Advanced Upright Bass Playing Techniques

Video Transcript

"Hi! My name is Branson Garner, and on behalf of expertvillage.com, we’re going to be talking about, in this segment, how to create walking bass lines using a technique called tritone substitution or half step resolution. In this technique, it focuses on resolving from the 1 and the 5 in the scale. You have a C scale, you know that is the 1 and the 5, but resolving that through using tritones, which is basically 3 whole tones above the original note. So say you have a C chord change and you are playing the 1 and the 5, but you want to put that tritone substitution in there, you needed to do half step above the 5 or half step below the 5, and then half step above the 1 or half step below the 1. It sounds very cool. We’ll corporate this into a change. Alright, so you can see, that tri-tone substitution is very cool, can add a lot of color to your bass lines as you go from the third to half step above the 5, and half step below, and back to the 1. It’s pretty simple once you get the hang of it. As you do get a hang of it, you can add a lot of cool things to your bass lines, so you’re going to sound like a really cool bass player, as you hit a solid on a note. So try some substitution or half step resolution. It’s a great way to add color to your bass lines."