The Major's Bass Boot Camp - Session 21

[Major-Minor]

The Major's Bass Boot Camp - Session 21

Getting Started with Music Reading - in F Major

As with Session 20, everything is playable in the first position and all 5 exercises start with a bar of drums. Play along with me for the first of each 4 bar phrases, then you are on your own for the repeats (although you have the guitar, piano and organ playing in octaves with you). The pieces all end with a 2 bar phrase repeated.


This session introduces you to 2 new reading concepts:

1. Reading with a KEY SIGNATURE.

Session 20 was all in C Major, therefore there were no sharps or flats.
This Session (21) is all in the key of F Major which has one flat - Bb.
So at the beginning of each line you will see a flat sign written around the second line up on the note B, transforming this note into a Bb. This applies to all octaves.

Nearly all standard written music will have the key sig written at the start of EVERY line. However, in the days of the Dance Band and the Jazz Era, so many arrangements was being churned out (all hand written, of course) that every possible abbreviation that the copyists could think of was being employed, including using only a single key sig at the start of the piece and at key change points. So you may well come across this method, particularly if you play in a Big Band.
With today's computer generated scores, it's usual to see the key sig on every line.

2. The "DOTTED" note.

Going back to the days before the printing press revolutionised the publication of music, overworked copyists developed the "dotted" note - a dot placed AFTER the note, lengthening it by half as much again. (This should not be confused with a dot ON or UNDER the note which is an articulation direction - meaning the note is short or staccato.)
In the first example (MBBC21a), I've tried to make this point clear from bar 25 onwards.


MBBC21a
[attachment=47895:MBBC21a.pdf]
[attachment=47900:MBBC21a.mp3]
From bar 17, you will see that there are 2 quavers on the 2nd and 4th beats.
Now look at the 1st two beats of bar 25:
Here you can see I have TIED the first crotchet and first quaver together, creating a single note which is 1.5 beats long, followed by the other quaver which starts half way through beat 2. You will sometimes see this rhythm written like this, but its far more common to see it written as in bar 27. Here a dot AFTER the crotchet signifies the extra 50%. You can see why this was an easier way to copy this rhythm on to the manuscript. Rather than writing the note, the stem and the tie, all the copyist had to do was write a dot.
Notice how the single quavers are written:
It's as if the BEAM over 2 quavers has been allowed to fall to the side of the single quaver.



MBBC21b
[attachment=47896:MBBC21b.pdf]
[attachment=47901:MBBC21b.mp3]
In bar 42, there is the first of several "dotted minims". As with the dotted crotchet, this simply means that the minim is extended by 50%, so it equals 3 crotchet beats rather than 2. As it starts on beat 2 in this example, I've written the beats underneath, so we get a note that lasts from the start of beat 2 to the end of beat 4.



MBBC21c
[attachment=47897:MBBC21c.pdf]
[attachment=47902:MBBC21c.mp3]
Before you start this one, just have a look at the TIES that start appearing in bar 17.
Make sure you understand how they join 2 notes together such that the second note is not re-articulated ie we just make one note out of 2 written notes. This is similar to the dotted notes we have already looked at, but this tie method usually occurs over a bar line (but not always, as we will see in a later Session).



MBBC21d
[attachment=47898:MBBC21d.pdf]
[attachment=47903:MBBC21d.mp3]
Here I've not written the note names in - hopefully you are getting to know the notes by now !



MBBC21e
[attachment=47899:MBBC21e.pdf]
[attachment=47904:MBBC21e.mp3]
Have fun !


The Major