How to Write a Bass Line with Harmony
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- čas přidán 7. 08. 2024
- Music Theory from GoGo Penguin "Everything Is Going to Be OK".
►FREE BOOK. Learn Theory in 30 Minutes: HackMusicTheory.com/Books
0:00 Step 1. Low
1:53 Step 2. High
2:38 Final Example
Step 1. Low
Harmony is when two or more notes are played together. And sadly, it’s rare to hear harmony in a bass line. The word “line” is actually used to convey the fact that it’s a melody, not a harmony. That’s how rare harmony is on the bass! You see, most producers think the bass frequencies are too low to play harmony. In other words, if you play two notes together, it’ll sound like a rumbling mess. But, that’s not true. That only happens when the two notes are close to each other. For example, if your root note is a low A, and you play a D above that. It doesn’t sound very nice if you play the D that’s five semitones above the A. But, if you play the D an octave higher, so it’s now 17 semitones above the A, it sounds absolutely beautiful! Alright, so now we know how to successfully add harmony to a bass line, however, we don’t yet have a bass line to add it to. So, step 1 is to write a cool one-bar rhythm on the root note. And we’re using A natural minor. Then, copy and paste that rhythm to three other notes, so you’ve got a four-note bass line over four bars. And feel free to throw in some passing notes to smooth the line out. And a shoutout to the British band GoGo Penguin, and especially their bassist Nick Blacka, as this lesson is based on the title track from their beautiful new album “Everything Is Going to Be OK”.
Step 2. High
Now it’s time for the fun part: writing another line over the top, so you’ve got two lines playing together. Start this step by choosing what note you want to use for the harmony over your root note. And this is where Nick Blacka was super creative, as he actually used one high note that sounds good over all four bars. You don’t have to do that, but it’s very cool, so we did something similar in our example. We used D as our high note for three bars, then we varied it in the fourth bar. Once you’ve chosen your high note, write a cool rhythm for it over your root note in bar one. Then, copy and paste that rhythm into the remaining three bars. Once you’ve done that, feel free to add some rhythmic and melodic variations to keep things fresh. But you don’t have to do that, if you just wanna keep things simple.
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ABOUT
The fast, easy & fun way to make music. Taught by Ray Harmony, a multi award-winning college lecturer who's made music with multiplatinum Grammy-winning artists, and his protégé wife, Kate.
CREDITS
© 2023 Revolution Harmony
Revolution Harmony is Kate & Ray Harmony
Script & all music in video by Revolution Harmony
Book promo filmed & edited by Maurits Nienhuis
Footage of Ray Harmony by Billie Woods
Vinyl footage by Matthias Groeneveld
Thumbnail photo from Blue Note Records
►FREE BOOK. Learn Theory in 30 Minutes: HackMusicTheory.com/Books
Peter Hook (of Joy Divison and New Order fame) did this for decades, nice to see you teaching others a great technique.
This is great! I would never have thought of doing something like this. Thanks so much for this lesson with these ideas. You have definitely brightened up my Sunday morning!❤🙏🙏🙏
OMG! This sounds so cool. Thank you so much as always for bringing light to our music path! Blessings and success for you my friends!!!
Whoaaaaa! That final result hit so well!! Definitely going to give this a try.
This is awesome and good advice! I knew that the notes couldn't be close but I didn't know why. Do you guys have a video about writing bass solos? If not that'd be an amazing video!
Interesting 🤔...will ABSOLUTELY be using this soon. I bet the inverse (steady note on the bottom) sounds amazing also
Great stuff and GoGo Penguin just gained a fan too. 🙏
Can't thank you enough. Bless
Very nice!
Cool.......thank you very much....
Hi Kate & Ray! This is very unusual and interesting lesson, thank you! Some bass VSTs don't even have multivoicing, as if nobody thought of bass harmony.
I like that. I've created the opposite in one of my songs where the low note was the same, and the high notes were varied
Such a wonderful hack
Aw thanks Arjun, I'm so happy to hear that you found this video helpful. Thanks for stopping by and connecting, we appreciate you! Hope to see you back here on the next video. Ray :)
@@HackMusicTheory You guys are awsome teachers and I can't thankyou enough. Love ❤
Nice 👍🏽
Love GoGo Penguin!
Us too. Yay! We saw them live a few years ago. Sooooo good!!! Have you seen them live?
@@HackMusicTheory yep saw them at Blue Dot festival at Jodrell Bank in the U.K. pre plague. They were truly stunning. Made it all look so easy
Amazing!!! Such a great band. Loving their new album big time, feel like it's their best one so far :)
👌
👍 - _also_ for the YT algo! 😊
Please hack a classical Skinny Puppy or Frontline Assembly song😊
They're on the short list, my friend! We'll get to them soon, for sure, so stay tuned :)
Wich daw they useing
reaper.fm :)