This article is written by Toru Hoshino, a jazz bassist and instructor based in Japan who teaches online lessons to students worldwide. In this article, he breaks down a slick-sounding lick you can use any time a major chord holds for two bars.
Contents
Who This Article Is For
- You’re not sure how to build your own improvised solo phrases
- You want to bring great bassists’ approaches into your own playing
- You want to expand your vocabulary of solo lines
- You want to understand how to build jazz phrases around chord tones
Work through the phrase in this article, and you’ll pick up one solid approach for soloing over a major chord that lasts two bars. It transposes easily, so you can apply it to all kinds of tunes — stick with this one to the end.
Where This Comes From
This is a phrase you can use in jazz chord progressions whenever a major chord — like CΔ7 or C7 — holds for two bars. Have a listen to 1:21–1:30 in the video below first.
Album: Manhattan Trinity
Bassist: George Mraz
How the Phrase Is Built
Here’s the approach over a CΔ7 chord:
- ① Play the 3rd (E), drop a half step, then come back to the 3rd (E) — red line
- ② Play the root (C), drop a half step, then come back to the root (C) — blue line
- ③ Play the 5th (G), drop a half step, then come back to the 5th (G) — green line
- ④ Play the 3rd (E) an octave down, drop a half step, then come back to the 3rd (E) — red line
It’s basically weaving through the chord tones. Give it a try with your own hands if you can!
If you played all three of those target notes exactly the same way each time, it wouldn’t be wrong — but it would lose a lot of its style.
Transposed and Applied
Here’s this same idea — weaving through chord tones using a half-step below each one — transposed and applied elsewhere. This is the chord progression for the jazz standard “Just Friends.”
This works over plenty of tunes, so give it a try in your own playing.
Phrases like this one are easy to get almost right but hard to really nail on your own — exactly the kind of detail a teacher can catch instantly.
Want Personalized Feedback on Your Playing?
This is exactly the kind of thing that’s hard to fix alone — and where having a teacher makes all the difference.
At Line on Bass, I offer an online lesson service where you send me a video of your playing, and I give you specific, detailed feedback — every single day if you want.
Students from around the world are using this to fix exactly these kinds of issues and steadily improve their jazz bass skills.