Melodic Bass Lines Archives

Olivier Babaz is back with another “Bass & Creativity” lesson, and this time, he’s sharing a boot camp on melodic development with three concepts. Utilizing these tools, you’ll be able to come up with tons of ideas to explore.

We’ve all heard about “chordal scales.” Chordal scales are useful; they contain the chord tones—we really need those!—and a set of neighbor and passing tones that will sound reasonably and reliably good. Chordal scales are emphasized in a lot of teaching methods. Are they the basis of what we need to know as bass players? Do we make our lines...