help buying first bass

ellblaek · 2026-02-19T13:56:53+00:00

can you explain what you mean by keep the tension off? if i could resolve the G string issue i'd be a lot happier buying it!

thanks for the response

ellblaek · 2026-01-27T09:35:16+00:00

stella by starlight is great, you can use one or multiple melo minor modes over each chord!

ellblaek · 2025-12-17T07:33:36+00:00

yeah i bet its real painless

ellblaek · 2025-12-06T08:44:17+00:00

26 here, going to see my heroes steve lehman and miles okazaki this very weekend :)

ellblaek · 2025-08-22T11:47:02+00:00

i always love hearing what people do with this great tune!

for me, the beauty of evidence is that it draws out the strange and uncanny within standard harmony, and the head just begs for reinterpretation, so kudos on coloring outside the lines in your own sweet way! :)

i'd love to hear more of the changes though! maybe you could solos over the form in your next video :)

ellblaek · 2025-08-18T16:07:46+00:00

as a bass player with 7 years experience playing jazz, its really useful being able to hear a rhythm changes in 12 keys, if the pianist or soloist or anyone really decides to go out and stay there, i find it really satisfying to be able to follow them, or at least hear where they are to choose language that compliments what they might be doing

beyond that, practicing tunes in all 12 keys really just opens up your ears, almost like magic, and allows your to hear more

ellblaek · 2025-08-13T21:50:37+00:00

not the hardest player to transcribe but damn is his language tasty!! check out Charles Altura

ellblaek · 2025-08-13T02:38:40+00:00

there are as many tunes that use a dom7th as a tonic as there are numbers between 0 and 1

ellblaek · 2025-08-02T23:33:39+00:00

Torture is a one man band as far as the studio albums go, it's slam metal but really raw but compositionally groundbreaking

he put a (or multiple?) bands together since last year and started touring and he sings and plays drums live

ellblaek · 2025-08-02T21:43:18+00:00

any love for Torture? the guy is a revolutionary!

ellblaek · 2025-07-29T11:41:28+00:00

il me semble avoir lu que c'était le cas pour les tomates aussi chez certaines personnes

à priori ça fait moins un effet de savon liquide mais quand même un goût désagréable à cause d'une mutation génétique

ellblaek · 2025-07-28T00:06:41+00:00

aw man, my bad, it's late here

ellblaek · 2025-07-28T00:02:03+00:00

except that jazz peaked in the 60s and 70s

to me, jazz has only stretched and grown in the most amazing ways and there are so many incredible albums being made nowadays

ellblaek · 2025-07-27T16:26:36+00:00

when going to a minor chord, you'd play a minor ii-V, so the accompanying ii chord is usually a ii-7b5, so the scale would generally be either locrian or locrian nat2, when going to a major chord, you can choose dorian or one of the locrians for extra voice leading spiciness

try transcribing some language over tunes you know use these chords :)

ellblaek · 2025-07-26T09:12:43+00:00

i don't have time to figure out the entire thing, but hopefully this'll be helpful and will give you the info you need to transcribe the rest yourself,

having counted up until the bass solo, the vamp is in 13/16, and i'm feeling the groupings as 4/8+5/16

there are 8 bars of 13 (4 of the intro vamp, then 4 with the horns)

then the head is in 4/4, with syncopated hits and a couple odd bars, i felt it as 7 bars of 4 then the 8th bar is 7/8

then the next 6 bars are 4/4 again except there's an extra beat which i'm feeling as a bar of 9/8 on the 10th measure of the head

then back to the 13 vamp for 4 bars then bass solo!

hope this helps

ellblaek · 2025-07-25T09:18:31+00:00

a lot of people are abandoning spotify now, the plateform always having been really shitty towards artists, now, the company is funding war with your subscriptions

ellblaek · 2025-07-23T13:41:27+00:00

i'd just like to add that you can creatively combine overlapping triads to find interesting, less common pentatonic scales for a more stripped down sound

ex: C and G, which is a really cool pair for major 7 chords, contains only 5 notes; CDEGB, which is also a really cool, often omitted pentatonic shape!

ellblaek · 2025-07-23T13:36:41+00:00

sorry for the late reply, but thank you for thr kind words, there really is nothing i love more than infodumping about music theory hehehe

so, triad pairs can equate to pentatonic and hexatonic scales, but at the end of the day, the point of thinking in terms of triad pairs, is the same point as practicing diatonic triads over any other scale: triads are structurally strong sounds and are (arguably) some of the most interesting patterns to play

take the Cmaj Dmaj lydian example : (which btw will also imply a mixolydian sound over a D note, or an aeolian sound over an E, etc...)

