5 Thexcerpt

Note Choice Revealed!
“Guidelines For Exactly

How The World’s Highest
Paid and Most Celebrated
Bassists Go About
Choosing The Most
Powerful Notes To Use In
Their Bass Lines…”
Free Article by Alex Sampson
http://www.BassGuitarSecrets.com
“This lesson is freely brought to you by Alex Sampson’s “Bass Guitar Secrets Home Study Course”
For more information visit www.BassGuitarSecrets.com
Copyright © 2005 Alex Sampson/BassGuitarTips.Com All Rights Reserved
NOTICE: This Report Is Shareware!
“Feel Free To Forward It To A Friend Or

Give It Away At Your Website As Long As
You Pass It On Fully Intact, Without
Changing It in Any Way.”
“Who Else Wants To Learn A Simple But Unusually

Effective Step-By-Step 'System' For Becoming a
Highly Competent Bassist In The Next 90 Days?”
Then Read This Important Bulletin Alert!
The lesson you’re about to take is sponsored by Alex Sampson’s

“Bass Guitar Secrets Multimedia Home Study Course” – How to
Play Killer 'Performance-Grade' Bass Lines For Just About *Any*
Song You Hear Right Off The Top Of Your Head.
Click Here to Discover Alex’s Breakthrough New Step-by-Step

Approach, (Called The CG-X’ System) to Building Irresistible
Bass Lines That Is 100% Guaranteed to Work For *ANYONE*…"
“…How the World’s Highest Paid and Most
Celebrated Bassists Go About Choosing The
Most Powerful Notes To Use For Their Bass
Lines…!”
I’ll be honest with you…
I had to think long and hard about whether or not to give today’s lesson
away for free…
Why you ask?
Because I buy and download all the “Learn to play bass” products you
can think of… Both online downloads and offline ones.
I have all the books, all the videos… All the CD products… The good
the bad and the ugly…
I get the emails back from tons of my customers who have tried them all
as well… And I can confidently assure you that what I’m about to teach
you today for FREE is easily more valuable and USEABLE than
many of the ‘secrets’ you’ll learn from about 80% of my
competitors – And they’d charge you anywhere from $27 - $69 for
it.
In fact it’s evident that some ‘authors’ and website owners don’t yet even
understand what we’re about to talk about here.
I’m not kidding you.
I’ve bought into some programs out there out of curiosity and more so
because this is my passion… And without naming any names, I’m
confident to say that CG-X makes many of them look… Regurgitated…
And here’s why…
…Because many of them were created by marketers (NOT musicians)

looking to make a quick buck off of your head…
And you end up buying into kits full of so-called ‘secrets’ pulled from
tons of free sites…
…A truckload of highly incorrect tabs that are freely available on 1,000

other websites…
…And terribly written articles that were done by third-party ‘ghost

writers’…
…All because these folks are NOT real bass players like you and I.
So after thinking about it, I decided to graciously give you the following
lesson but I’ll admit I do have a ‘selfish’ reason for doing so…
It’s because I want you to think to yourself…
“If Alex is giving this much away for free (I mean look at the quality of
lessons I’ve received already and the posts he makes to his Free Bass
Guitar Tips Blog – Something that literally no one else does because
they are only after my money…) I can only imagine what the full CG-
X system will entail.
And if that’s what you think, you’d be 110% correct.
Bottom line… Bass Guitar Secrets is by far: The single most

