Using Dotted Notes to Play Bass Guitar Rhythm

"CASEY CORMIER: Another important aspect of written rhythms are dotted notes and ties. A dotted note is basically implying a note plus half of its value in time. Let us take a look to make more sense of this. On the bass clef here, a dotted rhythm is written as it says, say a quarter note dotted has a dot right behind it, and you can see right there. What that dot implies is that an eighth note is added to the quarter note. So instead of it being one--instead of this being written as one, two, three, four, it's one, two-and, three, four. So this takes up one-and, two-and. It takes up basically the space of 3 eighth notes whereas a regular quarter note takes up a space of 2. So one, two-and, three, or this would be played [PLAYS MEASURE] one, two-and, three, four [PLAYS MEASURE] like that, okay? Now, a dotted eighth note would be a value of an eighth note plus half of it--sorry, a half note here, which half of that half note is a quarter note. So a dotted half note takes up three beats, one, two, three, and then we play a quarter note on the four, so one, two, three, four; that's how long we hold this for. Now, a tie here would connect two notes, basically you would play this note once and then hold it for the value of this one as well. It's almost like a dotted rhythm, but another way of writing it, and to cross measures you can't write a dot to connect; you have to use a tie. So, if we play this whole thing, you will notice, starting from here, one, two-and, three, four, one, two, three, four, one-and, two-and, three-and, four-and, so we end up playing on the ands here because of the ties, one-and, one-and, but it's tied to the two, and then the two is only ringing after the "and", then "and", play on this "and" here. It is going to take a little practice, but you will become accustomed to ties and dotted notes eventually."