Bass Chords 101

Maybe you’re a recovering guitar player.

Maybe you saw a cool YT video where some 3 armed, 10 year old virtuoso was playing a solo bass arrangement of Beethoven’s 9th symphony… and the video was titled: “beginning bass chords!”

Maybe you just like hearing more than one note at a time.

Whatever your reason for seeking out how to play chords on your bass, welcome.

If you’re the internet searcher who just wanted some damn bass chord shapes already, here you go.

If you wanna learn what chords are made out of, what songs actually use these chord shapes, and how to use these chords responsibly in real life, read on.

Bass chords are beautiful.
They sound incredible.
They are fun and satisfying to play.

HOWEVER.

As a responsible bass teacher, I have to pause here, and take a long look in the mirror.

Gio, I ask myself, is it right and good to write an article teaching and explaining a rarely used and often abused element of bass playing?

(My brow furrows as I contemplate this…  I lean in closer for some real soul-searching eye contact.)

But then I remember:

I am not always a responsible bass teacher, and I freakin’ love bass chords.

Sure, you probably would be more practical and efficient if you worked on your groove and played classic bass lines to a metronome.

But!

• Chords are so damn fun.
• They’re intoxicating.
• They bring our instrument and ears into the wide world of harmony that is usually reserved for other instruments.

It is right and good to teach and explain this glorious element of bass playing! But – in order to make the world a better place, I’m going to do it (mostly) responsibly.

For you must be made aware of the dangers that lurk within:

Bass chords are huge and powerful, and have the potential to step on lots of toes. (Expect a few stink-eye looks from the guitarists and keyboard players out there).

I won’t fill your head with clunky chord shapes and send you out into the world naive and vulnerable, playing bass chords on every song, in every rehearsal, at every gig…  No.

#1What Is A Chord?

For the purposes of this article, a chord is more than one note played at the same time.

Music theory folks will claim that a chord is 3 or more notes. But we’re ignoring them right now.

I’m going to use as little Deep Theory Lore as possible here and focus on getting these sounds to happen on your instrument.

#2The Golden Rules Of Bass Chords

If bass chords are so beautiful, sound so incredible, are so damn fun and satisfying to play, why don’t we get to use them more?

Because there are three golden rules to using bass chords in songs, and they must be followed in order for you to avoid getting busted by the Wank Police.

What you do in your own practice room is your business, and if you want to play 100% chords 100% of the time, do it.

But in order to use bass chords responsibly and bring them into songs when they are going to be effective (and not get you fired) you’ll find that chords will fit into music where these rules are being followed.
Buuuuuhhhht… all rules have exceptions. Here they are:

Rule one is non negotiable.

Rules 2 & 3 can be broken when you have a song or a band built around bass chords. Examples:

#3The Power Chord

2 note chords and the bass are best friends.

They’re clean, clear, and still contain mountains of harmony for your ears to soak up.

And the most famous, rocking, and (ahem) powerful of the 2 note chords is The Power Chord.

Who named it the Power Chord? Some genius lost to time.

In technical terms, this is a two note chord (also called a dyad) made out of a root and a fifth.

Play them together = a power chord.

Root + 5th.

If you have any trouble getting the chords to sound good, you may need to adjust your technique. Technique tips and advice are at the very end of this article.

Once you get this shape to feel comfortable, move it around on your bass. It sounds amazing just about everywhere. In my experience, it gets into Mud land right around your low B – the 2nd fret of your A string, or the 7th fret of your E string. Below that, it can be too rumbly and mooshy (technical terms) to hear. But everywhere else is all power and glory!

#4Major And Minor Thirds

Power is great, sure. But what about beauty? Love and joy and sadness? Welcome to the world of thirds.

This two note chord is made with the root and third of the corresponding scale:

A major third starts with the root, and then stacks the third note of the major scale on top.

A minor third starts with the root and then stacks the third note of the minor scale on top.

ENTER: THE MAGIC OF OPEN STRINGS!

Instead of playing the D root of the D major third on the 12th fret of the D string, he plays it on the open D string. The notes are the same, and so the chord is the same and now the low end is back in the bass line.

Here’s how Mark actually plays it:

#5Major And Minor Tenths

To pick up where Mark Hoppus left off – the sound of that low root and that high major (or minor) third is a truly wonderful sound.

We keep the sweet low note that the people want from our basses, but we add the gorgeous harmony that we want to hear.

These chords have the same notes as the major and minor thirds. The difference in sound and name comes from the change in the distance between the notes.

