Bass Line 4

Çağlayan Y ı l d ı z b

Bass Layn- Bass Line No3

Slash Chords

Let me tell you that you can find my column from last issue and all my lessons at www.caglayanyildiz.com, and once again get straight to the point.

In this lesson too, to calm our public, who are working themselves into a frenzy saying, “We’ve finished this triadic harmony business, we know all the 4-note chords and all their possible ‘Drops’… Isn’t there aaanything more?”, we will touch on Slash Chords. Those protesting, “But this subject has already been covered soooo much,” I silence with, “So what? Hear it from me as well; perhaps a different perspective will help you notice something else,” and continue my column.

Slash Chords are frequently used in both Modern Jazz and Contemporary Classical Music. They share only a name with the chords played by Slash in “Guns N’ Roses”; they are not even distant relatives. These chords are formed by adding to the triads we now know inside out a bass note that is “not part of” the triad.

Below, to explore all possibilities, I have written the 4 types of triad in 12 keys over a C(do) bass, giving all 48 possible slash chords. Then, to find true 4-note chords, I marked chords in which C(do) was repeated with an “x”. Then, since inversions of “augmented” chords repeat themselves at every major 3rd, I marked these with triangular noteheads too. That left us with 30 true slash chords.

Examining these chords, we see that some yield entirely familiar functional 4-note chords, while others yield “color chords”. We can see this more clearly by analyzing the degree of each note in the resulting chord relative to the root. First, we find 8 obvious 4-note chords and 4 chords without a 5th (omit 5). I have written their slash-chord forms above and their functional harmony names below:

If we look at and play all the slash chords for long enough, we may notice that they give us 4 notes, and that the remaining 3 notes they do not give us, needed to form the commonly used 7-note scales, can be filled in by us as a multiple-choice exercise to suit our wishes…perhaps… Actually, I could try to explain everything more simply with a table like the one below. Why not? I can write the notes supplied by the slash chords as normal notes, and those not supplied as “headless” notes. Under these I can write their possible “accidentals” (sharp/flat). That way I might have provided a natural answer to the questions that have haunted humanity since the Dark Ages: “Which scales do I play over which slash chord? But why?”… The attentive among you (2 of the 7 people reading this column) will notice that I have modified the “accidentals” of certain chord degrees, and will work out the logic governing how the multiple-choice degrees interact…

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Although our primary duty as bassists is to play the roots, need I say that these chords and scales contain very colorful possibilities for composition and improvisation? Spouting a meaningless slogan like “Play slash chords, not slosh chords,” I once again make a swift exit from the scene…