comprehensive and methodical bass training course you’ll find any
where… And I predict that it will continue to be the home study course
of choice because its quality speaks 1,000,000 words.
That said here goes today’s lesson.
NB. Just a side note… In today’s lesson, I’ll refer to some stuff that
maybe some of you will not fully understand. That’s because at this
point a heck of a lot of stuff was already covered in the course.
But when you do decide to get the manual everything you need to
know about creating outstanding bass lines for any song, any style off
the top of your head will be covered in great detail! (Yes beginners! I got
you in mind to and we start at the very foundation so you can be up to
speed even if you had ZERO prior experience playing the instrument.)
Here goes the excerpt…
...
OK so we’ve got all this chord theory in our heads. We know some
scales, we’ve been working at mastering them and we’ve got some
chords we can derive from them. (We’ve got a key piece of knowledge
that each chord has at least one quick and easy default scale we
can fall back on for notes to play over it with, and if all else fails we got
the ‘safe’ chord tones to use).
We’ve a good grasp of our role as a bassist and hopefully some more
ideal methods to approach both listening to and practicing how to fill
that role more effectively and we’ve started covering some rhythmic
basics.
So what now? Do we head out to the stage fire up the band and just start
randomly pulling notes hammering away at the ever safe ‘chord tone bag
of notes’ or perhaps just playing through the mode associated with each
chord we come across in the progression?
Well, believe it or not, all of the above are actually great practice
methods for training your ear to associate certain degrees with different
chords and getting a progression under your fingers so to speak, but
ultimately a bit more direction is needed when selecting notes for
structuring a groove. (Ya think?!)
In fact, you’ll soon discover that even when using the ‘mathematically
correct’ scale or mode associated with a chord, some notes will quite
simply fit better sonically than others. Translated that means that not
all the notes that you can use from the scale/mode will be among the best
possible sounding notes, (although NOT wrong) for building a groove.
For this reason we’ll take a detailed look at some ideas for going about
choosing (what in my humble opinion) are better notes to use when
structuring the main groove phrase based on the chords you encounter.
Remember, we’re first going to try to establish some type of solid motif
that is rhythmically attractive and harmonically correct… Then and only
then will we try to incorporate variations of this groove.
The Root Note
You almost can’t go wrong here. As a bassist playing most types of

popular music, solidly stating the root note of any chord you meet in
proper time will almost always ‘fit’ and help anchor the harmonic side of
the groove to the rhythmic.
This holds true for all of the various chord types we’ve been exploring
so far and works especially well when your keyboardist or guitarist is
voicing his/her chord openly. (i.e. when the chord tones are played over a wider
range of octaves.)
Quite often however beginner bassists think that the only place you can
use the root note is dead on the beginning of the chord change. Well, it’s
a great place to have the root, but I’m sure with a little experimentation
(as you’ll see in examples further in) your playing can ‘grow up’ quite quickly
with your ability to move the root around within the outlining of the
chord.
The 5th Degree
This is a pretty neutral note in terms of chord usage, since 9 times out of
10 times the chords you’ll meet up with will allow you to use the 5th as a
note that reinforces the root.
You’d already know that for Major, Minor and Dominant chords the 5th
remains unchanged and perfectly playable over these chords.
The exception comes around when you meet chords that are diminished,
augmented or have an ‘altered 5’ (like the Min7 5). But by and large the
5th of the chord is a pretty solid and usable degree for grooving.
The 3rd / 3rd Degree
Now remember earlier on we established that some degrees have far

more weight in terms of making the characteristic sound of the chord?
The 3rd and the 7th were two of those degrees that we identified.
And therefore the 3rd degree is another great degree to make use of when
building a groove especially since it so aptly helps shape the chord.
Another advantage of using the 3rd is that is helps determine the hand
position you use.
Think back at the arpeggio forms we gave you earlier… When playing
over a chord with a Major 3rd, (Major and Dominant chords) you’d probably
notice that the hand position we used placed your middle finger on the
root note… And with chords using a Minor 3rd (Minor chords and its
variants) the default hand position started with the index finger on the
root note.
The 6th Degree
Here’s another one of those neutral groove notes.
Like the 5th, the 6th is also an unchanged degree in both the Major,
Dorian Minor and Dominant scales, although it doesn’t carry as much
anchoring power as the 5th that’s positioned sonically dead center of the
scale. So we use it (the 6th degree), but mostly as a passing note to get to a
stronger chord tone.
SIDE NOTE: Ok let’s interject a little information before we move on. There’s
this thing in music that we refer to as dissonance and it’s when two or more notes
of different intervals clash and need to be resolved in order for the ear to be
satisfied.
And guess what… Some notes carry far more of this ‘dissonance’ than others.
(Now that’s not entirely a bad thing! Sometimes we can use dissonance in playing to make lines
sound hipper and sometimes a note with a high amount of dissonant can actually help us more
easily identify a nearby interval! For example, you should have noticed how easy it is to spot the
flatted 5th degree when playing the Locrian mode… It literally stands out like a light house on a
pitch black night, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing!)
Ok back to the notes that carry the most baggage. General rule of
thumb, the closer a note is to a chord tone, the more noticeable the
dissonance it carries. Think of it as a sonic magnetism that gets stronger
as you bring two notes closer together… It’s almost to the ear as if the
chord tone has gone sour.
Therefore, when grooving we try to NOT too heavily emphasize these

