Originally Posted by Gordon Scott
A couple of things that may be useful to know, if you don't already know them.

1) It's quite common for the bass to lead into the next chords, so for example in a simply progression C, F, G7,C the bass may play approach notes to the new chord, maybe D,E,F from the C to the F, or likely the Bb from the G7 back to the C. Approach notes are usually played towards the end of the bar to start a momentum towards the new chord.

2) A lot of traditional western music works around 'modes' also known as 'church modes', where the melody uses the notes of a scale, but the bass note defines the mode. The mode can give a very distinctly different feel to the melody. You'll certainly already know two, if not by name, because they're the major and the relative minor keys (Ionian and Aeolian), but there are five others: Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Myxolidian and Locrian (Locrian is very rarely used).

Wikipedia has an English page here
David Bennett explains in a video here
What Gordon says! Another useful source of info on modes and how to use them in songwriting is Jake Lizzio's YouTube channel "Signals Music Studio". Five years ago, he created a fantastic modal chart, which I purchased. I had it mounted on heavy poster board. It's one of the few things I brought with me when I moved to France from the U.S. It's now hanging on the wall in my home studio. Jake is fantastic. I've sub'd his YT channel for a long time. He's a great teacher. OK, he's a guitarist, and I'm a bassist, but I still get a ton of useful info from his videos.



[Linked Image from i.imgur.com]

Last edited by TheMaartian; 11/07/24 05:37 AM.
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