Converting to Bass Guitar - 12 Bar Blues

Описание: In part 3 of the converting to bass guitar mini series, get a better grasp of music theory by playing a great 12 bar blues riff on bass (or six string guitar!) and see how interval names work in two dimensions of music.

Catch up with part 1    • Converting to Bass Guitar for Lead or Rhyt...   & part 2    • Bass playing for Lead or Rhythm Guitarists...  

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Abridged Script:
Thanks to everyone who responded to my first two videos in this mini-series on Bass guitar playing. Your positive feedback has made me decide to extend this series. But, if you are not a bass player and are keen to get on and develop your skills on the 6-string acoustic or electric guitar as rhythm or lead player, then please don’t click away from this video!
This series is designed for you! Learning bass – is a massively useful thing to help you develop your understanding of practical application of music theory. Even if you don’t have a bass guitar and just use the bottom four strings on your six-string guitar to work along with me on these videos, you will uncover some great shortcuts to a better understanding of music and an improved grasp of fretboard orientation on the six-string as well.
Bet you’ve heard that riff before! I describe that riff as 1 3 5 6. If you followed the last lesson closely, you can probably see where this description comes from… remember this movable Major scale pattern?
Start this pattern on any note on either the E or the A string, and it gives us the Major scale in the key of that note. Now, this Major scale is effectively used as a measuring stick for all sorts of things that we do in music. So, getting back to our riff, when I call this a 1 3 5 6 riff, you can see that I am simply referring to the steps on the Major scale in the key of my starting note which, in this case is A. So, I am playing notes 1, 3, 5 and 6.
Now, in a 12-bar blues we would need to change the starting point of the riff each time the chord changed. So, for a 12-bar blues in A for example, for the first four bars we would build our 1 3 5 6 riff using A as note 1.
Simplest option is using A at fret 5 on the E string… before moving the whole pattern across one string so that the note D at fret 5 on the A string becomes note 1 in the pattern… after a couple of bars of that, we move it back to A at fret 5 on the E string, then up to fret 7 on the A string to find the note E and make that note number 1 in the pattern, just once through the pattern on that note, then back to D, and ending the verse with two bars on A.
So far, I hope you will agree that this is fairly straightforward. But, if you have studied music for any amount of time, chances are you will also have come across numerals used, not to describe notes, but to describe the relationship of the chords themselves. So, instead of naming the chords specifically, we use Roman Numerals to show their relationship to one another in whatever key you choose to play in. I sometimes refer to this as ‘Generic’ chord notation. because it has the advantage that it can instantly be applied to any key.
Let’s say we want to play a 12 - bar blues in the key of C# major. We don’t have to concern ourselves with the fact that C# has 7 sharps in its key signature – we just find the note C# here at fret 9 on the E string… and declare that as note ‘I’ (thinking in Roman numerals in this case). Then four steps up the Major scale from there I can find the root note of chord IV and one step higher up the Major scale the root note of chord V. So that has mapped out the root notes of each of the three chords we need in our 12-bar blues in C#. Note that most often the pattern these I IV V notes makes on the fret board has this characteristic ‘L’ shape. So, then I can play, thinking in these terms… but what you’ll be actually hearing is me following these chords…
Now I apply my riff pattern of 1 3 5 6 starting on each of our root notes, as called for in the chord sequence, which works great behind a 12 bar in C#. Now the actual notes we are playing are C# E# G# A# behind the C# Chord; F# A# C# D# behind the F# chord and G# B# D# E# behind the G# chord… but you don’t even need to know all that! By using this numeric approach, we steer round all the complexity involved in calculating different Key signatures and notes within each chord.
Our 3 part Guitar Music Theory Course will help you fill in any gaps in your music theory knowledge and be able to take advantage of many more shortcuts like this. Remember, the more knowledge you have - the easier learning guitar becomes! As I always say: Music Theory is for Lazy People!