As a recovering computer programmer (retired after 23 years of creating apps in Delphi (Object Pascal) and C#, and database design using various databases on the “back end”), I sometimes go “back to my roots” and create a small app for my own use.
I recently wrote one to help me with my two main problems pursuing my primary hobby (playing the bass guitar). I consider myself a hobbyist, not a real musician, but if I get considerably better at two things, I might reconsider and upgrade my opinion of my musical prowess.
What are the two things I really need to work on?
1) My “ear” (being able to play music by ear, that is figuring out which notes are being played on a song without referring to sheet music)
—and:
2) My creativity (coming up with my own bass lines rather than just copying other peoples’ brain babies)
This is how my app looks (yes, kind of ugly, or at best plain):
My app generates a list of four random notes that can be played on a “normal” bass guitar (that is to say, a four-string, 22-fret bass in standard tuning). It plays one of those notes, and allows me to guess which of the four random notes it is. If I’m wrong, it tells me that, and I keep guessing until I’m right. Over time, I expect (or at least hope) to get better at knowing which note it is I’m hearing.
Then, to aid in creativity in coming up with my own bass lines, it takes those same four random notes (that can be anywhere on the bass, and are certainly not necessarily going to be part of a harmonic scale such as G major or A minor or such) and challenges me to “connect the dots” by going from note 1 to note 2 to note 3 and finally to note 4 in some sort of harmonically and rhythmically pleasing way.
My inspiration for this idea (of giving myself random notes to string [no pun intended] together) came from an interview with Pete Townshend (guitarist and songwriter of The Who), where he said if he sat down to write a song and gave himself complete freedom to write a song about anything in any key and played at any tempo, he would get writer’s block and be unable to come up with anything, but if he gave himself certain parameters first, such as, “This will be an uptempo song in the key of G major about soccer hooligans” he was off to the races.
If some of the random notes provided by the app sound dissonant or even discordant next to each other (“you can’t get there from here”), you can play those “unmatching” notes as part of a chromatic pattern (a series of ascending or descending half-tones), and run through the “sour” note[s] quickly. This is okay — strangely enough, a bad/sour note sounds alright if it’s passed through very quickly (played for a very short duration); this is similar to the “three-second-rule” which states that you can drop a cookie on the floor, and as long as you pick it up within three seconds, you can ignore whatever germs it may have picked up (supposedly, that is). The only difference is, with music it’s more like a 3-millisecond rule. So, “You can’t get there from here?” is not true — you always can, somehow, some way.
As I try to create a nifty riff connecting those four notes, like going through a maze or connecting the dots, I will try to come up with something in different genres (pop, rock, funk, disco, blues, country, etc.), in different tempos, and playing with my fingers, also with a pick, and even using the slapping technique (something else that I currently stink at).
Using these notes to jumpstart your creativity will produce different results at different times, no doubt, depending on what mood you’re in, what music you’ve been listening to most recently, etc. It’s like taking Highway 1 from Monterey to Highway 101 in Salinas to Highway 5 past the eastern slope of Pacheco Pass to Highway 26 in Stockton to Highway 12 and then Highway 49: there are many variations on the exact routes you can take to get from one highway to another, and the road you choose (as Robert Frost said in his famous poem) makes all the difference, and depends partly on where it is exactly that you “live.”
For now, though (while the app is private and only used by me), I will periodically update you on my ear progress, and upload some audio of the bass lines I’ve come up with linking the four random notes.
As seen in the screenshot above, a chart shows me where on the bass I can play all the possible notes. The purple-circled notes are those that can be played in only one place (the lowest five notes and the highest five notes). All other notes can be played in at least two places (such as B1 on the second fret of the A string and the seventh fret of the E string; or even three times, such as G2, which can be played open on the G string, on the fifth fret of the D string, and on the 15th fret of the E string). There are 39 distinct notes that can be played on the bass in the chart, but 92 places to play those 39 distinct notes (22 frets X 4 = 88, plus the four open strings make it 92). On a standard piano, OTOH, there are only 88 places where you can play a note, but all 88 are unique — there is only one place on a piano where you can play each of its 88 notes.
Anyway, this post serves as an introduction to what is to come; in the next article in the “Bass Riffs” series (which will be #90), I will tell you about my progress (or lack thereof) and upload a riff or two that I come up using the four random notes the app generates.