In this lesson, we're going to look at 5 different ways to make a static bass note more interesting and colorful.
Let’s use this melody from La Gazza Ladra by Rossini as an example.
Say you have a very active 4-bar melody like the one above, and your bass notes are just whole-notes and half-notes. Now, you want to make the bass a bit more exciting, but you don’t want to write a super melodic bass line as you want the other melody to be the main focus. These 5 techniques will help you get a little more creative with your bass notes.
1. Rhythm
The first technique you can implement is making the notes more rhythmic. You can write a homophonic idea with the melody, or an independent rhythm.
Here, we haven't changed any notes or added any new melodic information, but simply changed the rhythm. In this example, the harmony and bass notes are homophonic with the melody in 1 measure. Homophonic means that the rhythm of the melody and harmony/bass is the same and they move together as a unified idea. In the second measure, the bass rhythm detaches from the melody and keeps the rhythmic idea going while the melody sustains a long tone. This switching back and forth between homophonic writing and rhythmic independence offers a nice variety.
2. Orchestral Size Vs Orchestral Weight
The second technique is changing the Orchestral Size and/or Weight throughout each measure. Orchestral size is how many registers or octaves you are playing in at one time. This could be a small size of one octave or a large size across 5 or 6 octaves. Orchestral weight is how many different instruments are playing each line or note.
This technique at face value is simply jumping up or down octaves. Notice, specifically how it’s done in this Rossini example because you will see this very often in orchestral music. The first beat of the measure (in Bass part 2) is a larger orchestral size, which gives you more low-end and a fuller sound so to speak. Then it jumps up an octave in the middle of the measure giving more orchestral weight to that specific E in that register and shrinking the orchestral size a bit which takes some of that heaviness and fullness away to allow some more room for the melody. At the end of the measure, he expands the size again. The point is that the octave jumps are not randomly placed, but rather well thought out.
3. Neighbor Tones
The next technique is Neighbor Tones, which are a decoration or embellishment of a note by playing the note above or below, typically on a weak beat, especially if it’s in the melody. These can be diatonic or chromatic notes above or below. You can also use a Double Neighbor Tone which is simply both above and below before returning to the original note.
The thing about neighbor tones is that they are always a shorter rhythmic value than the note they are decorating so as not to be heard as an ornament and not as a new melody or bass note.
4. Trills
The next technique is trills, which are an ornament consisting of a rapid alternation between two adjacent notes. This could be a half-step or whole-step, or, if using a string instrument, could even be a fingered tremolo which is simply a larger intervallic stretch (technically, other instruments can play the wider interval trills, but it’s not as smooth).
When you have a trill in the bass, the bass note may be a bit unclear. The way Rossini clarifies the bass note for the harmony is by having the Tuba and Trombone play steadily held bass notes underneath the ornamented trill. So one is clarifying the bass while the other adds movement and color.
5. Imitation
The last technique we’re going to look at today is imitation. You can take a fragment of the melody (2 notes, 3 notes, 5 notes, etc.) and play it in the bass, or simply imitate the rhythmic idea behind the melody but use different notes more in tune with the bass’ function.
While the Rossini example is extracted from the very beginning of the melody, we’ve looked at this a lot already so let’s take another example.
This one is from Episode 3 of "Mastering the Craft" when we looked at Morning Mood by Edvard Grieg. If you look at the last 4 notes of the melody you’ll notice that they are immediately repeated or tagged 2 octaves down in the Violas. This is a great way to keep things moving and cohesive by reusing material we’ve already heard.
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