 Hi guys, this is Jason Zach here from Nathaniel School of Music in this bass guitar lesson We are basically going to talk about groove how to groove and pretty much just using four notes So the notes I have for you in this lesson would basically be the root of a scale The major second the minor third because we all like our minors and our perfect fourth Right, so just four consecutive scale notes So let's say you're on the key of E. It's going to end up being E F sharp G A if you're on the key of C, it's going to be C D E flat F If you're on the key of D, it's going to be D E F G Now you could play this anywhere even on the key of G G A B flat C You could also go G A B flat C C D E flat F So basically four consecutive notes I just like one two minor three and perfect four at least for this lesson There'll be a lot more lessons on our channel, which you can check out, right? So what I'm going to do with these four notes is to just see how we can establish something musical by creating a groove and focusing on the groove elements and by watching this video You're definitely going to be able to understand time a lot better I hope and also understand the concept of groove What does it mean to get a guy to dance in simple words, right? So there's not going to be too much of drums. It's just more of a Applied theory lesson where I'm going to count a few things So you could get a book and pay a paper out and a lot of our notes would be on our patreon page So you can supplement this lesson and pretty much most of the lessons which we do on our YouTube channel on our patreon page and it'll be great if you can consider subscribing to our channel hitting that bell icon for regular notifications and Also, we teach bass as a regular course at our music school as part of our six-month semester music method It's now a virtual course You can learn it online from the comfort of your home or you can come to our studio and learn, right? So let's get cracking with the lesson guys. So if you take Let's just take e as a start. So I'm just going to go e f sharp g a E now the first thing I want you to do is play these notes and Count but one two three four. Let's assume that it's four crotchets four quarter notes. So one two three Four and if you're having a struggle to play a here, you could perhaps do e F sharp g a you could play a with an open a string e F sharp g a e F sharp g a and it kind of sounds good with a b C D as well or be F G You just want to make sure that your notes are not ringing don't play it like e F sharp g Like you don't want to ring your E string with the open a string So that's the only challenge of playing open strings. So then you'd want to Play a with your pinky and so on Or if you feel this range is too much, then you could always play it higher. You could go E f sharp g e f sharp g a you could also go to a next string But then we all like that low e or that low a anyway, so you have F sharp g a so first let's count this out. Okay, in whichever way you're playing it Let's just play e f sharp g a and count it out First thing we'll do is just assume it's on four beats per bar four by four and just say one two three four like this One two three four One two three four One and two three four One two three four, okay now in your mind if your mind is not thinking this already This is what ideally a bass player needs to do even though you're just playing this one You want to ask yourself how much is the beat being divided by? In most cases the beat is going to be divided by something, right? So let's start with the basic assumption that the beat is being divided by two So when you play this stuff, you're thinking of another beat or what we call a subbeat Which is inside the main beat package so e F sharp g a so that's one Two and three and four. So that's the quaver one and two and and four and one and two and three and four so You could also imagine a groove around that Do So if your head is moving now like this well your head could also move slower Like this But if your head is moving like this Then what you're playing on the bass is slower than the actual pulse so if the pulse was This then yes, you are playing on the pulse you are playing quarter notes crotchets But if the if your head movement is like this Then you're not really playing crotchets you're playing minims you're playing half notes on the bass One two three four one two So I'm gonna assume that the speed of my music is one two three Four so one and two and three now you have this and going on right? It's dividing the beat into two equal units. What can you do in that equal unit? The first thing you can do is maybe double up your groove double each note And I always like to play with dynamics so you could maybe do one note choppier and The second note or the next note longer Three and four and it's carrying the groove a lot better. I think Just repetition So another thing you can do with these notes is to move them along your new Time grid and the time grid has now presented us with the end with an additional division of the beat So it's going to be one and two and three so you have that opportunity to space or place your notes Not only at the one two three four, but also One and two and three and four. So what did I do here? I've moved that F sharp to the end