The bass is the instrument that holds down the harmony, but it can also be a very creative and melodic instrument, too. Today we're going to talk about a few concepts to improve your bass solos. All of the concepts that we’re going to cover are in our resource 25 Bass Etudes. If you want to hear how Dan plays these concepts, be sure to check out our accompanying YouTube video, 6 Soloing Techniques for Jazz Bassists.
Now let’s get playing!
Contents
Start simple
This first concept sounds simple, and it is simple—because it is “start simple.” Give yourself a short rhythmic phrase that you can repeat and alter in ways that match the harmony. Repetition is a great key to establishing a relationship with your listener, and it intrigues the listener if you take a simple idea and move it around a little bit. So for example, on this solo from “Just Friends,” it starts out with a relatively simple motif.
If you know this song, you’ll recognize the reference to the melody. Then we change the B natural to B-flat, which changes the chord from major to minor.
Then we’ll go like this.
So you can take a small idea and develop it, change it and repeat it. We do it again at bar 17, starting the second A.
So we’re taking the same shape, using it and changing it over time to match the harmony. The other thing is that we’re coming from a slightly different place, as we use four ascending eighth notes to get us into the two eighth notes we really care about. This is an example of taking a motif and tacking it onto something else so that the motif reveals itself shortly after, but maybe you didn’t realize that you’d already heard it. In this case, you don’t recognize the motif, since there’s the F# and G# that come before, but it’s hidden in there.
Vary range
The second thing you can do is vary your range as extremely as possible, sometimes from note to note. It's an interesting and unique aspect of the bass, an instrument which is normally heard in a linear fashion—walking up and down. It opens up the listener’s ear to hit something high and drop down really, really low to a kind of beefy, low, open string, which we see on this chorus.
This not only uses syncopation, which is already interesting, but it literally kind of dances from the upper range to the lower range.
Play with momentum
Another tip is to play with the momentum, or the weight and the direction of your lines. Something great to do is to take a stream of eighth notes and then kind of pump the brakes at the very end and just end it out with a beefy triplet quarter note line.
This makes it almost feel like you're falling into something, then it just slows into boom, boom, boom. This is a way of giving a little bit of rest to your line. We’ll do this before the second A.
So you're varying the rhythms, going from kind of steady and short to big and wide, and slowing it down so that you can really pace yourself and build off of that.
Phrasing and shaking
We’re going to look at a solo on “Beautiful Love” and check out some things to consider for phrasing and never letting a note die, which helps capture the vocal quality of the instrument.
Looking at these first eight bars, on every quarter note, we’ll give a little bit of a shake. It's kind of a vibrato that slowly works its way in. It sounds a bit like a bend at first, but has a little bit of a wobble to it. This is a great way to sink into a quarter note, especially after you've been playing some faster notes. It helps give a little extra life and movement, especially on longer notes.
Pull from outside of jazz
The next thing is to not be afraid to pull from outside of jazz for your solo. For example, going into the second A, we do this arpeggiation thing with 16th notes.
When you look at this, you may see a grand concerto, or a kind of cadenza, right? Sometimes doing repeated notes and outlining the harmony very literally can break the listener out of the traditional jazz idiom, and it serves as a nice way to bring some tension before you bring everybody back down and resolve. And harmonically, we're outlining a diminished chord descending. This is a way you can try to raise the listener up to eventually gently bring it back down to something a little more tonal and relaxed.
Bluesy melodic sequence
Our final tip for today is to not be afraid to get bluesy with it. You can melodically sequence something that's a little bit different from the lineage of what you've been playing before. Here we’ve got these little triplet licks that feel pretty blues-oriented, right?
But again, it's sequencing. This idea of taking it up from the B flat and then lowering it a half step right along with the harmony of the chord. We get a little bit of a call and response with yourself and the listener, and it snaps you into a different realm, right? This is in a minor key, so it can be fun to do little bluesy slides, like from the minor third to the major third. That's a different realm, a different harmonic language than we’ve been using for the rest of this chorus.
So there we had a couple things to think about as you are creating your own individual solos using your own individual voice. If you haven’t already checked out our accompanying YouTube video 6 Soloing Techniques for Jazz Bassists, it’s a great way to see how Dan plays through these exercises. Plus, don’t forget to check out our resource, 25 Bass Etudes, for even more ways to level up your bass playing.
We’ll see you next time!
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