 Hi guys, this is Jason Zach from Nathaniel School of Music continuing forward with our series on how to pass between chords with a lot more entertainment, with a lot more flair, with a lot more musicality. We are going to look at passing bass notes, a topic which a lot of you have requested for in the comments and even my students at the music school. So again we are going to stick with our same two chords B flat major which I can play in any inversion B flat D F, D F B flat, F B flat D whichever inversion and then we go to D major which is D F sharp A or F sharp A D, A D F sharp. And if you haven't already don't forget to watch our previous parts where we haven't covered passing or walking bass lines which we are going to do now, we have covered other strategies of connecting chords, we've looked at cadences, we've looked at adding chords, we've looked at inserting arpeggio movements, covering different time fields like triplets and so on and we'll also look at melodic improvisation. So it's a nice series to consider and before we get started with this passing bass movement it will be great if you can consider subscribing to our channel, it will give you notifications whenever we have a new video released or whenever something is premiered, we release videos very often on our channel, come to think of it and on our Patreon page you'll be given access to notation, my handwritten notes, MIDI files and backing tracks wherever applicable so do consider a five dollar a month subscription or some of the other tires as well if it interests you on our Patreon page. So let's get cracking, first off the right hand is going to do three patterns so we are not forgetting the right hand as well so amidst three patterns from our right hand we are going to develop a variety of passing bass movement all around a very similar concept so the challenge will be to incorporate both the hands playing together so it's also going to end up being a very good hand independence workout for you watching the video. So the right hand just to start off let's look at pulses of each of these chords and maybe we can look at four beats per chord so that's about a bar of four four correct four one two three it's good to count move your head two three then we can even double that up with eighth notes three one and two and three and four and eighth notes can be broken up either outer or upper two with the bottom or the extremes the leftmost and the right most and then the inner most at the end so one and two these are two ways to play broken chords okay and this is your blocks you can start with blocks if you're newer to the piano so blocks two three or you can enter the world of eighth notes by breaking up the chord either this way or out in out in out in like that let's also look at some arpeggio movement so a common arpeggio in the right hand could be l m h m low middle high middle by the way i'm playing b flat major in this instance in its first inversion l m h m l m h m next chord and to make that l m h m even more interesting you can go l m h m l m h m that's the higher octave of the low note if that makes sense so leftmost note gets copied higher and we represent it in our notes if you see it as l dash or l apostrophe you can also find this in the notation so l m h m l m h m l m h or if you're newer to the piano just do simple l m h m l m h m or l m h m l m h m l m okay these are your two arpeggio in variants in the right hand and last but not least we can try something more disco or more salsa called the tresio feel in the right hand which can play into n3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and 3 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 so we've got you covered for whichever genre you're trying to play whether it's ballads whether it's arpeggios which we do a lot of in our channel okay and some dancey stuff tresio so one and two and three hit three hit points as the word tresio implies one and two and three and four and one there we go so with all of this we need to at least maintain a pulse you know in the left hand and even if you're not able to start off with a lot of rhythms at least be able to play the roots of the chord somehow so while you're doing all the patterns the left hand can maintain a steady root and then we add some passing notes okay starting off with just a lazy semi-brief in the left hand then maybe try some broken b flat d when you do broken there you can do pulses here so then there's a nice contrast created between the hands and what i like to do when i play the pulse in the left hand which i'll be doing throughout the video i'm breaking up my octaves first of all octaves add a lot more thicker of a sound especially when i play it down below if you have access to those keys of course if not you can play it here if you have a 61 key piano on you so i'm playing it here and instead of doing a very um heavy pulse three four that's two sort of assertive and dominant compared to the right hand which is on the more higher timbers so what i do in the left hand is i play and ring out one or hold one the one two and the two three four will be played with my thumb and i have to push down the pinky because that's playing the root so one two three hold that down one two so in this case in the left hand there's a bit of finger independence if you want it that way or you can just play the normal pulse normal pulse or just hold whatever works for you so i'm setting you up for the actual lesson which is passing movement between all these notes in the left hand not too many notes for this lesson it's just b flat and d so we just have to figure out how to move from b flat to d and then from d back to b flat okay and i hope you've got the right hand patterns under the belt so to speak we've done basic pulse broken other broken arpeggio lmhm lmhm then the more octave displaced arpeggio if you want to call it that because this octave gets displaced and then the dancier form okay and before i get to the bass line when you're playing the dancier form in the right hand the thresio the pulse will sound incredible in the bass so do try and like don't slow down the rhythm you know like that because it's a counterproductive thing now you're droning the left hand and