A tenth is a third one octave higher. Same notes, different way to play them.

In the example below, a D major third would be played thus:

If you take that 3rd note and move it up an octave, it becomes this:

This big open spacing for chords works out great on the bass. Plenty of room for the low notes to do their bass thing, plenty of room for those high harmony/melody notes to do their thing.

#6Major And Minor Triads

The world of 3 note chords is a much more complex and challenging place than the land of 2 note chords.

The bass’ longer scale length, giant strings and wider string spacing make playing 3 note chords challenging. Playing chords with more notes in them and having it sound good while not breaking the Golden Rules is very challenging.

Before you go through the chord shapes and TABS for the major and minor triads, you need to answer an important question for yourself.

Have you spent quality time with your pinky recently?

If you’ve been ignoring some important pinky work, it will show! You’re gonna need that pinky!!

The major and minor triad are built starting with thirds.

For a major triad – start with a major third, then add the 5th note from the major scale.

For a minor triad – start with a minor third, then add the 5th note from the minor scale.

Not easy stretches for anyone.

(Again – if you are looking for some chord playing technique tips, scroll to the end of this article. They’re there.)

Why is the 5th of the chord in this new, weird, too-far-to-stretch place?  

When playing chords, you can only hear one note per string.

The old way of playing the root and 5th (the power chord) would be taking up the same string as our major or minor third.

To play all three notes – the root, the third (major or minor) and the fifth, you need to find a new place and new string for the 5th.

Thus the triad shape.

There is another way to play these. You can smash together two other shapes – the power chord and the major (or minor) tenth:

If we start with the root and the 5th in the power chord shape, now we need a new place and string to play the 3rd.

We already did this when we played our  major and minor 10ths!

If you play a power chord on the E string and put the major or minor 10th on top (on the G string) now you have another way to play the triad.

Here are two ways to play the chord progression from Pachelbel’s Canon in D.

In this first attempt, every chord has its root note on the A string:

For this next option, you’ll use a combination of triads with the root note on the A string and the E string. The change of chord fingerings makes a huge difference for two reasons.

Reason 1: Now each chord is closer to the other chords around it and thus easier to play. Reason 2: The new way to play these chords changes the highest note in each chord to sound more like the original melody.

It pays to have options!

#77th Chords

Learning bass chords isn’t just about using them in songs. They can also help you hear what chord progressions sound like, so you can play better bass lines.

With these chord shapes, you’ll have a quick and dirty way to hear and play most sets of chord changes, no matter how complex or difficult.

The Major 7 Chord

The ingredients of a major 7 chord are: root, 3rd note from the major scale, 5th note from the major scale + 7th note from the major scale.

Due to the way our instrument is constructed and tuned, playing these 4 notes is rarely – if ever – a good option… Or even physically possible.

Instead, we have to select 3 of the 4 ingredients and leave one out.

The note we’ll leave out is the 5th of the scale.

The 5th is great for powerful rock and roll, but it doesn’t add much color or harmonic information to our chord. Of all the options, this is the best choice to leave out.

And, once again – if we begin with our shape of the major 10th, we can play the same 3 notes: root, 3rd note of the major scale + 7th note of the major scale – like this:

You can run into all kinds of crazy chords in this wild world. This chord shape can be used as a simple way to play the following chords you may find on a song sheet:

• Maj 7
• Maj 9
• Maj 7 #11
• Maj13
• Maj13 #11

Dominant 7 Chords

Make friends with this chord shape.

This can be the funkiest friend in your bass tool box-o-funk. It is comfortable for the hand, and sounds killer!

The ingredients here are: root note, 3rd note of major scale, 5th note of major scale, 7th note of MINOR SCALE (also referred to as a flat 7, because it is one half step lower than the 7 from a major scale).

Again, when we work out how to play this on bass, we’re going to leave out the 5th note of the scale and play only the root, 3rd and flat 7.

This chord can be used as a simple way to play these chords you may find on a song sheet:

Les Claypool pretty much owns this chord. If you want to play it, you have to get written permission from him. Check out his intro to Golden Boy (from Primus’ The Brown Album):

Minor 7 Chords

The ingredients for this chord shape are: root, 3rd note from the minor scale (also called a flat 3 because it is one half step lower than the 3rd note of the major scale), 5th note from the minor scale + 7th note from the minor scale (flat 7).

This chord can be used as a simple way to play the following chords you may find on a song sheet:

• min7
• -7
• m7
• Min9
• Min11
• Min13

Using These Chords

There aren’t a lot of songs where these chord shapes and sounds are used in a practical bass playing way. But they’re such great sounds!

