Running with the Bass

May 7, 1999

Bass is a great instrument. Important to almost all forms of popular music, the bass is the foundation of most groups. The low pulsing beats are the building blocks on which everything else is built. The bass is easy to learn, yet difficult to master, and herein lies the problem. Too many bass players have learned to play by ear without really understanding what they are playing or why. You can get started as a bass player this way, but it becomes difficult to progress past the stage of adequacy without the knowledge and the theory of music behind your playing. I have received a lot of mail from readers asking for the quick way to learn cool runs. Well . . . there isn't a quick way. However, knowing the theory behind what you are playing will help considerably. Hopefully this series of articles will help. I have designed the "Running with the Bass" series of articles to help bass players with the theory they need to progress. Furthermore, I have left out a lot of the technical jargon and details that are not terribly useful to bass players. Focusing on only the lower register of the grand staff will allow us to progress at a much faster pace than is normally done when studying music.

In part one we will deal with the building of major scales and fingering patterns on which to develop your style of playing. All styles of playing need to be built around a sound foundation. Whether you're a in the pocket, blues man, or a swing player doing jump music, there should be something in this article for you.

Before I get going, I would like to state for whom part one of this article is written. The main focus of this article will be for beginners to medium-advanced bass players. If you are at the high end of this talent range you may find the early topics and examples too easy. Please feel free to jump ahead to the more advanced topics.

The Basic Major Scale as it Relates to Bass

The major scale is a series of whole and half note steps upon which all other scales are compared or built from. The major scale is the "Natural" sounding scale. In order to understand the later lessons and examples, we need to take a good look at the Major scale first in order to establish the terminology that will be used later. Let's take a look at a simple C scale:

The notes run from a low C to a C that is exactly one octave higher. The reason why both C notes are called C is because they both fall into the same mathematical sequence. For those of you who hate math, but love music, you're in trouble because music is math. If one note is 440 cycles (concert A), then the same note one octave higher is 880 cycles or exactly twice as many. To follow this article you do not have to know this, I just thought you may find it interesting.

But enough of that - back to the major scale now. Upon further examination of the scale you will find that there are different numbers of half-steps, equivalent to the number of frets, between each note. If you were playing the scale on one string of a bass, here is the number of frets between each note.

Notice that between some notes there is only one fret, but most of the notes have two frets between them. A one fret step is known as a half step and, consequently, two frets is known as a whole step. If we remove the letters and replace them with numbers, you begin to see that the note names don't really matter when figuring out fingerings on the bass. Let's look at this:

The half-steps in a major scale are always after the 3rd and the 7th note of the scale. Therefore, no matter what note we started on (the root note), the fingering for that scale on the bass will always be the same. In the example below, note the fingering pattern used. The numbers in the circle refer to the finger number to play the note with. Your index finger would be "1" and your little finger would be "4". By starting the scale with your second finger, it allows you to play the entire scale without sliding your hand up or down the neck. Sorry people - if you've been cheating and not using your little finger, it's time to break that bad habit.

Standard fingering for a major scale.

In the diagram below we use the standard finger pattern to play the G major scale.

G major using standard fingering.

Now, by simply moving your hand up and down the neck, and performing the standard fingering pattern on different frets you can now play any major scale. For example, by starting on the sixth fret instead of the 3rd fret you are now playing the scale in A# or Bb. This fingering can also be used on the 3rd or A string as well. The A string fingering is shown below.

Standard major scale fingering on the A string.

If you are playing a 5 or 6 string bass, you can also expand this fingering to the D string due to the fact that you have more strings. Simply play the same fingering pattern starting with the root on the D string played with your 2nd finger.

By using the E and A strings to play standard scales you can quickly get to any scale you need and be sure you are playing it correctly. These scales will be the basis of the pattern and run techniques we will be discussing during this series. It is very important to memorize all the notes or root starting positions on the E and A strings. Here are all the frets and notes up to the 12th fret for quick reference.

The notes for the E and A strings.

For use later in this article we will refer to the different notes of the scale by number as we did earlier. Here is the fingering pattern of the major scale using the note numbers.

The numeric scale.

These note numbers are often referred to in music. A perfect example of this is the standard blues pattern 1-4-5 which refers to the root or 1st, the 4th and the 5th of the scale. So, if you are playing blues in A, you will expect the chord pattern to be A - D - E. The beauty of referring to notes by number instead of letter names is that it makes it easy to play a song in any key. Bass players shouldn't memorize strings and frets, they should memorize the pattern. This will increase the flexibility of your playing and make you a key member of the music creation team.