Why Learn Chordal Tones? (Tip #83)
– by Carol Kaye
Helpful playing tips from a legend of the bass guitar
Why I teach chordal tones instead of unpractical scales is easy to understand: all music song forms are formed around CHORDS, and the bass player has to know how to funtion in chordal progressions, know what chordal notes to play and how to movethem.
For decades, I’ve had so many so-called “scale-trained” students come to me for lessons — they can play a god-zillion amount of scales yet cannot play a simple chordal song at all. They don’t even know a simple jazz blues, can’t follow chords with their ears, and have NO IDEA of where their basic chordal notes are, cannot play a simple R35 arpeggio across the neck in *one* position.
This belies how terrible those scale-teachers are! Some have even been taking lessons for 2-3 years and could never play ONE TUNE! I get them to playing a tune first lesson and many are walking good lines in the jazz chords on the blues….in one lesson!
How? Simple, I teach them the basics of chordal notes, chordal scales (never note-scales). How chords move and function….and they are both angry and thrilled (angry at their past waste of time and money and thrilled to find out it was NOT THEM! That they did have talent, that they CAN learn!.
Most of your bass lines are made up from chordal notes, for all styles, altho’ the jazz styles require a more complete line of theory, it’s still thinking in *chords*! Jazz improv (and walking lines) use mainly chordal notes with some lead-in chromatics, some b5s on the cyclic chords, and yes, even an occasional scale (rarely tho’!) for connecting the chordal notes.
Pianists and trumpet players seem to overdo their jazz improv with a few scales, but if you really listen to the jazz patterns, they are formed from chordal notes, stacked triads, and the pivotal b5 chord substitutes: G7b5b9 (with the b9 replacing G), IS Db7. Db7b5b9 (with the b9 replacing the root) IS G7. No two other chords are like this.
Slonimsky wrote a WHOLE BOOK based on this pivot b5 pattern use (and mistakenly named “Thesaurus of Scales”), no, it’s not a “scale” book but a book of b5 patterns which even composers like John Williams, etc. Quincy Jones get some of their film screen compositional patterns from. Chordal tones of the pivotal b5 chords!
– Carol Kaye (February 26, 1999
These playing tips quoted from Carol Kaye’s website with permission. Visit her website for many more invaluable gems in the “Education’ section at http://www.carolkaye.com.
A veteran of over 10,000 recording sessions, Carol Kaye has written extensively on bass guitar technique. Contact Info: http://www.carolkaye.com
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