Lesson video

Hello, my name is Miss Charatan and welcome to my lesson on how we can create a bass line.

Let's begin with a warm up and I'm going to leave a lot of this work up to you to do.

Let's just start though, rolling our shoulders back.

Rolling them forward.

Have a nice stretch.

Shake out your right hand and your left hand.

Both hands, up high.

Down low, great.

I'm going to challenge you to create your own rhythm today.

You're going to try and create a rhythm with as many different sounds as possible.

So for example, like my one.

I'm sure you can do even better than me.

I use this one, this one and this one.

Pause the video, come up with a great rhythm.

Try and beat mine.

I used three sounds.

Can you use more? Great.

Let's get started.

In this lesson, you will need the following items of equipment.

You need a piece of paper, a pencil or pen, instruments or app.

I really like the Virtual Piano app on iPhone and a digital audio workstation.

If you're not quite sure what that is, don't worry.

Something like GarageBand or BandLab would do the job.

Don't worry about finding that now.

We can always find time to find it later.

Pause the video, get those things and come back when you're ready.

Lovely.

Let's now see what we're doing today.

The first thing we're doing is to recap our knowledge of bass lines and chords.

We're then going to go and learn how to create a successful bass line.

We will input that and create it on a digital audio workstation.

We'll explore how to make our bass line more interesting, and then we will share our bass line.

Let's get started with recapping our knowledge of bass lines and chords.

Let's have a quick recap.

Answer these two questions using the coloured words below.

What is a ground bass and what is a bass line? Pause the video now and resume when you're ready.

Lovely, let's now check your answers with mine.

Take out a different coloured pen and give yourself a tick for the correct points you've made.

So a ground bass is a bass line that repeats over and over again.

This term is typically used when we talk about Baroque music.

It is played by the Basso Continuo.

So that's the harpsichord in the bass file.

A bass line is the lowest part of a piece of music.

It is often repeated and at its simplest is the root note of the chord.

So a ground bass is a type of bass line, except it's in Baroque music and is repeated very much throughout the piece.

Bass lines are also quite repetitive.

We will be creating bass lines today.

So how does a bass line relate to chords? Choose the correct sentences from the ones below.

Pause the video, choose the correct sentences, and resume when you're ready.

Great, let's now check our answers.

So the bass line is not a repeated melody because it's not a melody, it's a bass line, but it is repeated.

So that one goes away.

The bass line is often the root note of the chords.

So the green box stays.

The chords and the base line fit together.

That is correct.

The chords and the bass line will use a different key and a scale.

That's not correct, it won't sound good.

Oh, that one went by mistake! The chords and the bass line will use the same key and scale, in the dark green box.

That's correct.

The bass line must always move by step.

Not necessarily.

We know the ground bass doesn't move by step, Bass lines are often repetitive.

The bass line must have the same rhythm as the chords.

That's not correct, it can have any rhythm.

So these two disappear.

So these were your four, correct answers.

Check that you've got those written down and let's move on.

So another quick recap, what is a chord and what is a triad? Well done if you said a chord is more than one note played at the same time.

A triad, how many notes are in a triad? Think about triangle.

Yes, three notes.

A root, a third, and fifth.

So in D major, that would be D, F-sharp and A.

What are the primary triads? We learned those last time.

So if you can't read Roman numerals, they are in normal numbers next to them.

Take a moment to think about it.

The primary triads are one, four and five.

So in D major, this would be D major chord.

G major chord and A major chord.

Because that's one, four and five.

What about the secondary triads? What numbers are they? And are they major or minor? If you said two, three and six, that's correct.

And they are minor chords when it's a major key.

So for example, in D major, that would be E minor, F-sharp minor and B minor.

Well done if you've got those correct.

Another recap, what key is Pachelbel's canon in? There is a clue below.

If you said D major, you are correct.

So your task now is to write out the notes of the D major scale and the treble and bass clef, and label them.

So we've got numbers one to eight here, so you need to write out eight notes.

You'll first need to draw the treble and bass clef.

You can always use a worksheet to help you.

and then you will label them with the letter names.

Pause the video, do that now and resume when you finished.

Great.

Let's check your answers.

