Bass Gym: A Minor Riff Workout With Harmonic Minor, Blues Notes, and Speed

Have you ever perceived music as colors? This condition is known as chromesthesia, whereby sound triggers color vision and a multisensory experience. Each instrument also has a different timbre, pitch and other qualities, which make you associate its tone with a particular color. 

What color do you see when you play fast riffs in A minor? Funnily enough, I see monochrome colours, black and white, and that is the story of our riff today. 

Now let’s talk about scales. The opening melody in bars 1–4 is played in the A harmonic minor scale (A, B, C, D, E, F, G♯, A), creating an eerie, exotic vibe. 

The main riff, which starts in bar 5, was distantly inspired by the famous “Hysteria” masterpiece, as it shares the open A string with notes from the A minor Aeolian scale (A, B, C, D, E, F, G, A). To make it sound more bluesy, I added two chromatic notes: G♯ between G and A, and the famous blue note, also known as the tritone E♭, between D and E. 

The riff evolves into the bridge part (starting in bar 13), which could easily be part of a high-energy Suicidal Tendencies track. In bar 15, you’ll play the G# diminished scale to create a smooth transition back to the main riff. 

The third part of our fast monochromatic riffing in A minor has a very punk rock vibe, with fast chromatic runs and an epic G# diminished scale lick (this time one octave higher) to conclude the piece. 

It’s fast, it’s dangerous, and it’s monochromatic. 

Have fun and make those sixteenth notes fly!

Download the transcription and follow along with the video below.