11
ULTRABASS
BASS GUITAR PACK
Walking Bass
This example shows you a typical blues, rhythm & blues and jazz style. As in the first example, it consists solely of quarter notes.
Make sure that you dont leave any breaks between the individual notes, so that they flow into each other.
RHYTHM
As a bassist, you are largely responsible for the rhythm and the groove. Basically, you are the link between the rhythm
instruments (drums, percussion, etc.) and the melodic instruments (e.g. guitar, keyboard or vocals) and its your job to bring it all
togetherso a good sense of rhythm is essential. This chapter is intended to give you an outline of the wide range of rhythms and
to help you to start using them. In this chapter we will be using standard notation to illustrate note values and in the following
rhythm exercises.
Note values
Pieces of music can be broken down into measures containing a certain number of beats. The best-known is undoubtedly the 4/4
measure. In this case each measure has four beats and if you were to play all four beats on your bass you would be playing four
quarter notes per measure. Hence the term 4/4 measure.
There are, of course, many ways to fill a measure with beats of all kinds of length in order to create interesting rhythmic patterns.
To do this you have to know the different note values into which a measure can be divided.
If a 4/4 measure contains only one note that covers the entire length of the measure (four beats), then that note is known as a
whole
note
. It is four quarter notes long:
w
=
q q q q
If you play two equally long notes in a 4/4 measure (one of them beginning on the 1
st
quarter beat and the other beginning on the 3
rd
quarter beat), then you are playing two
half notes
. Each of these notes has the same length as two quarter notes:
h h
=
q q q q
If you play one note on each of the four beats, the measure contains four
quarter notes
as mentioned above:
q q q q
=
q q q q
A quarter note can also be divided into shorter note values. For example, the length of one quarter note is equal to that of two
eighth
notes
. If you play two eighth notes of equal length on each of the four beats, there are eight strokes in the measure:
If you play four notes on each of the four quarter beats, you are playing what we call
sixteenth notes
. A 4/4 measure would then
contain sixteen strokes:
Dotted notes
A dot after a note indicates that the value of the respective note is increased by one half of its original value. For example, a dotted
quarter note has a length of one quarter note plus one eighth note, a dotted half note is one half note plus one quarter note, etc.
h .
=
h + q
l
q .
=
q + e
l
e.
=
e + x
l
x.
=
x + r
In the following rhythm exercise there are dotted quarter notes in three places. When you play these notes, remember to extend each
of them by one eighth note.
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