So your treble clef, D major scale should look like this and your base clef should look like the one below.

Pause the video again and check your answers against mine.

And you should be able to see that I've got a root, a third, a fifth and an octave labelled.

Label your diagrams now, 'cause these are going to be really useful, really useful symbols for you for later.

Fantastic.

We have now recapped our knowledge of bass lines and chords.

So we're now moving on to get ready to create a successful bass line of our own.

So when we create a bass line, it's easiest to start from the chords because they are related.

If we create a random bass line using random notes that we like, we're going to have a really difficult job later to create some chords to fit with it.

So we're going to borrow some cores from Pachelbel's canon.

I've written out the chords here for you and I'm going to borrow four chords.

So I'm going to borrow D major, A major, B minor and G.

So, it sounds quite similar to Pachelbel's canon, but not exactly the same.

So you are going to write down, choose your chords and write them down in a grid.

You can see two grids below.

So there's one grid which I filled in with my chords.

I've chosen to repeat it, roughly twice, but you can see I swapped over the last two.

You can use the table below of the chords, notes and the pictures in them.

So for example, for D major, if you read above that, that's D, F and A, and you play those together.

So if you're not quite sure what notes are in each chord, look at that grid below.

And that will tell you what to do.

Pause the video, come up with four chords for your chord sequence and resume the video when you're ready.

So by now you should have four chords or eight chords, if you're being really adventurous, written down in a grid.

If you haven't got four chords, please borrow mine.

D, A, B minor and G, and then that's going to help you more.

So you've got your four chords, and now you need to write down the letter names of your chords.

So for example, for me, my first chord is D, so I write down D at the bottom and an F-sharp and an A.

So I'm doing that with all of my chords, 'cause that's going to really help me write a successful bass line.

Pause the video, write down the letters of your chords.

You don't need to copy mine if you've got your own.

And resume when you're ready.

Lovely.

So how do you make a bass line? So the most basic bass lines are literally the root notes of the chords.

So you've actually.

So how do we make a bass line? The most basic bass line adjust the root notes of the chords.

Which row below is the root note of the chords? If you said the pink row, the bottom row, you're correct.

So that means we've already got a bass line.

I've got my chords here.

So I've actually got a bass line already.

So you are now going to make some decisions because you've got a bass line.

But you're going to decide, do you want four chords or eight chords? So I might choose to get rid of four chords, just to make it more simple.

And decide how long you want each chord to last.

Is it two beats or four beats? So for example, looking at my chord sequence here, I could get mine to last for two beats.

I'm just going to play the bass line for you.

So one, two.

One, two.

One, two.

One, two.

Like that, or I can make it last for four beats.

One, two, three, four.

So make those decisions now, pause the video.

Make the decisions and resume when you're ready.

Great, have you decided what to do? Hopefully you got four or eight chords and you've chosen two or four beats.

You are now going to practise your bass line so you can play it completely fluently.

So make sure you've decided how many beats per pitch because that's going to help you play it in time fluently.

Play it musically and with expression.

So for example, I'm not always going to play it legato.

I could do something like this.

Or I could do something like this.

If you've finished already, you could try and play the chords and then you could also think about whether your bass line has to be the root of the chord, and experiment with some different notes to play.

Once you're ready, resume the video.

Fantastic.

So we've recapped our knowledge and we've now learned how to create a successful, basic bass line.

We're now go to explore how to create a bass line on a digital audio workstation.

A digital audio workstation is an interface and a device to help you record in music and keep it.

Here is a list of digital audio workstations which could be used.

You can create a bass line using audio mixing software.

The demonstration you are about to see uses a free music software programme called BandLab for Education.

You can use this programme if you're under 13, but you must get permission from your parent or carer first.

Please also speak to your parent or carer to help set up the programme.

Once you are on BandLab for Education, you need to go to My Library, which is this button up here and press Create Project.

This will load, and then you will need to press Instruments.

The first thing you need to do is change the tempo.

So I'm going to put mine a little bit slower.

So you just click on it and drag it down to where you want, around 80.

And then I need to practise my bass line.

So I need to press my, I can play it on my keyboard hopefully.

Yeah.

So mine's now playing on my keyboard and now I just need to work out what octave I want to play it in.

