Bass accompaniment question

Hi, I will be playing bass with a friend on ukulele next week. I just got a bass ukulele, and have been messing around with it. Rhythmically I'm very comfortable with this, as I have a background in percussion. But just trying to think about it... So he has a song written with the chord progression C, Am, F, G, pretty standard, are there "standard notes "that I would normally play on the bass to accompany this? The tonic note of each chord? The C, the fifth and the octave?

Any thoughts are appreciated.

Let's hope kohanmike sees this, he'll put you right, he's been playing his bass ukes this past year with his group of players.

The tonic note of each chord? The C, the fifth and the octave?

3rds and 7ths will work nicely as well

Piecomics said:

Hi, I will be playing bass with a friend on ukulele next week. I just got a bass ukulele, and have been messing around with it. Rhythmically I'm very comfortable with this, as I have a background in percussion. But just trying to think about it... So he has a song written with the chord progression C, Am, F, G, pretty standard, are there "standard notes "that I would normally play on the bass to accompany this? The tonic note of each chord? The C, the fifth and the octave?

Any thoughts are appreciated.

Click to expand...

A lot of this falls on what your friend is playing stylistically, rhythmically, etc..

Standard notes would be the tonic, for sure. It'll help "root" the song somewhat. And if you add in some passing tones (ie. using the B to go from C to Am, walking down from the Am to the F, etc..), it'll bring in some much needed movement.

But for the most part, I would stop trying to overthink it. Bass is a FUNCTION and a SUPPORT role, and that's first and foremost. Outline the chords if you must, but only do it if it helps to serve the song, and add something to it. Otherwise, you're just adding things for no musical reason.

It also depends on the genre of music you'll be playing too. For example, for rock you can play just the root note. For bluegrass, alternate between the root and the 5th note. For jazz, play root, 3rd, and 5th (or in any order that sounds pleasing). These are just generalitites, just to get you started.

uke1950 said:

Let's hope kohanmike sees this, he'll put you right, he's been playing his bass ukes this past year with his group of players.

Click to expand...

I see it, but I'm still learning theory so I'm certainly no authority, in fact, the other posts have said it better than I can. I mostly play position rather than theory. I actually only recently learned that a minor chord walk up or down is not the same notes as a non-minor chord. For a while I was playing the major chord progression when I should have used the minor progression. The other bass player in our group pointed that out to me when we started playing "All About That Bass" in the key of G; G G Am Am D7 D7, I was doing an A progression not an Am. Not only do I have to see the chords on a lead sheet, I also have to hear the song to be able to work out the bass line, which can take me hours, but I'm thoroughly enjoying myself in the process, as the list of bass ukes attest in my signature.

As my friend Terry told me when I began playing bass "you can mess up the note, but don't mess up the beat"

First, that last statement is not true. If your bass notes don't fit with the chord (you have a 3/12 or 1/4 chance to find something that works), it ruins the song. A church where we used to attend had a nice guy who decided to play bass for worship and played all kinds of wrong notes. He just should not have been up there yet.

A quick question: what is the tuning on a bass ukulele? It sure would be wonderful if it followed (much lower) standard rentrant tuning, but I doubt that is the case. It would be so great for any ukulele player who knew their fretboard to be able to play bass, too.

The tuning is standard bass, which is the low four strings of a guitar, E4, A3, D2, G1. It honestly didn't matter that it was not uke tuning, especially since I played guitar before the uke. I have very good tempo, for the almost 50 years I played rhythm guitar, I was often told I should play the bass, but I agree, you have to hit the right notes.

I've memorized quite a few bass lines, but wanted to learn more theory so I started taking lessons.

At the end of the first lesson, my instructor had me learning:

Major: 1, 3, 5, 8
minor: 1, b3, 5, 8
7th: 1, 3, 5, b7
Maj 7: 1, 3, 5, 7
min7: 1, b3, 5, b7
1/2dim (m7b5): 1, b3, b5, b7

I told him I'd never read music before and he explained the notes (quarter, half, whole) and measure bars. If a chord extends a full four beats, then play four notes. If a measure has two chords, then play only the first two notes of each chord. If a chord spans two measures, he has me playing the four notes forwards and backwards.

The songs he gave me to practice are "Autumn Leaves", "All of Me" and "How High the Moon". I found some really helpful YT videos like this one. I downloaded them using this online program so I can slow the speed more precisely using Windows Media Player.

This is a great question. I don't alter my bass style when I'm just jamming through fake books with my uke friends, but if you're going to be working on songs, there are a few things to consider.

First, remember that the soprano, concert, tenor (in C) are true and pure treble instruments. They don't play any notes below a middle C. Second, remember that they only have four strings so they cannot play any extended chords - 9ths, etc, which require five or more notes unless they drop some notes. Some popular uke chords don't even play the root - Hawaiian D7, for example. Third, remember that most ukuleles are tuned re-entrant which makes the chords "tighter" and often plays inverted forms of the chord - where the root of the chord is not the lowest note being sounded.

Taking all of those things into consideration means that when you're playing bass with uke you have more responsibility, but also more freedom. Since the uke is a treble instrument, the bass is entirely responsible for the bass line. There is no chance that you will be doubling up on bass notes, or playing clashing bass likes like with a guitar or keyboard. That gives you freedom to do bass runs and to track the melody without worrying about interference from other instruments.

But the responsibility part comes into play when the uke is asked to play a chord that it doesn't have enough strings for, or it's missing the root. For instance, you want to make sure to cover the missing D of the Hawaiian D7, or possibly alternate to the 5th if the uke player plays a 9th chord as 1 - 3 - 7 - 9.