VII Chord Shapes & Application

A chord is more than one note played at a time. Simple! Typically, many bassists will call two notes
played at a time a “double-stop” and use the word ‘chord’ for anything more than that but, pure and
simple, you may apply the word chord to any collection of notes played at once.
Whether or not you ever plan on being the type of bassist who actually uses chords on the gig,
they are quite useful as a harmonic device for practicing. Chord shapes are yet another way to help you
‘see’ changes and chordal relationships on the fretboard.
One advantage to internalizing your chord shapes is the simple fact that you are working with
more than one note at a time and, hence, internalizing more than one note at a time. Chord shapes can also
provide a nice ‘outline’ for licks or melodic runs as well. Simply outlining chord shapes is, in itself, a
harmonic device that can sound pretty good. My method for working through chord shapes is exactly the
same as working through arpeggios.

• Internalize a root position shape.

• Work all inversions, one by one.
• Explore alternate shapes and voicings.
• Work them all in different positions of the fretboard.
• Use voice-leading to further explore relationships and the myriad ways we can connect chord changes.

Now, since we’re already familiar with our chord scales, it should be a piece of cake to build a
chord or two, right? Well, yes and no. With consideration to the range of our instrument, some chords will
sound better than others. In addition, the lower on the fretboard you are, the simpler your voicing should
likely be (remember what I said about the lower frequencies and things sounding muddy vs. sounding
melodic up high on the fretboard?). This is completely subjective, of course—you’ll have to explore it for
yourself and play to your own aesthetic.
The following is a large (but not exhaustive) collection of possible chord shapes on 4-, 5-, and 6-
string basses. As the 3rd and 7th are the notes that make up the foundation of the chord quality, most of
my shapes revolve around the root, 3rd, and 7th. I don’t bother with the 5th as much unless it is altered in
the chord type (♭5 or #5). This is because, in most cases, I find that less is more with regard to the
number of voices played at once on a bass guitar. That’s not to say that you can’t or shouldn’t play the 5th
or use voicings with four or even five notes (thumb?) but I would start simply and expand from there.
I’ll also explore some root position shapes through changes as well as using inversions and voice
leading (my favorite exercise!) but, first…

Here are a bunch of chord shapes to get you going! I also listed my most commonly used shapes near the
end. Don’t feel like you have to memorize every one of these. Just explore them and pick at least one
shape you like for each chord type to get you going while you start to practice these through tunes.

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I’ve organized these by string spans (3, 4, 5, 6). Don’t play every string. Just play the notes in the chord
shape.

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Here are a few things to keep in mind as you work various shapes through changes.
Many students have a tendency to lock into one shape per chord type. If you play a 4-string and
you like the voicing with the root on the E string, 7th on the D string, and 3rd on the G string, for
example, but you never internalize the three-string shape, you’ll always have to voice the chord with the
root in the E string, which may be nowhere near your current fretboard position. This causes you to have
to jump around the fretboard, sliding up and down the neck frantically as you find the next chord.
This is why it’s important to learn chord shapes that span multiple groupings of strings so
you can stay in position, as much as possible. If you play a 4-string, this means two chord shapes per
chord type (one using three strings and one that spans four strings). On my 6-string, I have four different
shapes for a voicing that consists of root, 3rd, and 7th! That doesn’t even include inversions or extensions.
Don’t worry, though. Just take it chord-by-chord and work through the voicings. They relate to each other
so if you learn one, you are already two-thirds of the way there with the next one.
Here’s an example. If you voice a ∆7 chord over three strings, playing root, 3rd, and 7th, playing
the 4-string version of that chord is as simple as moving the 3rd up one octave, replacing the higher
octave with the lower. It can still be a three-note chord—but now it spans four strings instead of three.
If you’re having trouble figuring out a shape using certain chord tones or tensions, remember to
scan the immediate area of your fretboard. I often see students attempting to make near-unplayable
stretches with their left hands trying to grab a note when there is the same note available to them on the
string below it and in a much easier to grab place.
Here are a few examples of common bass voicings, in root position, over changes with which
we’re already familiar.
In an attempt to keep the notation both readable and in bass clef, I will write many of the notes an
octave lower than they should be played. I will, however, add tab so you can see the appropriate shape
and in the appropriate range. The term “8va” refers to the notes that are written an octave lower than they
are played.
We won’t worry about extensions yet; these first examples will only include primary chord tones.

Here are the first 16 bars of “Beautiful Love,” with root-position chord shapes for 4-string bass,
using only primary chord tones.

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I implore you to work through many more tunes than the ones in this book, with ALL the exercises and
concepts presented in this text. At the end of the book, I will provide a list of useful jazz standards to
work on, as well as more than a few chord charts for practice.

