Introducing Tenths
Tenths are a very popular musical device for bass players to use, since they help us to more clearly define harmony. Tenths are by no means limited to slap bass, and you’ll certainly find a use for them in all areas of your playing. When playing slap bass grooves, tenths are often used in place of octaves, for added colour. In this course we'll be looking tenth intervals in detail, and examining how they can be useful to us when using the slap bass technique. After working through exercises that cover fretted tenths, we'll also be looking at open string tenths.
1 - Introducing Tenths
In this video we'll be talking about tenth intervals and how/when we might want to empty them when using the slap bass technique.
2 - Exercise #2
This simple exercise is based on a string of implied major chords, which are reflected in the bassline through the use of major tenth intervals.
3 - Exercise #3
This exercise is a rock groove which uses tenths to reinforce the sound of the chord progression. Tenths are also used to move back to the root chord at the end of the second and fourth bars.
4 - Open String Tenths
In this video we'll be talking about playing tenths using open strings. We'll also be looking at all of the available open string tenths on a standard 4-string bass.
5 - Exercise #4
This exercise puts open string tenths to good use. This one recalls the playing of both Stanley Clarke and Mark King.
6 - Exercise #5
This exercise moves between two chords - D minor and D minor. Both chords provide opportunities to use open string tenths.
7 - Exercise #6
This is a complicated exercise which makes use of sliding tenth intervals, a melodic device employed by Mark King on the classic Level 42 track '43'.
8 - Exercise #7
This exercise is in the key of E minor and features both open string and fretted tenths.
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