you're grooving the right hand so what i would then do is at least do the pulse so check that out that's the pulse but rhythmically speaking there's no contrast in pitch pitch rhythmically also needs contrast if you think about it a drum kit has a kick drum and a snare drum tabla has two tablas to to deal with so does a conga and all these other percussion instruments so on the piano what you could end up doing a good toggling approach with your pulse could be b flat and it's fifth and you can play the fifth either lower which i like to do makes it very salsa or upper fifth which is also pretty good let's do that for the deal so i've kind of set you up now the left hand has these at the bare minimum you play the roots of the chords or else you can do that ballad technique where you go one two and three and four right and there are two ways to do the left hand one is if you're doing broken chords with eighth notes in the right hand you can do pulses in the left hand or if you're doing single hits you can do eighth note what i call as ghost notes in the left hand two and three and four you see what's happening in the left the thumb is adding that and and but it's very soft which is why we call it in at least on the piano as a ghost note even though on a guitar you can do actual ghost notes which sound very percussive in nature the piano doesn't have that option and so this is another nice way to journey through your chords you can do this even with arpeggios and versus pulse okay so that was the setup for these for this entire tutorial b flat major and d major two chords we have a few patterns in the right hand three basic categories blocks with broken then we have arpeggios and then the dance the thresio and the left hand had a few ways of tackling the root notes of the chords with octaves then displaced with one droning and one kind of creating the pulse or the offbeat or the upbeat in a ghostlike or a very soft manner so now let's get into what the bass can do more than what it is doing already so if you play b flat what's nice to do is just at the end of the maybe the last two beats or the last beat what I would consider is how can I go to d so if you look at b flat diatonically speaking or any way which way speaking whether it's diatonic or chromatic you have all these notes which connect between b flat and d right so maybe I will experiment and see what sounds better from b flat to d b flat that sounds a bit weird so maybe let's try a c that sounds pretty good but as opposed to sounds it's not something you'd find anyone playing in a in an ensemble it could work faster perhaps I'm going to show you that later in the video the faster you play these chromatic or non diatonic notes the more sense they add in the song now let's also consider c sharp which is also close to d it sounds pretty interesting but a bit too tense for my liking today doing this video so I'm going to pick c okay so how do or where do I insert the c let's figure some options out one two three four one you could hit it at the four which is pretty cool you could maybe repeat or reinforce the root of the chord at the three one two three okay one two three b flat is again at the three one two three four one two three four one two three four one two three four or you can kind of squeeze the time together by inserting b flat and c at the four and the and of the four so it becomes a bit more dramatic one two three four and one dividing by two four and one and I'm coming back to b flat in the same direction d two three four and back two three up to d two three four and one if you're not getting the independence you can go back to crotchet speed one two three four c at the four b two three four c at the fours one start with this three four one but not this is not so interesting rhythmically right because you're not adding any time flavor so divide by two and two and count and three and one and two and three and four and break the chords if you enjoy in the right hand one and two and test it out maybe with the arpeggio why not if I play eight note arpeggios the left hand may be easier to coordinate versus sixteenth arpeggios which sound a lot nicer I think 16th notes with the octave displaced as I showed you earlier let's bring in the left hand and sing the bass if possible to make it a bit more assertive or impactful maybe add some octaves in the bass and when I'm adding octaves I'm using my sustain pedal because it creates a bit more of a ringy resonant sound so two three four and but lift your pedal before you hit those passing notes otherwise well you may want to close your ears for this one two three four and one two see the problem there so don't overdo the pedal there are also some buttons out there which over sustain you hit a button and it auto sustains it's absolute nonsense learn how to use the pedal you have left hand right hand and whichever foot decides to play the sustain pedal usually the right foot because that's how the piano is arranged right or at least a grand piano with those three pedals so two so pedal on so I can play whatever pattern I want in the right okay I'm going to do the arpeggios now and you will observe the contrast with the bass one two three four one only fours four with octaves let's bring in eights four and one two three four and one two three four and one slow it down if you're not able to have that independence because remember you also have to lift the pedal if ever you're using it otherwise don't use the pedal you can play this pretty well without the pedal as well okay let's get the threshy also going for the threshy or what I like to do as I told you get that fifth root toggle but now we need to insert the passing note isn't it so so you have to figure out b-flat it's fifth b-flat the eighth note has to somehow happen right so um still continue to sing the bass and if we bring in some ghost notes in the left hand you'll have to practice that with the passing as well so depends on what you're capable of doing I don't know we are exact skill level because I can't see you and I can't hear what you're doing which also reminds me to tell you to send your recordings to us we can tag us on instagram you can probably join a course and do this in a more structured