Chords and Inversions

You will notice that in my list of chord shapes, I have provided voicings for chord types which include
other primary chord tones in the “bass” (the lowest note of the chord).
In general, I don’t play the 5th unless it’s altered, but I make an exception for chordal inversions.
This is mostly due to the fact that we are limited on our instrument with regard to which notes we
choose—and in which order—when voicing them as a chord. Our instrument can be somewhat
unyielding, and unless you’ve got incredibly long fingers and some serious dexterity, it’s just too hard to
play certain voicings. This, again, is something that you will have to explore for yourself. Everyone has
different limits and physiology. First inversions, for example, sound fantastic to me with just the third in
the bass with the root and fifth above.
Playing chordal inversions on the bass can sound really interesting, but on most gigs, it may not
be the most useful thing; these exercises are geared more towards development and exploration. It’s easy
enough to imagine, though, how just having the ability to play a C∆7 chord in root position AND first
inversion AND second inversion AND third inversion can only increase your ability to see across the
fretboard and navigate the range of your instrument more freely.
When speaking of chord shapes and “inversions,” they are not a set pattern (as are our arpeggios);
I’m simply referring to the note in the bass. Any chord can have multiple voicings, and each will have a
different sound—and thus, a different sonic effect.
As we move forward, some of these voicings may not even include the root. Quite a concept for a
bass player!

Here are the same 16 bars with voicings for all inversions, using only primary chord tones.

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I used tab to help denote voicings for that first set of exercises, but they’ll be the only examples given
using tab. I believe students get FAR more from figuring out how to apply concepts to their instrument
than they ever will simply reading through tab examples (or even notated examples), though both types of
notation can be useful guides.
There are much more interesting voicings available to us once we begin to include the appropriate
extensions into our chord shapes. I am particularly fond of the natural 9, #11 and 13, when appropriate.

Voice-Leading with Chord Shapes

This is one of my favorite exercises. You’ll remember that voice-leading is, essentially, moving through
changes while actually moving each note as little as possible or not at all. This can really test your ability
to think through changes as we are playing three notes at once and constantly evaluating our notes. We
are contrasting them with the upcoming chord and having to decide if we have to move each note at all
and, if so, where.
It’s best to take this as slow as you need to. The beautiful thing is that you don’t even have to be
necessarily good at this exercise to gain from it. Each moment thinking through changes like this
increases our ability to recognize available scale tones and challenges our knowledge of our fretboard.
Simply start with ANY chord shape you like and then evaluate your notes, one at a time and one chord at
a time. Take it slowly.
At this point, we are still restricting ourselves to primary chord tones. When voice-leading chord
shapes on the bass, once we allow ourselves the entire chord scale, things get interesting. The reality is
that we don’t have to move much at all when we use the entire chord scale. Two by-product of this are:

• We realize how closely related each chord is to the next.

• Our chord shapes don’t sound very good (especially on a bass).

This is practice, and it’s not always supposed to sound “good.” It can be hard to hear the harmony if we
strictly voice-lead through the changes using our entire chord scale. I will allow myself the use of certain
extensions that I like but I tend to stick to primary chord tones.

Here’s “Giant Steps” (with tab—you’re welcome), using primary chord tones and chord shapes for
4-string bass.
(I drop an octave at one point because I ran out of frets and there was a definitive pattern happening that I
wanted to complete. No hard and fast rules here—just don’t cut corners with the function of the concept.)

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NOTE: I may only give one notated example per concept at times in this book, but by no means should
that imply that the work ends there. EACH of these fragments should be in a constant state of
development. If you’ve “mastered” root position arpeggios over “Beautiful Love,” for example, that does
not mean that you’ve “got them.” It means you’ve got them over “Beautiful Love” and that it’s now time
to move on to another tune with some different changes.
Each musical exercise can give you a lifetime’s worth of work. Try not to read through each
exercise once or twice, kind of get it, and then move on. Always try to push farther with each concept.
You should do EVERY exercise through EVERY tune I list near the end of the book. Then you should
pick another handful of tunes and explore them in similar ways. It should never end.
To truly internalize many of these concepts, you will have to work at them for years. You should
never stop discovering how X can relate to Y and why that works better in this tune than Z.
I have no intention of providing an encyclopedic text of possible scalar patterns through a million
tunes. In fact, I believe that would do you no good! To really get anything out of this kind of book, YOU
need to do the work. It’s in those moments of frustration, when you’re struggling to figure something out,
that you are learning. It’s important to hit those walls and find your own way around, over, or through
them.
Even once you’ve ‘mastered’ all of these exercises, they will only lead you to discover more
variations and different ways to explore changes. You will inevitably invent your own exercises that will
challenge you in new ways. All of these exercises were of my own making. These exercises seemed like a
logical way to work on changes and I kept tweaking them. It turns out that improvising musicians all
across the world do these same very things, and I didn’t know it. I think these are the logical places to
start exploring changes, but you will find your own path and tweak this methodology to suite your own
learning style and goals for the instrument.

Here’s one more example (with tab) of the chordal voice-leading exercise (with
occasional extensions) using the first 16 bars of “Beautiful Love,” for 4-string bass.

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