The Major's Bass Boot Camp (Session 8)

[Major-Minor]

The Major's Bass Boot Camp

The Turnaround in 1st and 2nd Positions

[attachment=39872:MBBC8.pdf]
[attachment=39873:MBBC8.mp3]


"Turnaround" is an expression you will mainly hear on a "busking" gig - and I am not referring to playing in the street - but the kind of gig where there is no (or little) written material. The players, probably Dance Band type musos or maybe jazzers, all know roughly the same set of tunes (Ipanima / Tramp / Foggy Day / Autumn Leaves etc etc) but there are no arrangements to play from, so someone, maybe the bandleader, calls "Lady Be Good - in G - 4 bar turnaround intro - 1,2,1234" and off they go.

So what is this Turnaround ?

Well, roughly, it's a series of chords that sets the key, creates an intro, maybe helping the vocalist to get their first note. Its also a musical devise for use within a composition, indeed some popular songs are purely based on a standard turnaround.

The most common form of turnaround is Ⅰ vi ii Ⅴ (1,6,2,5) so in C it would be C Am Dm G and this is what I start this example with.
I then mix in some substitutions - chords which can be used as alternatives. So in bar 7, you will see i have written an F chord rather than Dm. As this F is the Relative Major of D minor, you can see why it works well as a substitution.
Similarly, in bar 10, i have used Eb diminished (Ebo) in place of the Am7 chord.
A minor 7 is A C E G
Ebo is Eb Gb A C
So you can see there are 2 notes in common, the A and the C.

Bar 15 - I have substituted F6 in the place of Dm7. The 2 chords are exactly the same notes DFAC but in F6 the root note is .. erm ... F !

In bar 18, for 3 bars, I've used subs that are a lot further away from the originals, but they still work well.

Note: The STYLE of music is not relevant here, although you can probably recognize from how I have presented the track, that this is used a lot in the Rock and Roll and other 50's type music.

In bar 25, I show how you can extend this 4 bar pattern by replacing the C chord (Ⅰ) with the iii chord (Em7). We then get an 8 bar sequence.
Then in bar 29, I show how its possible to move things around so the sequence of chords starts on the ii (Dm) then moves to the Ⅴ (G7) the Ⅰ ( C ) and finally the vi (Am7). In bar 41, I have substituted an F chord for the Am7.
There are many other alternatives. This is just an introduction to the idea of the Turnaround.

Note also the slurs I have used in, for instance, bar 25 on the last 2 quavers. This means you make a single pluck (on the D#) and hammer down the E. This sort of articulation is often not actually written in band parts, but you can choose to put them in occasionally, and it can be very effective.

From bars 45 to 50, I have not written the root note of the chord as the first note of each bar, instead using (mostly) the 3rd of the chord.

The Major

Edited April 2, 2010 by Major-Minor