Help Learning Bass Piano Technique for Different Styles

[Mitch M. (mitch1)]

Hello Everybody:

I have been studying piano at college for quite a while, and while I seem to understand the importance of playing classical music, the part that I am really struggling to understand, is to learn how to play different bass styles/techniques for accompaniment, on the piano.

Things like:
-Jazz;
-County Western; Bluegrass,
-Rock; Ballads; Rock N' Roll; Pop,etc...all have different styles of playing and listening to cds, it seems like many are playing "perfect fifths" or walking basslines on the bass guitar...

my question is: When I go and open up a fake-book, or original sheet-music, How can I learn to play many different musical styles/techniques for piano/accompaniment, so that what I am playing will be correct, in the correct music genre...like jazz, pop, countywestern, rock, ballads, blues...etc...

Thanks...any suggestions/ideas?
I hope this kinda made sense...but I would REALLY like to learn how to play different styles of bass technique playing on piano...cause I would also like to get into accompanying and arranging....

_Mitch_

[David Jacklin (dj)]

Hi, Mitch:

One thing is to listen to music -- a lot of music, in lots of styles. When your ear becomes used to hearing a style, its sound becomes natural, so that when you start working on a piece in a particular style, you have a feel as to what that style should sound like.

Then simply sit and try to pick out those bass lines until you have a feel for them and until you have a repertoire of "licks".

You're right in that many styles are "bass"-ed around tonic/fifth intervals, simply because those are the tones which provide the most solid harmonic foundation. Sherry can tell you about bass lines.

In popular music styles, it all goes back to ragtime. I suggest you pull out some Scott Joplin or Charles Lamb and conquer the ragtime stride. Once you can hit a ragtime bass line on automatic at 200 BPM, then you can play just about anything else.

[Mitch M. (mitch1)]

Hi David.

Thanks for replying back...

Are there any websites that would show the common bass licks/riffs/grooves taken from popular music styles/genres, instead of just listening to the whole MIDI songs?

Also...it seems that when using the FREE Midi Notate Player, I get some of the piano parts that show up WAY TOO HIGH in the octave range...for some songs,it shows about 3-5 octaves up! (YiKes!!)is there anyway to lower it down, so that it looks correct to a piano player?

Also...I am using the FREE MIDI Notation Player...and there are some songs that I would like to print out, but since there is SO MUCH instrumentation being shown, (bass,drums,violin,piano,etc...,)the song is about 32 long...is there any way to remove the excessive instrumentation, so that I can only have the bass and piano parts on the sheet music online...That way it should be about 2-4pages long...hopefully, like regular piano-sheetmusic...I do have Sonar4 Professional...but I haven't tried it to see if it would do what I am asking for...yet...!!!

Thanks Again!
-Mitch-

[Sherry Crann (sherry)]

Howdy Mitch,

Re. bass lines: I'll reiterate the part that David has said about simply listening in "analysis" mode to a lot of music - lots and lots of it http://www.notation.com/discus/clipart/happy.gif.

But one thing that you may notice is that the way a piano plays a bass line and the way a string bass plays a bass line are a bit different. With piano bass, you often get rather large jumps in a bass line, whereas with string bass you get a more melodic type of line. This is mostly due to the ergonomics of the instruments - but in slap style, anything goes http://www.notation.com/discus/clipart/happy.gif.

You can use MidiNotate Player to see how these bass lines are played, and you may want to pay particular attention to ones that are scored as piano arrangements, rather than say a rock band, since the pianist's approach to bass may be a bit different. (sidenote: I play in our church band, and we have a fellow who plays keyboard, and I play electric bass. We were learning a new song one day, that he was a little familiar with, and I was trying out some variations on a bass line. He made the comment that the bass in the piano was played a certain way, and he played it on the keys, which sounded nice. So I played the same line for him on my string bass - and it sounded quite different, and not "right" because the instrumental nuances are different - it's just a totally different instrument. He said what I'd been playing previously sounded better http://www.notation.com/discus/clipart/happy.gif It's just an example of adjusting the line to fit the instrument.)

Regarding the octave range, you may be seeing an "instrument transposition". Bass notation is usually written an octave higher than it actually sounds, as is guitar notation.

Regarding printing out the score, MidiNotate Player is akin to the Adobe Acrobat Reader - you can listen to and see arrangements that others have made, but you cannot edit them. If you want to do some editing or setting up practice sessions (repeated loops and such) you might want to explore Musician or Composer. They both have a free 30 day trial.

Have fun - bass is great!
Sherry

[Sherry Crann (sherry)]

p.s. Mitch - I just looked over your first post above. Perfect fifths are easy to play on a string bass because the interval for tuning a bass is fourths going up, so to get a fifth, all you have to do is play the string below at the same fret.

Walking lines are great, too, because you're able to utilize scale modes, and you can pretty much play anything in that key and the proper mode for the chord that's going, and it will sound good http://www.notation.com/discus/clipart/happy.gif You'll notice that when using a walking line, the note is almost always on a beat, too, which gives it that "groove" feeling.

I'll stop now - I could go one for days http://www.notation.com/discus/clipart/happy.gif

ttfn,
Sherry

[David Jacklin (dj)]

Hello again, Mitch:

Regarding finding bass only sites on the Web, I'm sure there are. In fact, using Midinotate Player's built-in web browsing facility (feature plug alert! http://www.notation.com/discus/clipart/happy.gif ), I just found this link:

http://www.gollihur.com/kkbass/basslink.html

He has over 900 bass oriented web-links! I'm sure you'll find a few things there.

Regarding notation showing too high: if the particular midi file has some particular quirk (say a bass line assigned to an instrument that would normally be in the treble clef), the Midinotate might have a difficult time assigning the correct clef. You can usually fix that by clicking on the clef tool at the top of the screen and then clicking on the clef sign in the track in question. It will likely sort itself out.

If not, there could be a lot of reasons, usually to do with voice assignment. Unfortunately, the Midinotate Player doesn't allow you to edit notes: its function is, as it says, to be a "player". Follow Sherry's advice and download the trial version of one of Player's bigger siblings, Musician or Composer, and you'll find a whole raft of sophisticated editing tools -- for a very good price, if you do decide to buy.

Sherry-girl: you "could go one for days"? I thought this was a high-toned forum. Really, now. http://www.notation.com/discus/clipart/happy.gif

David

[Sherry Crann (sherry)]

Howdy David,

Even though _my_ "one" was a typo, I've heard rock songs that play one note endlessly http://www.notation.com/discus/clipart/happy.gif

ttfn,
Sherry