Bass Vamps and Turnarounds

Scott Giambusso: Scott Giambusso here, talking about vamps and turnarounds on your bass. You need to know your chords and scales so you can figure out what to play. A lot of people go, I have an A minor chord, what do I do? Two bars of A minor. The most pedestrian thing in the world you can do is just play a kind of a pulse, a heartbeat on the root, but that could be boring after a while and you want so what can I do to make it interesting? So, you add, you have to employ other chords. You have to create a chord progression in your head. So, the logical thing, the five chord of everyone of every tonic is always the furthest place you can go away from the tonic. So, to create tension we can go may be a bar of A minor to a bar E7 and I'm just playing the triad of each chord. Okay so, that's one way to do it. So, now its not so boring, there is some kind of movement going on, but now I can add in the first bar of A minor, I can go to the 6 sixth chord and in the first beat of the E7 chord, I could go to the two chord. So, now I can go A, F#, B, E so now I'm going one, six, two, five, I'm just using chord tones nothing fancies. So, now all of a sudden and this reminds me the carination theme. You can use chromatic notes to passing tones to get to those chords. So, I'm creating a vamp and its important to understand that the one, six, two, five is a vamp that is something that sets up a tune, when you're playing the Jazz players, they will start, you have to understand that just because the tune is over or hasnt started yet there is not music, there is always music. Introductions and endings are very important, vamps are where that comes in and that was a one, six, two, five in A minor vamp. There is a lot more variations to that and I will show you them next time.