Chords for How to Play Along on Bass Guitar

As guitar players, one of the most fun and rewarding things we can do is prey on the insecurities of bass players.
So today I want to talk a little bit about how you can fundamentally use some principles of playing bass guitar to match
maybe like a chord progression on guitar or something like that.
Now it might actually be a more useful video to talk about the relationship between bass and drums or percussion,
but that might be a different video.
Right now
we're just gonna kind of talk about how we can use the principles of a root note, a fifth, and an octave to follow
_ what a guitar thing is doing if maybe you have to like sit in on gig or something like that, right?
Now all joking aside, bass is actually a very nuanced instrument and to really master it takes just as much precision as anything else,
but we're gonna kind of simplify it and
just bring it down to a couple notes and the bare minimum of what you need to do to just fill a certain
sonic space and kind of mesh with another instrument, right?
So again, what I mean by a root note and a fifth, basically if we look at, oh and like if you don't know,
most bass guitars have four or five strings and on a fourth string like this one
it's tuned most of the time to the exact same thing a regular standard guitar is tuned.
So E, A, D, and G, right?
_ So what we're gonna do is we're gonna pretend there is a guitar player playing just a G chord, right?
A G major chord and
a G on a bass is gonna be the third fret of
the lowest string, right?
So just like a guitar so far.
In fact, a lot of the same riffs that you can do on a guitar,
you can play in the exact same way on a bass.
So right now we're gonna follow a G major chord with a root note.
So the bare minimum that you can do if somebody's playing a G chord is just [G] play the pulse of a G note. _
_ Just like that, right?
Now to kind of step it up a little bit, you're gonna add the fifth.
So if you don't know what a fifth is, I did another video on power chords to kind of explain that in a little more detail.
But we're gonna assume that you know the fifth note of any
_ key or any note is gonna be down a string back two frets, right?
So if this is my root note on
G, the fifth G A B C D is gonna be the fifth fret of the A string.
So root note and it's fifth.
One five and again we get that from the major scale.
One two three four five
_ six seven eight.
So the eight is something I want to talk about too.
This is an octave, [Bm] right?
If you really want to just kind of do the bare minimum on a bass, just follow along with the chords playing the root,
_ the fifth and the octave.
You can kind of do some cool stuff just kind of by manipulating the pulse of it, right?
So I'm gonna do a guitar loop in a second to kind of demonstrate this, but let's just say
_ there's some kind of music going on in the background that has a progression of G major, D major, B minor.
You just start out finding those notes, right?
There's a G to a D
to a B, which is the seventh fret on the low E string, right?
_ So the minimum you could do is just one two three four to D to the [B] B, right?
_ _ Now the next addition you could make would be to add the fifth. _ _ _ _ _
Okay, _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ and then after that you could add the octave. _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ [E] _ _ [G] _
Okay, all I'm doing is kind of jumping around and pulsing those [Eb] different notes and playing them in kind of like a rhythmic and percussive way, right?
So what we're gonna do now is we're gonna do a different example where I'm gonna set up a guitar loop and then I'm gonna
demonstrate how you can use simple methods to follow along with.
So I'm gonna lay down a [E] kind of busy guitar part.
The [F] progression is gonna be F,
technically [B] an F major 7, and I'm gonna [Eb] go to an E flat major 7 [Bb] to a B major 7.
So we're thinking of this in the key of B flat.
So the loop is [E] going to sound like this.
_ [Em] _
_ _ _ [F] _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ [Eb] _ _ _ [Am] _ _
_ _ [Gm] _ [Bb] _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ Alright, so [G] let's find the root note for each of those.
[Fm] We can start with this F right here,
which is the eighth fret on the A string, right?
And then so we have this F and it's fifth.
[C] Now another cool thing about bass is you can actually, if you're rooting on the A string,
you can play the [F] fifth below, which is just up a string, right?
So here's F,
it's fifth, is a C.
You can play it here, you can play it here.
[Eb] Then we're gonna go back two frets to the E flat and then we're [E] gonna go up a string to the B flat, right?
So all I'm gonna be using is a root, a fifth,
[F] below, or an octave.
_ [Bb] _ _ _ _ _ _
So with the loop, I'm gonna start by playing just the root note over and over again, right?
[F] _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ [Eb] _ _ _ [A] _ _ _ _
[Gm] _ _ [Dm] _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ So_
_ [Bb]
[Dm] Add [F] the five. _ _ _ _ _
_ [Eb] _ _ _ _ [A] _ _ _
[Gm] _ _ [Dm] _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ [Bb] _ And _ [F] _ _ now _ _ _
_ [Eb] _ _ _ _ [A] _ _ _
_ [Gm] _ [Dm] _ _ [Bb] _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ [Am] _ _ [B] the cool thing is if you notice this, [F] we kind of have this little
[Eb] pattern _ of [Bb] one, five, eight, just in this area.
Now [B] since this is all gonna be kind of staying in the same key for the most [F] part,
_ [Em] we can use the fifth and the octaves of previous chords, right?
[Bbm] So [C] let's kind of focus on, here's the F, there's a C, this note right here.
If I get to the [Eb] second chord, I can play the [Bb] one and the five [C] _ and kind of go back into the prior chord's fifth, right?
So you [F] can be like_
_ _ _ _ [Eb] _ _ [Bb] _
_ _ _ [C] _ _ [Bb] _ [Eb] So I went from a one to a [Am] five
_ _ [Bb] _ [G] into another chord's fifth, right?
So if we kind of start adding
notes from other chords in the same riff, we can get a little busier.
[F] _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ [Eb] _ _ _ [Am] _ _ _ [Bb] _
[Gm] _ _ [Bb] _ _ _ [Gm] _ _ [F] _
_ [Bb] _ [Dm] _ _ [Bb] _ _ _ _
_ [F] _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ [Eb] _ _ _ [C] _ _ _ [Bb] _
_ _ _ [Dm] _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ [Bb] _ _ _ _
_ [F] _ _ _ _ [N] So_
So really, as long as you know the root note of the chord, you always have
something that you can do on bass, just by getting to the root and adding the fifth.
It doesn't even matter if it's major or minor, because major minor chords have the same fifth as the third that separates them.
So I'll probably do maybe another video kind of like getting more into
playing a little more melodically and like using modes and stuff like that too.
But for just an intro and kind of moving around the neck,
just follow those root notes, add the five and add the eight, and it's gonna sound great. _