Originally published April 13, 2015, lightly edited for clarity.
I used to think scales were the most important things to work on as far as music vocabulary was concerned, but the more I played and studied the more I realized that triads and arpeggios are the most important part of music vocabulary to really have down. The problem is that you really need to know what a scale is and why a scale is what it is to really understand theory behind arpeggios and triads all the while knowing that all of these things are just a way of organizing, indexing, and cataloging your notes. As I have stated before, the triads are the harmonic material of all the bass lines you have played and will ever play. The way I like to work on composing a bass line for a particular groove or tune is to find what I call the harmonic and rhythmic core and build from there. The following video gets into the first important steps of this process. Harmony is one of the fundamentals I teach. If you want to work on composing stronger bass lines from triads, online bass lessons via Zoom are available.