One of the greatest benefits of having these chord shapes under your fingers is the ability to hear and play chord progressions.

Here’s a killer example of how you can use these chord shapes to really hear what the full band is doing – not just the bass player.

In The Ghetto by soul legend Donny Hathaway, the bassist, Willie Weeks, plays this killer bass line:

We bassists are usually playing cool bass lines, but not always paying attention to those chord symbols hovering over the top of the music.

Now that you know all these chords, you can play both the bass line and  the chords.

If you wanted to play chords to The Ghetto, here are two recommended chord fingering options:

If you start with a Bb minor with your root on the A string, you get this:

If you bring it down and play a Bb minor with your root note on the E string, this becomes the closest, most convenient way to move between the chords:

You can spice up the rhythm as much as you’re comfortable. But the reason Willie Weeks is playing that bass line is because it sounds killer against those chords!

For another good chord example, let’s take the first four bars of the jazz classic (as made most popular by Mr. Frank Sinatra), Fly Me To The Moon.

Here is what the first 4 bars of music would look like if you were to encounter it in a song book or out on a gig:

Traditionally, when playing jazz, it is assumed you know how to improvise a walking bass line that fits the chords shown above the melody.

It’s OK if you can’t – I’ve transcribed the recorded walking line from Sinatra’s version right here:

Now that you know these chords, you can play through the harmony to hear the full context of what’s happening in the song, rather than just playing the single note bass line.

Here are two ways to play it. In each example you’ll play the closest and most convenient shape for each chord depending on where you start.

Here’s what you get when you play the first Am7 chord with a root on the A string:

And here are the same chord changes again with the first Am7 chord played with a root on the E string:

Technique Tips

Every decent teacher is going to teach you plucking and fretting techniques that will be ideal for playing one note at a time. This makes sense, since 99.99% of all responsible bass playing is done with one note at a time.

This technique will not work for playing bass chords.

In order to get multiple notes to ring out at the same time you’ll have to adjust how you play with both your fretting hand and your plucking hand.

There are tons of solutions to this and your body works differently than every other body trying to play a bass. As in every technique lesson – use this as a starting point, and then adjust to your body from there.

The Fretting Hand

1. The fingers

In order for any note to ring out, the string has to be free and clear of any pressure or contact between the fretted note and the pickup. 
(What you do behind the fretted note – meaning between the nut of the bass and the fret – isn’t going to be picked up and amplified, so don’t worry about that.)

If you want two notes to ring out together, you have to be careful that no part of your fretting fingers are obstructing, muting, or otherwise touching the strings in any place except where you are fretting them.

In order to get this kind of accuracy and clean contact with multiple notes at the same time, your fingers will have to curl down to the fretboard and fret the bass with the fingertips only. No straight fingers, no fingers smooshing down on multiple strings.

You need a strong, curved, fingertip attack from your fretting hand in order to get the notes to be clear and not be muting the sounds you want to hear.

2. The hand & wrist

When you only play one note at a time, the traditional technique teaches you to keep your knuckles parallel to the strings – same with the folds of skin at your wrist. You can draw (pretty much) parallel lines with the wrist folds, the strings and the knuckles.

When you want to play chords, you’ll sometimes be asked to play notes on separate strings but the same fret – essentially stacking up your fingers.

The way to do this with good technique, flexibility and maximum efficiency is to angle the wrist a bit.

The movement starts at the shoulder – pulling the elbow slightly away from the body. This allows you to roll the pinky side of your fretting hand away from your body slightly. When you do this, your fingers move from being in a nice row (easy to play one note at a time along the fretboard) and move to being more of a stack or tower making it easier to access some of the chord fingerings you’ll find here.

Plucking Hand

When you use traditional plucking technique, your fingers follow through the string to rest on the next thicker string.

This won’t work out great for chords, as when your fingers rest on that string, they will be muting it.

We’ll go over 3 options for your plucking hand so that you can play 2,3, or even 4 strings at a time and have them all ringing out together in glorious, massive harmony.

Conclusion

You now have the power to play bass chords.

When and how will you use this power?

Will you obey the Golden Rules? Will you sneak the occasional chord into rehearsal and see what kind of stink eye you catch? Will you start a bass and drum instrumental duo project because you love these chords THAT much?* 

*cuz I did

However you use them, go forth with your chord powers and enjoy the lush, deep, glorious harmony of your instrument.