Originally Posted by eddie1261
I don't know if you ever tried what I once suggested about learning the neck. Most people learn to fret from the nut until they hit the body. That has a place for learning scales. But if you learn the neck in a "planar" fashion at an angle. In your case, on a 4 string bass, your first note on an open string on the top string is a G. Find every G on every string all the way to the 15th fret on the 4th string. And work on playing G after G after G as fast as you can. That's how you learn to not play everything based around the 3rd fret. Then work on playing intervals and patterns in every key and in every position on the neck. About 95% of the bass players I ever knew played almost nothing but root notes and in the same place on the neck. So to relate to the dominant 7 that was the topic, using C as the example, play C E G Bb Bb G E C, so walk up the chord and back down. Over and over, faster and faster. Then move your hand up the neck and find the next position and do it again. Also remember that you don't have to play all the notes in the same octave. You can play C3 E2 G2 Bb3 or whatever. That adds flavor.

Also watch THIS VIDEO and pay close attention to Victor Wooten explaining "wrong" notes. Watch it with whichever brain you want, but try to focus on the message. It's great stuff by one of the best out there. It will help you with "flavor". Try hard to use those scales and such and try to not turn into a boring "root notes only" bass player. You are allowed to use 3rds and 5ths. It's in the rules!!
With all the activity in this thread I almost missed this one.
I'm sure this is good advice. I'm beyond only the root. With any song I compose I can pretty much do root-5th-octave in time with the drummer across the chord progression.
My next level is to decompose each chord in the progression into it's constituent notes (hence the chord spelling table above) and then using some or all of these notes plus their octaves to build pleasing bass lines that keep time with the drummer and that are not overly repetitive or boring. So constructing bass lines is primarily what this is about.

Eventually I'd like to get so good at this that when I see E7 on the chord sheet for example, that my brain instantly knows E G# B & D, then my fingers know where those notes are (in more than 1 location) and my sense of timing would tell me which note to play and when so that I'm supporting the groove in a way that I'm always ready and predicting the upcoming chord. Finally, there's the matter of notes that will transtion you from one chord to the next. It's a lifetime journey and it's fun. But I have to keep the growth going; right now stagnation or plateuing is not an option.

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