of the one where it was normally at the on of the two one and two But instead of that one and two and three and four and one and two Three and four and one. So I'm not repeating anything. I'm playing every note once Two and three and four one and two and I think this grooves a lot better Okay, let's try and displace another one may be the G. I'm just calling it displacement I'm moving the note where it normally occurs or occurred at the one and I've moved it now before the Where it was so one So one and two and three and four and so G Moved earlier You can play along if you wish What's the next one we can move earlier the last note a F sharp G Like that. Okay, so what what were my options again? Then I moved G down down Now at this stage you can continue to count or you can not count you can just feel it If you can imagine a drum groove while you play that will be very helpful as a bass player because we tend to react Instinctively with the drums. So it's good to have something like a ghost drummer with you beside you if you will while you play G is displaced it's gone before the beat Now the a Bum And you see I'm fooling around at the end because I have so much more space It's ultimately to groove you're making more space for yourself to place your notes when we did not have space That's where we were not dividing the beat. So in this case, we are dividing we're dividing by To which is giving us a lot of space really, right? Why didn't we revise that again displacing F before? One and two and four and one and two and three and four and and now G will be displaced to the end of the two E F sharp G now, what about G G will be displaced to the end of the two There we go And then we have the a which is going to be displaced to the And of the three and now we have a which is going to be displaced to the end of the three There we have it so you have all these displacements which are happening Before the beat now I didn't displace e because e if you displace it before it'll go to the forehand of the previous Bar so I didn't want to confuse you in that aspect So we've just displaced the second note F sharp the third note G and the fourth note a now What we could do is we can move it later. We can delay the onset of the note So that's where you can even start by delaying the e to the end of the one It was normally at the one now you can displace it or move it Onward or later in time to the end of the one so what will that sound like? You can also do like a nice Percussive noise at the one if you like to give people the sense of the one or is this fun to play Percussive things on the bass in any case Okay And one and two you can also make that F sharp not at the on of the two but at the 2.5 Let's make it longer later A lot of permutations This is how you build your groove because you're aware of time F sharp at the 2.5 Or two and a half or two and hand of the two Now we'll do what's the third note G Slightly tricky What do we do about the G? You can it was normally at the three So you can do that at the 3.5 of the three and of the bar slightly tricky to visualize all this So I would suggest to write it down. You could also consider my notes which are waiting for you on patreon Bum bum bum and two and three and four and one and two and four and okay One and two and three and four So another thing I like to do when I'm not playing on the three is to actually like choke the sound Like don't have anything at the three one and two and choke One and two and choke and choke meaning don't play like mute it you have to mute your notes Okay, and finally we have our a where can we do that move the a to the end of the four Earlier it was the end of the three you moved it before now. It's going to go to the end of the four Enjoying this What if you combine the earlier displacement of a which was at the end of the three with now Displacing it at the end of the four And of the three And you can do all sorts of displacement combos like you don't have to only displace one note you can displace like Bum bum bum And three and see I've displaced all the three F sharp G and a and very groovy. I think Same four notes E F sharp G a I'm just toggling between playing the a here with my pinky Or playing it with the open a which I tend to do quite often. So Everything's at the ends except the first you know Now let's do something like And two and three and four and now I've moved everything to the right by and and except the first note to put things into context Right so you have you have this perspective now Hopefully with these four notes E F sharp GA or any four notes really I just took that to make it a lesson and to make you practice with something concrete. So Play around with it and initially don't fool around like don't you don't want to like Just play randomly, you know, and I'm actually doing this without a drum track So you can do this with a metronome. You can do this with your foot try to get the ants Naturalized inside you. Okay, so that is very important You have to feel your time and a great way to feel time is to first know and acknowledge your subdivisions The first one we looked at in this lecture is the and where you divide by two now the and Mind you can be played straight one and two and three and four and one or that could be swung So that's