Elementary question about creating simple bass track in a custom groove

[kanstulfan]

One of the reasons I have turned to mma is that I like the possibility of creating my own very simple grooves to help train my ear to hear bass lines for jazz impro purposes. I want to get better at recognising chord root tone progressions, and I thought it might be useful to create some midi files of tunes that I play that have just an elementary bass part for this purpose.

If a tune has two chords in a bar, one on beats 1 and 2, and the second on beats 3 and 4, then ideally I would like the hear the bass play the 1 of the first chord on beat 1, and the 1 of the second chord on beat three (thus allowing me to hear the root progression).

So far I've been able to create a simple groove that gives me the 1 of a chord on beat 1 of a bar, and the 5 of a chord on beat 3 of the bar. This works fine for me if there is only one chord per bar, but in a situation where there is a different chord for the second half of the bar my current groove is causing the 5 of that second chord to be output. I assume there is a way of achieving what I want, but at the moment I don't understand how.

[bvdp]

I think that mma's smarts are getting in the way

But, for a simple bass line you'd probably do something like:

   bass sequence {1 4 1 90; 3 4 5 90}

which as you've discovered will play the 1 and 5 on beats 1 and 3. So long as the chord is the same, it's all great. And, most of the time it sounds fine too, no matter how many chords there are in the bar.

But, for the occasional time you want something different, just use a RIFF. So, to continue the example above, just before the 2 chord bar insert:

    Bass Riff {1 4 1 90; 3 4 1 90}
     22   C /  G /

Now, the notes played will be C and G, not C and D.

The RIFF just applies to the next bar.

BTW, I find that in my music I use the RIFFs very seldom to change patterns since the "standard" stuff sounds fine most of the time. However, I find that I use them more for changing the articulation and/or volume for special effects in parts like endings.

And you can make this much simple with either macros or using pre-defined patterns. If you are using a groove from the library (or by doing an Include stdpats) you could do the sequence def with:

     Bass Sequence B13

and the riff as:

     Bass Riff  B11

Just saves a bit of typing.

Hope this helps.

[kanstulfan]

Brilliant!

Easy to use, and works perfectly. Just what I wanted. Thankyou!