Re-harmonize the chord with the bass?

Question

Hi i'm a bass player and as any other bassist i was looking to improve my bass skills and I've always wondered how I could change the root note of a certain chord to give it a different feel. For instance, for D major I could play a F# instead of a D which would be the root note of that chord. So it means I am playing the major 3rd of D instead of the root.

My question is, is this a standard thing? Will it be ok for me to play 3rds anytime i want to give a little something-something to the song or am I looking at this the wrong way?

Answer 1

You can play any note of the chord on the bass and that would be a chord inversion. Playing the 3rd of the chord on the bass is pretty common. It's called first inversion.

Bassists use this technique so the can give a little color to their basslines; using all the inversions, you can create interesting basslines.

You can experiment with the inversions. For instance, the first time you run across a D chord in a song, play the root (D); the second time play the major third (F#) etc. This can spice up your song.

Answer 2

You can play 3rds anytime you want, but it's not necessarily going to sound great. There are reasons you might want to invert the chord. If you want a smoother transition between chords you can sometimes stay on the same note e.g. you could be playing C on a C chord and then continue playing C on an F chord. You can also choose which note from a chord to play because you are aiming to take the bass in an ascending or descending direction eg C on a C chord descending to A on an F chord. It can be interesting when the bass ascends/descends counter to the higher parts.

Answer 3

A lot of the time bassists are sort of expected to play 1s, in mainstream music. They are often alternated with 5s. Sometimes a 1-3-5-3 fits well in 4/4 time. You could use a 1 on a I chord, and stay with 1 on the following IV chord, called a pedal note. A nice change on a I -IV is use a 1 on the I, then a 3, which then moves to a 4 on IV, one fret higher - or, to be even cleverer, play the note one fret higher than the 4 at the end of the I bar, dropping down a fret to 4 on IV. It depends a lot on the song. An 'in your face' song will sound better with 1s and 5s, whereas a more melodic song will benefit greatly from using 3s. And it works for minors too. On some songs, even a slide between 6 and 5 fits nicely.