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Chords - An Introduction -
Part 2 |
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| Note – This column takes it for granted that you are a right-handed player. As I promised last month, before we get into the ‘fingers of the left hand holding down the strings’ bit, I would just like to run over the technique of tapping chords. The huge benefit of tapping a chord using both hands is that you’re not restricted in any way. You can hit the low notes of the chord with your left hand down near the nut while simultaneously hitting the high notes with your right hand high up the neck The other benefit is that you’re also not restricted to a chord of four notes or less – you can hit up to 8 strings (if your bass has that many strings) and the really great thing about this technique is that you can hit the root note in a number of different places at the same time. One of the drawbacks of playing chords using just the left hand only to hold down the notes is that the more notes you add, the weaker the definition of the root becomes and in some cases it’s extremely difficult to make out exactly what the chord is – not so with a tapped chord – you could hit the root and its octave with two fingers of your left hand and hit the root two octaves and three octaves higher (along with a couple of other notes) with your right hand. Personally I don’t incorporate this technique in my compositions but in a band situation live on stage it looks and sounds fantastic and I probably would employ it if I were still a gigging muso. Listen to the first bars of School Days and you’ll hear Stan thwacking each chord once as he descends down the neck. There are times, however, when the music requires you to ‘hang around’ a bit on each chord before moving to the next one – it’s times like this that you can really get creative – if the conditions allow you to - especially in the recording studio. Have a listen to the track Bass To Bass by yours truly and you’ll hear something a little different. What I did here was to play chords all the way through the piece and panned them to one side of the stereo panorama. I then went back to the beginning and played all the chords again an octave higher but this time, instead of ‘one chord one thwack’, I thwacked each chord and immediately bought my fingertips back over the chord. I then panned this to the other side of the stereo panorama and the effect sounds quite good. There are tons of different ways to express yourself using chords – remember that music is for creative people so get creative and come up with your own style as a chordal player!
Left hand finger shapes |