So I'm actually quite happy with this.

Okay, so I can change my octave here, make it even lower.

Actually, I liked it get there and I might want to change it to something which isn't the piano.

So I'm going to have a go at doing a bass.

You could do a normal bass.

I might have to go at doing a synth bass.

Once I've practised it and I'm really happy with my basic bass line, and I know how long each of the notes are going to be.

Mine are going to be two beats.

I'm going to put the metronome on.

I'm going to press Record.

Nice little practise.

So once I've recorded it, I can just press space bar to stop.

I need to make sure it's in time.

So I double-click into the area.

If I've made any mistakes, I can always change them as well.

I click, I do Ctrl-A to select all of them, and then I'm going to change it to quantize by one over two, 'cause I've done my every two beats and that will make it in time.

I'm also not quite sure whether I want it this low.

It's really low, oops.

It's really, really low.

So I'm going to actually select all and do plus 12, which makes it higher.

I'm not quite sure, I'll make up my mind later and also it's all disappeared.

So if you've made a mistake like me and made all that your work disappear, you do Ctrl and Z and you'll get it back.

You then need to loop your bass line using this little arrow here.

So you click on it and you drag it, so it can go on for longer.

So make sure it ends at this line here.

Lovely.

I am really excited to hear your bass lines.

Well done for creating a bass line on your digital audio workstation.

We are now going to explore how to make our bass line more interesting.

What have I changed about my bass line to make it more exciting? So this was my original bass line.

I could have played it like this, with the four beats.

So here is my new bass line.

What have I changed? Think you'd agree it's a little bit more interesting.

Pause the video, write down your ideas and resume when you're ready to check.

Lovely.

So I changed the rhythm.

I didn't just have each note, each pitch having the same rhythm.

It's had a little syncopated exciting rhythm there.

I repeated and added pitches.

So I repeated that one twice.

I use different pitches, so they weren't just the root note all of the time.

So I could have probably done a bit more of that actually.

So I could have actually gone up to the third of the chord, if I wanted to.

And the most important thing is I added passing notes.

Let's see what these are.

So passing notes are notes that are between two pitches to make a smooth line.

So for example, D to F-sharp, D, E, F-sharp.

It could become D, E, F-sharp and E is a passing note.

Can you spot where I did it in here? That one, that one.

So one of them is a note, which isn't from a scale, I was a bit naughty.

That's called a chromatic passing note, which makes it sound quite cool.

So I used one of the black keys and the other one was just a normal passing note from the D major scale.

So you're now going to do a quiz, find a passing note to help out these bass lines.

And for your stretch, you can write it using notation.

So find a passing note to go from D to F-sharp, G to B, D to A and A to F-sharp.

Be careful, passing notes can go in two directions.

They can go up or down, so don't get caught out.

Pause the video, answer these questions and resume when you're ready.

Lovely.

Let's check your answers.

So should you should have D to F-sharp becomes D, E, F-sharp.

G to B becomes G, A, B.

A is the passing note.

D to A, actually I missed a note out there.

Did we see? D to A, D, B, A but actually I need two passing notes in there.

What would that be? It would be D, C-sharp, if I'm in D major, B and A.

So I needed two passing notes.

And A to F-sharp would be A, G, F-sharp.

I'm now going to show you how to record in an embellished and more-exciting bass line onto your digital audio workstation.

So I'm now going to show you how to record in a more embellished and exciting bass line on to your digital audio workstation.

Remember this demo is done using BandLab for Education.

You should only be using this if you are over 13 or under 13 with the consent from a parent or carer.

So I have got two tracks.

Now you may see I've already recorded in my more interesting bass line.

I actually turned down the tempo a bit further to help me record it in 'cause it was a bit more tricky.

So I've got my first bass line here.

Let's listen to that.

So I'm pressing Solo.

So we only listen to that one.

And then I've got my embellished bass line here.

So I only did this on a piano, just to kind of make it stand out a bit more.

I might want to turn it up again in terms of the speed.

So you can actually turn down the speed when you record and then turn it up again when you want to have a, kind of, performance of it.

So I'm going to backtrack and show you how to create a new bass line on BandLab.

