Harmony Archives
Cissy Strut Jam: Groove Like George Porter Jr. of The Meters
In this “Keep It Groovy” episode, we’ll channel the power of George Porter Jr. to get our funk on. Check out this lesson Ryan Madora created around “Cissy Strut” by The Meters.
Keep It Groovy: All About That Bass
We’re all about that bass, and Ryan Madora’s latest “Keep It Groovy” breaks down the song in this lesson. Not only is this a fun tune to play, but it outlines a classic chord progression, the “ii-V-I.”
Keep It Groovy: Build Your Bass Groove – Using Octaves And Palm Muting
In this “Keep It Groovy” bass lesson, and this time around, Ryan Madora is focusing on building your bass groove through the use of octaves and palm muting.
Bass & Creativity: Spicing Up the Chords
Today we will explore simple ways to discretely modify the harmony while maintaining the bass movement. Once again, experimenting with the piano will help underline those modifications, but we will also cover ways to express it on the bass.
Bass & Creativity: Modulation and Chord Progressions
In this “Bass & Creativity” lesson, Olivier Babaz dives into the mechanics of modulation within chord changes. You’ll learn how to navigate between tonalities, building harmonic sequences borrowing chords in two different, yet related tonalities.
Bass & Creativity: Harmonic Sequences
In this video lesson, we'll practice and explore the harmonic possibilities of combining bass playing with one or two top notes. Follow along with the video and topic outline.
Playing Outside the Harmony
I often get the question about how to play “outside” the changes. There’s no easy answer to this, but I do have several tips to keep in mind. This week I made a video to dig into how to create tension and release by playing outside of the harmony.
Talking Technique: Talking Triads
Triads are three note chords that serve as the building blocks of functional harmony. As bass players, it’s important for us to recognize triads by ear and to know how to play them starting on each string in all keys and in all registers of the bass. We’ll focus on the major triad in this lesson to get your ears...
The Lightbulb Moment: Major? Minor? Why Bother?
Being a bass player is awesome. Not only do you get to hang in the back and groove, but you get to skate by on all of that “theory” stuff that guitar players have to deal with. You know… like chords and whatnot. We only have to play one note at a time! That’s like… way easier. I wouldn’t want...
Joe Hubbard Authors Book on Functional Harmony
Top bassist and bass teacher Joe Hubbard (also a No Treble contributor) has released the book, Functional Harmonic Concepts. Hubbard is known for his recording work with artists such as Mose Allison, George Benson and Dave Garabaldi and his instruction (The Who’s current bassist, the prolific Pino Palladino, was one of his students). According to Hubbard, the 120-page book will...
Exploring Vertical Harmony in Bass Playing
Q: I have never studied an instrument aside from bass. In watching countless guitarists pick up my bass and rip out some cool lines (and the left hand of pianists), I’ve realized that I’ve never really found an effective way to internalize “vertical harmony”, and thus my lines lack coherence as a whole. How do you suggest I familiarize myself...
Fitting It All Together: Reading, Listening and Playing Through the Changes
Last week, we wrapped up the series on Breaking Down Harmonic Substitutions. After that, I had a great moment with a student where there was a small distinction made that seemed to have a great impact in the student’s playing. An immediate impact. We were running the Wayne Shorter tune “Juju”, primarily because it has a ton of whole-tone scale...