Goal: Play bass as a second melody: counter-lines under a vocal, slides and hammer-ons, lines with a hook, and a tone that serves the song. After tetsuya of L'Arc~en~Ciel.
Time: 1 hr 23 min

You need: Written for bass (4, 5 or 6 strings); guitar, 7-string and shamisen players get their own version of each step. Finish orientation first; a phone that records audio helps.

Melodic bass

You’ll cover

A counter-melody that answers the vocal instead of copying the chords
A guitarist’s left hand on bass: slides, hammer-ons and pull-offs inside a groove
Writing a line with pop sense: chord tones, passing tones, one hook
Sound: why the tone of the bass is part of the part

The idea

tetsuya, bassist and leader of L’ArcenCiel, started on guitar and was handed a bass so his friends’ band would have one
He kept the guitarist’s habits: long slides, hammer-ons and pull-offs, lines that move between the roots
He writes songs too, so his lines are built like melodies: easy to hum, never in the singer’s way
He picks the instrument and the sound for each song, the way a singer picks a key

You’re on the instrument this course was written for. Every exercise is bass first.

Every bass line here also works on guitar an octave up, and the thinking (a second melody under the lead) is how good rhythm and second-guitar parts are written. Your blocks say how.

Shamisen already plays a second melody: in nagauta and min’yō it shadows the voice, a little ahead or behind. Its own slide and left-hand family (suri, uchi, hajiki) and the bachi’s sukui map onto everything here.

Read more

The full tetsuya archive (interviews, his Tetsugaku series, gear): JRock University

You need

Your instrument, tuned
A song you like with a clear vocal line
Something that records audio (a phone voice-memo app is fine)

Exercises