What are Chord Arpeggios for Bass Guitar?

Series Summary

John Entwistle did not become a great bass player overnight, no matter what you may hear from rock and roll mythologists. Don’t believe that he was raised by trolls and witches who cast bass playing spells on full moon nights in the English countryside. He had to play scales and arpeggios just like everyone else who wants to master the instrument, and then get better through endless hours of practice. Yes, the Ox had to practice just like other greats such as Charles Mingus, Larry Graham and Aston Barrett. Make the bass your life and these arpeggios part of your daily routine if you really aspire to get better. And of course you do or you wouldn’t be getting ready to watch these videos…

In this series of free music instruction videos, our rock and jazz guitar expert shows you how to play arpeggios from chords on the electric bass. The chords show you where to place your fingers; from those basic scale positions, our expert shows you how to give your fingers a real workout. Learning these arpeggios will help improve your dexterity as well as your confidence as a bass player. Drawing from his experience teaching daily lessons, Casey Cormier talks you through each clip, all crucial steps to the mastery you are sure to achieve if you stick with Expert Village. So watch and learn, and then practice, practice, practice.

Video Transcript

"In previous segments we discussed scales and we just started working on arpeggios as well. Well, within scales, we can understand things better if we start assigning degrees to the scales. For example, that first note of the major would be 1. The second one would be the second scale degree. For a C, C major scale, C would be 1, D would be 2. We assign scale degrees 1 through 7. Then we look at how that works on arpeggios, major and minor. How flatting a certain scale degree or raising one can change the whole triad that we're trying to outline. We'll discuss and we'll try out some chord progressions using, such as 1, 6, 2, and 5 turnarounds. We'll be using the scales, or rather, the triads and the arpeggios to outline those. Then we'll look at major 7, Dominant 7, and minor 7 arpeggios, where we add the 7th scale degree for 7 chords on the guitar or the Bass."