So I'm just going to undo what I've done.

Help, that's not working for me.

Right, so what I'm going to do is I do an Add Track, Instruments.

I might want to label this, actually.

So I'm going to label this Fancy bass line and this one's going to be Basic bass line.

So I need to click on it.

And I'm going to click Instrument.

I might want to keep it on piano or not.

I'm just going to keep it on piano for now.

And then I need to practise it.

I'm going to turn down the tempo, really slow.

Make sure the metronome is on.

Go back to the beginning.

I might want to mute this track here, so that I didn't hear it and then get distracted.

And I'm going to press Start Recording.

Okay.

You might have noticed I made a mistake there.

Not a problem because I can go in here and delete it.

That's it, so I found it.

I'm going to delete it.

And I'm just going to move this one back.

Okay, now I need to select all, and I quantize a little bit.

Here we go and this should sound quite good.

I'm going to turn it up again, make it faster.

So I can now change the instrument if I want.

I can always do that afterwards, don't have to do it now.

Oh, it's not opening.

Here we go.

Right, so I might want to put that back on synth bass.

I'm going to turn up the octave.

And I've got my basic one, I don't want not want that one anymore so I'm just going to mute that one.

And then you can experiment by adding in some chords.

So I might want to add some chords in onto a new track.

If you know how to do that, you'll just need to go on piano.

Or a new track here, I've already got one.

Make sure your instruments up and then go back to your core grid at the very beginning.

So chords are tricky to play on here, but it's not impossible.

Where are we? So that's hard but you record in chords as well.

You can also experiment by adding in some loops on here, so you can get some drum kit grooves here.

Which one do I want? I want this one.

I just drag that in.

And then I need to loop that.

Let's hear what it sounds like.

Sounds pretty cool, right? So you are now going to pause the video, read the next slide and start the task.

Read the instructions on this slide really carefully to record in an embellished bass line to your digital audio workstation.

If you need help, rewind the video and look at my tutorial again.

Resume the video when you are finished.

Brilliant, now you're going to go through this checklist.

How did you change your bass line to make it more interesting? Why did you add in passing notes and what effect do they have? And is your bass line harder or easier to play once you have embellished it and why? Pause the video, answer these questions and resume when you're ready.

Lovely, well, I hope you change the rhythms to make it more interesting, adding in passing notes.

And I imagine your bass line was probably a bit harder to play when you had more things going on.

Let's have a quick recap then.

What is a passing note? The correct answer is the pink box, a note directly between two pitches.

Well done if you've got that correct.

So we have done loads of things today.

We've recently explored how to make our bass line more interesting.

And now it's time at the end of the lesson to share your bass line.

I will show you how to do it now.

So you have got a couple of options.

You could show it to somebody at home, or send it to a friend or family member for feedback, or you could even share it with your school.

So this is your kind of performance time, performing your arrangement with your bass line.

You may have put in some loops and other exciting things.

Pause the video now.

Show it to somebody.

Send it to somebody.

Share it with somebody and resume when you're finished.

I'm now going to show you how to share your work if you would like to.

So you can save it using this button here.

There's obviously no changes to save for me.

I can also go to File, Download, Mixdown as, It will create a mixdown for me.

You just need to be patient.

Might take a little while, that's absolutely fine.

And then you'll need to do it as an MP3.

So if you do high quality, obviously it will take longer to download, so medium quality's fine.

Then you press Download.

It will export and it will save onto your computer.

I'm sure that was a fantastic performance of your bass line.

You are now going to answer this key question.

How did you create a bass line? Put the sentences in the correct order.

Pause the video and resume when you're finished.

Lovely.

So you should have probably put it in roughly this order.

So firstly, you chose a chord sequence at the beginning of the lesson.

Then you took the root note of the chord sequence.

Then you would have done any of these things in any order.

So you'd have maybe added passing notes, then added repeated pitches, then changed the rhythm.

Or you might have done it in a slightly different way.

So obviously there's no real correct answer for this, but definitely the first two, chord sequence, root note was the first thing that you did.

Well done for your excellent work today.

Make sure you click on to complete the quiz to show how much you have learned.

All that's left to say is take care, have a good day and see you next time.