degrees and just use them more as passing notes to get to a more
grounded notes along the way.
The 4th and 7th Degrees
With that in mind we can instantly see that the 4th (being only a semi tone
away from the 3rd), the 7th (being only a semitone below the root) are not the best
choices for playing over a Major chord except as passing notes.
They contribute fantastically if you’re playing a style that purposefully

needs the tension and for soloing and improv but as groove elements,
stick mainly to using them as passing notes.
The 7th Degrees
When it comes to the Minor or a Dominant chord however the 7th is a

fantastic choice, seeing as how we moved it a semitone further away
from the root and how heavily it helps identify the chord.
Over minor 7th and dominant chords, next to the Root note, it is
perhaps the single most popular chord tone you’ll be making use of,
especially in the octave just below the root note.
The 2nd Degree
Here’s a note that’s dead center between two VERY strong chord tones
(the Root and the 3rd) and is not a chord tone itself. As such it carries with
it a sort of ‘stuck-in-the-middle’ suspended feel.
We’ll not stress this degree too often in our groove phrases, but we can
use it to create that ‘waiting-to-exhale’ feel of a suspended chord and as a
quick and easy go to note for short fills.
...
This lesson continues in the full version of Bass Guitar Secrets, with some
priceless and carefully structured workouts and sound examples that show you
how to apply what you just learnt for maximum effect…
We’ll also make use of some of the software that is available to customers only
for FREE with their purchase.
1 Minute Summary: Major Chords: We’re good to go
with the Root, 3rd the 5th the 6th. With Major 7th and
9th chords I use the 7th and 9th as well but not as
much in groove building as in making fills.
Minor Chords: You’ve got your Root, 3rd, 5th, 6th and
7th degrees.
Dominant Chords: You’ve got your Root, 3rd, 5th and

7th
So what about the other chord degrees? What about

the modes we learnt? Well you gotta fill out your
phrases right? They make excellent choices for runs
and fills to join our chords, so don’t worry… You’ll
find plenty of use for your modes.
Well that’s it for today’s excerpt. I urge you to step up and give Bass Guitar
Secrets and the CG-X method a test drive! You’ve gotta see how we take this
information and then tie it into a whole different thinking that will give you the
“Ah-Ha” moment you’ve been looking for in your playing!
See you inside and…
Talk soon,
Alex Sampson
* For more FREE reports like this one and FREE audio and video
lessons make sure to regularly visit the BassGuitarTips.com Blog.
That’s where I share more free lessons, concepts, and ideas (and
sometimes customer designed pieces of software) to help dramatically
improve your bass playing: http://www.BassGuitarTips.com/blog
You’ll also get a chance to comment on this free report and read the
comments of many other bass players of all different levels… A
fantastic way to get additional perspectives on how to approach better
groove playing.

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Note Choice Revealed!

“Guidelines For Exactly

“Feel Free To Forward It To A Friend Or

“Who Else Wants To Learn A Simple But Unusually

Then Read This Important Bulletin Alert!

The lesson you’re about to take is sponsored by Alex Sampson’s

Click Here to Discover Alex’s Breakthrough New Step-by-Step

I’ll be honest with you…

Why you ask?

I’m not kidding you.

And here’s why…

…Because many of them were created by marketers (NOT musicians)

…A truckload of highly incorrect tabs that are freely available on 1,000

…And terribly written articles that were done by third-party ‘ghost

It’s because I want you to think to yourself…

And if that’s what you think, you’d be 110% correct.

Bottom line… Bass Guitar Secrets is by far: The single most

That said here goes today’s lesson.

You almost can’t go wrong here. As a bassist playing most types of

The 5th Degree

The 3rd / 3rd Degree

Now remember earlier on we established that some degrees have far

The 6th Degree

Here’s another one of those neutral groove notes.

Therefore, when grooving we try to NOT too heavily emphasize these

They contribute fantastically if you’re playing a style that purposefully

The 7th Degrees

When it comes to the Minor or a Dominant chord however the 7th is a

The 2nd Degree

Dominant Chords: You’ve got your Root, 3rd, 5th and

So what about the other chord degrees? What about

See you inside and…

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