the next feel playing it in the swing One and two and three and four and one so nothing changes except that Division is not even it's not done done done. It's not exactly straight It's swung Very common with blues and some rock Same thing you can swing it and start doing some displacements What did I do one and two and three and four so I displaced F sharp and G preceded it I went before one and two and three and four one and two and three I Like this vibe for some reason you can try whatever works for you It's now creating some space at the end so you can do like a lick a little lick there to kind of do a make a statement Keep quiet every alternate time Bum-bum-bum Stop So that was swing so it's sort of like eighth notes, but you just swing it instead of going Three and four and one and two and three you're going Right now if you go further inside the beat Let's say you want to access the triplets or the semi quavers the 16th notes Which divide by four triplets tend to divide by three as it isn't mentioned in the word triplet What you could do is yeah, you Displaced the same notes, but now you have two more displacement points You have the on of the beat in the case of a triplet and then you have two sub beats because it's Tuck it One and a two and a three and I as some people call it Triple it triple it triple it so Tung-tung-tung-tung-tung one and a two and a three so now you have one and a so One and a two and so this f-sharp came in at the end of the triplet division one and a two and a three and a four Everything else is on but it just creates that nice focused Indian vibe actually I think But then then we can do something like maybe more displacements Or you could do the us here and there One and two and a three eat Stuff like that Once you're in the triplet environment, you know the world is your oyster as people say so Moving forward the last thing I want to talk about is 16th notes Which you would expect going from nothing which is the pulse then you go to the quaver Which is dividing by two then the triplet which is dividing by three and lastly the semi quaver or the 16th note Which is dividing the pulse or your head movement or your foot movement by four So how do we feel that? One and a two and a three and a four and a one and a two and a three there we go Tuck-a-dimmy, tuck-a-dimmy, tuck-a-dimmy, tuck-a-dimmy, one and a two So get that those four syllables into your brain Or into your nervous system as you play even though you're not playing those you're feeling it One and a two and a three and a four and a one There we go you can now access those divisions one ear Can even mute it and play one ear so your groove becomes a lot more sophisticated Stuff like that Move the F sharp all the way to the E of the ones You're make making it very close to that first E Three and a four and I'm moving the G at the of the two And the last one a for everyone's benefit listeners pleasure is on the beat So your groove starts getting sicker by the Amount of times you divide the beat if you think about it So the general mantra if you want to call it for grooving is divide the beat more But play less continue to play less like if you do all the 16th notes, it won't sound too bad, but But it's not grooving it's just doing like a build-up you're just going to maybe the next release And Before that you go like a 16 So I wouldn't call that very groovy, but if you do You're just taking the same four notes, but placing them depending on how you're dividing the beat, right? So I would encourage you to start with four notes the ones which I am demonstrating E F sharp GA you could play them Wherever you wish That way whichever way really Really, yeah, and you could end up starting playing them with crotchets move your head feel the pulse Try to use a metronome if that helps you or don't use your foot or your head or your body's own natural pulse and then divide by two quavers Okay, then we swing it Then triplets But you're not necessarily needing to play all of these You're just finding those same four notes or repositioning them in the triplet grid repositioning them in the quaver grid repositioning them in the semi quaver grid and maybe not doing something like this One and two and You don't want to put all of them like together you want to have some breathing room So divide more play less have some space between the notes People are gonna definitely dance Right guys, I hope you found the lesson useful again this is Jason Zach from Nathaniel School of Music and If you're watching this video and you want something structured and you want to learn the bass guitar You can you can head over to Nathaniel school calm fill up a form and just mention that you'd want to learn the bass Or pretty much any instrument and most of what we teach in our school will involve the instrument Primarily the technique related to the instrument and then all the related music theory which you need to play music Or we also try to train your year with a lot of exercises. We work a lot on your rhythm your reading So it's a great six-month foundation semester If that's your level or if you already play if you've been playing for a while You can always move forward to our more intermediate and advanced programs, right guys. Cheers. This is Jason Zach catch you soon