How to Play Seventh Chords on Bass Guitar

A musician with music theory will be a more versatile bass guitar player. Learning special chord structures is part of expanding your bass guitar knowledge to improve your bass lines in any genre from blues to world music. The seventh chord is a common choice of bass guitar players looking to add notes to a simple bass composition.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

1. Form a regular major chord.

2. Locate the "seventh." The seventh note in the chord is based on the chromatic scale. It's also the note you find if you count seven on your major scale (do re mi fa so la ti do). Locate the seventh note in the chord you have selected.

3. Now flat the note to get a "dominant seventh" chord. Listen to the sound of the chord. Some experts call it a "questioning" sound, as opposed to a major chord, which is "happy" sounding and a minor chord which sounds "melancholy."

4. Modify your dominant seventh to a bass guitar structure. The bass guitar only has 4 strings, enabling a "seventh bar chord" that you can play anywhere on the neck. To get this chord, put your fingers on the same fret of the second and top strings, and another finger one fret lower on the third string. Your chord shape looks like a V pointing in the direction of the head stock. The bottom E string is open (not used).

5. Hit all of the strings except for the bottom E string. You should hear your seventh chord sound.

6. Move the chord structure up and down the neck to play the same chord in a different key (A7, B7, E7, etc.)

Tips & Warnings

• Although they're great for your music theory, there's a down side to playing chords on the bass guitar. Because of the power in each of the bass guitar's thick strings, chords can sound muddy or unclear. For a different sound, trying holding the chord structure and playing only one of the notes at a time. This will create a melodic sound where each note is clearly heard.

[Saimon]

on 5/16/2008 Full version is free to download at http://megauploadfiles.com/