way or patreon's another nice place to be for me to interact with you a lot more musically than what we are doing now hopefully now before we add more notes to the the walking or the passing bass movement if you look at it you're transitioning from b-flat to d-vrc but why do we need to care why should it go in this way in the ascending way why can't it come down to d so let's check something out one two three four and one that's pretty nice or let's experiment ah that's an interesting augmented sound but a bit weird so i'll stick with f because f is part of the chord that's a very interesting kind of a fridgian note minus second but you can ignore that and play just simple intervals so we did bum bum bum b-flat cd or f e d two three four and one that's another nice taste to offer you can toggle between that so you're already making a chord progression which just has two of them b-flat and d major a lot more interesting and a lot less monotonous and that's all the bass is doing and even in a band the bass instrument which could be a cello or a double bass in an orchestra or a bass guitar in a rock group or a quartet would add this kind of value the bass is not there to just follow the drums the bass is there to make the chords interesting to make the progression interesting and also to make the melody stand out better from the crowd of other things going on so the bass is an important instrument in a band we also have a few bass lessons you can check them out in the description so we've looked at an ascending walk up to the d you can also look at a descending walk down to the d and you can also then do an ascending climb back to b-flat you know once you hit d f a b-flat g a b-flat and you may be thinking should it always be pump pump pump pump pump pump should always be these kind of linear stepwise movements well it's recommended but you can also develop some skips along the way to pass so I'm just gonna fool around I went f a b-flat there are no rules really it's just a note which you like at the moment you know and you need to experiment but I am guessing that you can't really experiment until you have the control over the the mechanics of the exercise which is the hit points of every note the chord and whatever bass movement you're planning to do so let's fool around hmm see I I did a D major over a bass that changes the texture of the chord I think in this context in a very good way so major seventh a little longer set of notes that's pretty orchestral and with rhythm you can take this further and that's pretty much what I want to leave you with for this lesson we've looked at the concept of figuring out a note between the the two chords and hopefully you've you acknowledge that it adds a lot of interest to the music it's not just the chord voicing making something a fancy major seventh or a flat nine or sharp 11 or whatever it's about the bass everything starts from the low end and the audience can definitely feel the bass even though perhaps they can't sing it even though perhaps they can't identify it as very colorful so it's something even you need to train your ear for because we don't appreciate or acknowledge the bass that often in music so when you work on it that's when it really hits you okay because this can really control that so to speak all that you do there may not matter if the bass is redundant and simple so to speak so the bass can in a nutshell make or break a song so to speak now let's squeeze in a few more elements so if I take one two and three and four and I'm on an eighth note time frame or a time grid or time feel as I like to call it so if you now think to yourself what if I divide by four instead of two you'll have a lot more options you'll have one e and a two e and a three and then at least at that four e and at the end where we do our connecting movement you'll have a lot more spaces to fill or not fill so to speak so I can do something like this two three four and one four e and a or just do chromatics and now our chromatics work because they are played faster there we go there's some phantom of the opera for you and why fill all those four e and us we can maybe tastefully do it maybe try out a one e and a two e and a three and a four e and a one e and a so four e and nothing four e and ur so ur will be played a little bit trickier now on the hands to achieve that independence but keep trying it out see what you really want to achieve and you that you'll probably be motivated to do that a lot more than the textbook stuff one e and a two e and a three and a four e and a one e and you see it's a bit tricky for me to count what else can we do let's do one and one and so what's missing e so what else let's do one e and one e and a no ur that's the other permutation or don't hit the four at all you know can also do some triplets if you want okay so if you have more space to fill you can then decide what to fill you'll have more containers more slots and you can then pick and choose if you music is ultimately about the notes and also the gaps between the notes so the more you divide the beat more gaps are created and hence more interest because there's that contrast created between to play or not to play okay so in a nutshell in this lesson we've looked at passing bass notes and first off we had some nice patterns in the right hand do revisit that blocks arpeggios and a little bit of broken and then we did some displaced octave arpeggios then we did the dance chord hit points then the left hand started pretty easy we added a little bit of interest to the left hand with some octaves ghost note movements and then the the biggest interest in this video I think was the passing bass movement where you're connecting from one chord root to the other either in an obvious visual ladder like way going up to the target or down to the target and then using your ears to see whether that connecting note is tense annoying or out of the book or if it's within the radar or you know within the confines of the diatonic realm okay so hope you found the lesson useful and do consider getting yourself a copy of the notes on our patreon it might help supplement the lesson pretty well and as always this is Jason Zach from Nathaniel School of Music cheers