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Are you recording the video of this? No? Okay. Yeah, so that's another cool thing to get, is if you can record the video so that you can actually record me for the whole lesson, so that you'll have a video recording of this lesson that you can go back and watch anytime.
Yeah. The free download? Oh, well, no, usually not. You probably have to pay something for the software. I mean, I had to pay for mine. It wasn't much, there's like twenty bucks or something, it wasn't really a whole lot. It depends on how many features you get. I mean, you get the real fancy stuff and it gets expensive. But, you know, if you just get something called Pamela, you remember the setup sheet I sent you? Yeah, it has a listing of that, Pamela, of how you get it. But if you just Google, you know, recording Skype on PC, recording video for Skype on PC, you'll have a list of stuff that comes up and you can pick from and see what you like.
But the cool thing about it is you can set it to record both of us side by side, or you can just have you, or you can just have me. Of course you wouldn't want to see, you know, you'd want to see the one at me, because it'd be just like what you're seeing now. You'd have a video of that, so that you could go over procedures on exactly how to work on stuff. And I've had students who do this with me say that that's one of the best features of it, because they don't have to worry about remembering stuff, they can just go back and watch it again. You've created like a little video library of these lessons, so it's definitely worth doing.
Okay, all right. Did I also give you triads in walking bass? I think I did. Yes. Okay, that's the next thing I'd like to talk about, because triads, you know, are the most basic chord that you can have, right? It's a 1-3-5 of the scale, and if I take that 1-3-5 and play it together, it's a chord. If I do it separately, it's an arpeggio, okay? But you have to have three notes, three different notes, to actually, theoretically, earn the name chord, right? I mean, there's such things people call power chords and stuff like that, it's actually found its way into harmony and theory books now, because it's become a part of music, but as far as traditional harmony goes, you need at least three different notes for a chord.
The most important of these are the triads, these are the ones that outline the basic chord sound. There are four different kinds of triads: there's major, from the major scale, 1-3-5, minor, 1, flat 3, 5, diminished, 1, flat 3, flat 5, and augmented, 1, 3, sharp 5. Those are the four main chord types that you'll have.
All right, now these triad notes are important to us as bass players, because the note job of a bass line is to outline the chord sound. The bass line also has a rhythm and groove job, and all three of these things work together, but the note job is to outline the chord sound using one note at a time, and the triads are going to be the main players in this. In fact, a bass line cannot be a bass line and not be triadic. I mean, even if it just includes the root note, that still counts, because I'm doing one. Or if I'm going 1 and 5, 1-5-5, right, or 1-3-5, a bass line has to have one of those notes, the root note, and then either the three or the five, to outline the chord sound. So knowing the different ways to play a triad is extremely important, and can cut down on a lot of unnecessary shifting.
All right, so the next thing I would like to have you work on is start getting familiar with the triad shapes. I'm going to bring these slides up and show them to you, so you'll see what they look like, and they'll be in this walking bass line folder. I'm going to do a screen sharing thing, let me know when it comes up.
Okay, all right, this is the first of the slides. The fingerboard layout is the same as it was on the scales, with your low string here, you see my arrow moving, the low string there, and the high string there. Now I just have a four string version of this, the five string and six string really aren't necessary for this, because this applies to anywhere that you place a root note.
All right, so the first thing that you want to get acquainted with is this written material up top here, because this is how you're going to catalog this information, so that you'll be able to file it away mentally and be able to access it later. So, section 1, now we'll be in sections 1, 2, and 3. Section 1 means the third and fifth are above the root note, and by above the root note I mean that they are higher notes, they're actually higher in pitch. You know, I have the one, the three is higher than that, the five is higher than that, as opposed to being lower notes than the one. That makes sense? Yeah, okay, so that's what section 1 means, right.
Then we have the type of triad and the root note that's involved, for the example here on the slide. Now the next important thing to look at is the side position. Generally on bass you have three main positions that you can play different things in. You'll have what I call left side position, where you'll have basically a root note, let's say played with the fourth finger or the third, and the other notes involved will be physically to the left of that root note. Then you have a center position, where the root note is based in the middle of the other notes that are going to be played, like the threes and fives will be surrounding that root note. Then you have a right side position, where you have your first finger on a root note, and sometimes a second, but mainly the first, and then the notes will be physically to the right of that one. Okay, so that's what the positions mean.
So, left side position, what's important about left side position in section one is that you have to have two strings above the root note to play this configuration. So if you're playing six string bass, I could not start a section one left side position on the G string, right, because I've run out of strings, right? Make sense? Okay, so that's what's important about left side position in section one.
Now you see the configuration of notes on the fingerboard. I have the D root note, which is on the fifth fret of the A string, and then the third, which is on the fourth fret of the D string, and then the fifth, which is on the second fret of the G string. Now there's several ways to get the information from this slide, it really doesn't matter which way you get it, just so long as you play it and study it a certain way, so you have the layout this way.
Now you also see the actual notation written out, and then the numbers in the middle here are the note function numbers, and notice they go 1, 3, 5, 3, because we're trying to keep it in a four-four time frame, coming back to the one every fourth beat, I mean every first beat of the four, thinking of it as four-four time. Now on the tab, you're familiar with tablature a little bit, you know what these lines represent, those are the strings, so that's your E string, A string, D string, G string. So that five right there is telling you that that note is on the fifth fret of the A string. Now the number beside it in parentheses is something I added to it, which is a suggested left hand fingering for that note. So you have three sets of numbers on this, you have the note function number in the middle, then you have the actual fret number indicated on the line that's representing the string, and then you have the suggested fingering in parentheses.
And then the second staff grouping here is what I call the inversion of that. In other words, notice the sequence changes, instead of going 1, 3, 5, 3, it now goes 1, 5, 3, 5, 1, 5, 3, 5. So when you practice this, you play it like this, one, three, five, three, one, three, five, three, a couple times, and then the inversion, one, five, three, five, one, five, three, five. Any questions on what I did, or how I got it from the slide? Nope, okay, then we go to the next slide, slide 2.
