Beginners’ Lesson
Welcome back! When we first start playing bass, the usual path is a mixture of pretty open exploration—basically making a terrible but really enjoyable noise!—and learning songs, either from tab, video tutorials, or notation. It’s usually not long before we first encounter the task of coming up with a bass-line for a chord progression to fit a particular song.
The places where this might happen are many and varied. We could be working on original songs with a friend who writes music; playing covers behind singers at an open-mic night where getting the exact line is less important than playing something that fits how they’re singing it; or in a church or community situation, playing songs written for communal singing. In any of those situations, you are faced with that most foundational of bass playing tasks—connecting the harmony to the rhythm.
“OUR JOB IS TO PLAY A LINE THAT LETS PEOPLE KNOW WHERE THE CHORDS ARE GOING, AND LOCKS IN
