Designing Your Own Bass Lines

Back matter — Integrated Study and Appendices.

Chapter 35 named the Design Algorithm; Chapter 40 walked one complete sixteen-bar case study through it in detail. This appendix restates the algorithm as a plain checklist to have open while you’re actually composing, then works through two shorter sketches showing it compressed to its essentials on situations Chapters 36 and 37 explore in full.

The procedure

This is Chapter 35’s Design Algorithm, restated as a working checklist:

  1. Read the harmonic rhythm. How often does the chord actually change — every bar, every two beats, or not at all for a long stretch? This constrains everything that follows.
  2. Choose a Role for each structurally important moment. Ground, Definer, Inverter, Pedal, Reframer, Driver, Supporter, or Conversationalist — what job does each marked note need to do? Decide this before choosing pitches; the Role constrains which chord tone makes sense, not the other way around.
  3. Choose the Motion that connects those moments. Staying, Stepping, Approaching, Enclosing, Arpeggiating, Leaping, Connecting Chords, or Contrary Motion — how does the bass travel between the Roles you just placed?
  4. Choose the Groove that places those notes in time. A Repeated Cell and a rough sense of Attack Placement and Density are usually enough to fix in advance; leave Syncopation, Anticipation, and Variation Without Collapse for specific departures you want to mark deliberately rather than decide upfront.
  5. Choose the Interaction between the two layers. Doubling, Independence, Interlock, Call and Response, Density Balance, or Register and Separation — how does the bass relate to whatever the harmony is doing at that same instant?
  6. Play it, then test by ear and vary one layer at a time. Everything above can be designed silently or sung; the instrument is where you find out whether the design actually feels the way it looks on paper. If something doesn’t work, isolate which single layer is the actual cause before changing anything else — it is normal, and expected, to loop back to step 3 or step 2 once you hear it.

Sketch A — a short, mostly-static vamp

Situation: one chord, Am7, four bars, moderate funk, meant to sit under a vocal. See Chapter 36, Static Funk Vamp, for a full worked study of exactly this situation.

  • Harmonic rhythm: static — deliberately, since the point is to stay out of the vocal’s way harmonically.
  • Role: Ground throughout — there’s only one chord, so there’s no second harmonic identity for a Definer or Reframer to reveal or reinterpret. The interest has to come from Groove and Interaction instead.
  • Motion: almost entirely Staying — the point of a static harmonic rhythm is that there’s nowhere to travel to.
  • Groove: a one-bar Repeated Cell states itself plainly in bars 1–2, takes a Variation Without Collapse in bar 3 (one pitch substituted, the rhythm untouched), and returns to the plain cell in bar 4.
  • Interaction: Density Balance carries most of the weight here — a busy, syncopated cell against a single sustained right-hand chord is what keeps four bars of one harmony from going static in the bad sense as well as the harmonic one.

Sketch B — a moving turnaround

Situation: a one-bar turnaround, Fmaj7 – Am7 – Dm7 – G7, played twice, medium-up jazz-funk. See Chapter 37, Functional Jazz Progression, for a full worked study of a comparable fast-moving progression.

  • Harmonic rhythm: fast — a new chord every bar (or every two beats, if you compress the cycle into two bars instead of four), which shifts most of the design weight onto Motion.
  • Role: a Ground on F states the turnaround’s first root; a second Ground on A states Am7’s root plainly; a Definer on Dm7 brings out F, its minor third, rather than restating the root a third time in a row; a final Ground on G closes the cycle before it repeats.
  • Motion: Connecting Chords links F to A, then A down to the Definer’s F on Dm7; a chromatic Approaching figure (F-sharp, a half-step below G) leads out of that F into G7’s root, setting up the turnaround’s own resolution back to F on the repeat.
  • Groove: a two-bar Repeated Cell (since the turnaround itself spans two bars at this rate) stays identical on the first pass; on the second pass, a Syncopation is introduced on the Dm7 beat — a small, deliberate departure timed to land exactly where the harmony is already doing the most work.
  • Interaction: Register and Separation matters more here than Density Balance — voice-leading motion this active needs a clear gap from whatever the right hand is doing, or the moving line and the moving harmony blur into each other.

Using this appendix

Keep the six-step list open, mentally or literally, before your next writing or transcribing session. The order is the important part — harmonic rhythm first, Role before pitch, Motion and Groove filled in around the Roles, Interaction checked against what the other hand is actually doing, and the instrument consulted last, not first. Skipping the order and going straight to pitches is the single most common way this method collapses back into ordinary trial-and-error — which remains a perfectly valid way to write a bass line, just not the one this book is trying to teach.