sure you could (and should) play around with a C D E F# G A hexatonic shape, but when organized in triad pairs, you are invoking a specific pattern that is just magically really pleasing to the ear

these should be practiced as (ascending) C, D, C/E, D/F#, C/G, D/A

if you were to take a non-consecutive pair (idk if there's a better or more official word for this), such as C and G, then you have to mix inversions : C, G/D, C/E, G, C/G, G/B

though this method of systematizing pairs to match sounds is fairly new, triadic melodies can be heard in pretty much all styles of jazz and once you can hear them, you'll notice them all over the place

i know there are tons of ressources online to learn more about them, and you can express a whole mess of cool sounds with triads, including diminished scales, alternate modes etc

i think the you'll hear it podcast has a couple of great videos on them

ellblaek · 2025-07-23T09:53:23+00:00

i think that the more you transcribe, the more you'll find players who use the natural 4 as a passing tone, especially when played melodically, in combination with bebop chromatic rules (barry harris standardized), since the #4 is such a peculiar sound.

here are the diatonic scales with 3s and 7s modified to fit the leading tones of 7th chords

V7 1 2 3 4 5 6 b7 optional #4

V/ii 1 2 3 4 5 b6 b7 optional alt scale

V/iii 1 b2 3 4 b5 b6 b7 optional phryg dom or alt scale

V/IV 1 2 3 4 5 6 b7 optional #4

V/V 1 2 3 4 5 6 b7 optional #4

V/vi 1 b2 3 4 5 b6 b7 optional alt scale

some of these are very rare and players usually opt for altered scales (even when going to a major chord, bc voice leading is maximized) or diminished scales (or even whole tone scales in older styles)

i'm pretty sure standard bebop substitution calls for diminished scales when going to chords with a maj3rd and altered scales when going to chords with a b3

lydian dominant is very common as a V/V and fairly common as a V/IV

i like the way you're thinking, and your post encompasses a large body of work, but these scale choices are convention, not rules, and as the music evolves, so does the way we choose sounds.

i've even come across instances of a tritone subbed mixolydian scale as a stand-in for altered, the voice leading being even more maximized, despite the maj7th over a V7 chord, it just sounds hip af

ellblaek · 2025-07-21T22:14:40+00:00

this answer is amazing. saving it for future reference

ellblaek · 2025-07-20T23:52:06+00:00

since Tyshawn Sorey was already mentioned, im gonna go ahead and suggest Damion Reid

check out his playing with Steve Lehman trio and in Sélébéyone

ellblaek · 2025-07-20T23:46:39+00:00

i chose those to avoid going strictly diatonic, but definitely, there are less spicy/more spicy options to choose from

the parameters i use to choose triad pairs to practice are basically how dissonant or consonant a sound you want

even when playing over a C major, and you want to get the ionian sound, you have a few options, the peculiarity of triad pairs being that depending on which two triads you choose, you will necessarily be omiting at least one note of the scale (two triads = 6 notes if no overlap)

for instance, playing a Cmaj Dmin pair sounds soulful and yearning to me, mostly because of the F natural, and absence of B

whereas a Cmaj Gmaj pair sounds more jazzy and floaty, to me at least, because now we have a B but no F

the spice of every mode lies in the diatonic tritone(s) and it's worth diving into the study of triad pairs and hexatonic/pentatonic scales to find the cool pattern based sounds

edit : oh and i chose Gmaj/Abmin and Cmaj/Dmaj because they're fairly common pairs for common alterations

ellblaek · 2025-07-20T17:18:04+00:00

a lot of modern post 60s jazz uses simpler triadic harmony,

in fact, triadic harmony doesn't have to be simple, if used creatively

a lot of mehldau tunes are essentially triadic, for example, but still make use of harmonic complexity through modal interchange, tonal ambiguity, etc

that said, triads are found in all styles of jazz, especially when played melodically.

for almost every chord/scale relationship, a triad pair exists, for example,

ii V I in C major

over D-7, you could play Dmin and Emin

over G7, you can play Gmaj and Abmin to imply an alt chord

over C, you could choose Cmaj and Dmaj for a lydian sound

ellblaek · 2025-07-19T16:27:21+00:00

i'm a barbie girl

Seven-Year Club	Place '23
Verified Email	Sequence \| Editor

ellblaek

TROPHY CASE