Read the transcript
Now, these arpeggios, see, as we talked about with the scale, the bebop scale, the notes naturally resolve downwards, right? So to get back up, you can go back up the scale the same way you went down, but that's a way to build tension. A way to do it, another way to do it, let's say, is to use arpeggios to get back up once we run out of notes.
All right, now the arpeggios start on three, five, and flat seven. They don't start on the one, they start on three, five, and flat seven, okay? The note function for the three start is three, five, flat seven, nine, one, three, five, flat seven, nine, and then the nine resolves to the one, all right, which would sound like three, five, flat seven, nine, one, here, conclude on the one. Now I'll show you how to play in a second, okay? Do you hear that? Yeah, I do. Okay.
All right, so the note function formula for the one starting on the three, for the C7 bebop arpeggio ascending, is three, five, flat seven, nine, resolving to one. The note function, this is for your recording, the note function formula for the one starting on the five is five, flat seven, nine, eleven, resolving to three. And the one starting on flat seven is flat seven, nine, eleven, thirteen, resolving to five.
Now, you understand that twos, sixes, um, I'm sorry, twos, fours, and sixes are the same thing as nines, elevens, and thirteens, right? Yeah. So, the note in this case, in C, that's two, is D, right? Yeah, D is also nine. Sometimes it's two, sometimes it's nine. The four, which is F, is sometimes four, sometimes eleven. The six, which is A, is sometimes six and sometimes thirteen.
And so that begs the question, well, why is it sometimes two, sometimes nine, sometimes this, sometimes that? The answer to that question is that it's how it's functioning in the line. If the note is functioning as a connector, for example, if you're connecting one to three with a two, now I'm just going, or three to three back to one, three, two, one, one, two, three, then that note is a two. If it's part of an arpeggio, or functioning as a chord tone in the line, that's what differentiates a two and a nine, and a four and eleven, and a six and a thirteen. If it's functioning as a connector, it's a two, four, six. If it's actually functioning as a chord tone, it's nine, eleven, thirteen.
Now, you'll see what that actually is, all right. You might say, well, I don't know whether it's functioning as a chord tone or not, but you will, as we work through this, okay? Okay, right. But just know that that's the rule on why you would call it a nine as opposed to a two, right?
Now, can you see me clearly? I can. Okay. Now, as with the triads, these arpeggios have a left, center, and right side position. They also have a two and one string combination, right? But the three, the three string version of this is going to have a left, center, and right side position, just like the triads. All right, which means we're going to start the three version with the first finger on note function number three, seventh fret on the A string.
All right, so you have right side position, watch my left. Yep, three, five, flat seven, nine, one. Center, three, five, flat seven, nine, one. Left, three, five, flat seven, nine, one. Okay, all right, so you want to just be able to very comfortably, three, five, four, nine, one, three, five, seven, nine, one, three, five, seven, nine, one. Okay?
Right side position, note function number five, five, flat seven, watch it a couple times. Yeah, five, flat seven, nine, eleven. Make sure you call out numbers when you practice this, okay. So that's a center position, left side position, start with the fourth finger, okay, five, flat seven, nine, eleven, three. So with the fives, like the three, you want to be able to just practice going in between the three of them: five, seven, nine, eleven, three, five, flat seven, nine, eleven, three, five, five, seven, nine, eleven, three.
And the reason to learn these three different positions is you never know where you're going to be in a line. Yeah. So bass players, because of the nature of the fretboard, and I'm sure guitar players have to do the same thing, is that generally you have to learn how to play stuff three different ways, or should practice things three different ways, especially in an improvisational sense, because you never know where you're going to be in that moment, to where if you can grab something without having to unnecessarily shift, the chances of the line being smoother and more musical, or better. Yeah, right.
Yeah, so what you do is you get your muscle memory and your musical instincts honed to just make these choices almost by themselves, you don't have to think about them. This stuff gets ingrained where your hands just know where to go as you hear sounds, in the same way your mouth knows how to move when you talk, all the complexity of the mouth, tongue, lips, all that stuff. I mean, bass playing pales in comparison to what you have to do physically when you talk to somebody, it's not even close, and you think of what you're able to do with that.
See, the perfect analogy for improvising is a conversation with somebody, because you're improvising with the words to get your message across, right? But you're not inventing new words, right? Right, you're using the same old words that everybody's used forever, but you're always, in a way, saying them in a way that's uniquely you at that moment. It's the same thing with this stuff, you get all this stuff ingrained, so that when you start making these choices, ultimately you want to hear sounds, and your hands just know where to go. So that's what we're training, that's what we're doing now, is training, is the training for that process.
Yeah, unfortunately it doesn't work in a day. It's stuff that, you know, stuff that you can play easily now, that at one time was like, oh man, I'll never get this, and now it's like nothing. Yeah. Okay, all right.
All right, so right side position, starting on the flat seven, flat seven, nine, eleven, thirteen, five, right side, flat seven, nine, eleven, thirteen, five, center, flat seven, nine, eleven, thirteen, five, left side. Okay, so you want to own these guys, so just, you know, put them in a rotation sequence, don't worry about getting them by the next lesson, that's not what I'm asking you to do, I'm just asking you to start putting them in the rotation and get familiar with this information, just like you did the triads.
Okay, so when you start doing these lines, you're going to go up on the arpeggios: three, five, seven, eight, three, two, one, A, flat seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, A, flat seven, nine, eleven, thirteen, five, three, four, three, two, one, eight, five, seven, six, five, nine, five, flat five, five, seven, nine, eleven, three, five, five, seven, nine, one, eight, five, seven, six, five, four, three. So you're just going to bounce up and down on these things, so you keep the lines just going and going and going. I call it the energizer exercise. Yeah, just keeps going like the Energizer Bunny.
Yeah, and we'll start connecting it, it's cool stuff and it works, man. It's just, you know, you got to sit down and work on it. Yeah, but it'll work, this, you know, somewhere along the line it starts to come together, and we're learning vocabulary, we're learning vocabulary is what we're doing. We're also working on controlling note function numbers rhythmically, which, again, I say, is the key to a good line, in the same way you control how your words fall in a certain order to make sense when you talk to somebody. The way it works in the language of music is what goes where in the rhythm, and to be able to control that. Languages follow a logical progression of events in order to work, music is no different.
