Identifying harmonized basslines

We are wrapping up the harmony unit of pop aural skills class with harmonized basslines. These sound more “classical” than the other material we’re covering, and for good reason. Long before Western Europeans thought in terms of chords, they saw harmony as something that emerged from the interaction of multiple simultaneous melodies. Baroque composers frequently wrote pieces using ground bass, formulaic basslines that act as a foundation for counterpoint. (Bach used ground bass for the Passacaglia and Fugue and the Chaconne.) Galant composers used schemas, short figures combining basslines and contrapuntal melodies that you use as points of departure for larger compositions. And many European composers in the 17th and 18th centuries honed their skills with partimento, basslines that you improvised counterpoint on top of according to particular rules.

Some the Baroque ground bass patterns and galant schemas persist in the vocabulary of Anglo-American pop, though with fewer rules about the correct way to harmonize them.

Stepwise Descending Basslines

These basslines walk down the major scale in order from the tonic, a particularly classical-sounding trope. “A Whiter Shade of Pale” by Procol Harum (1967) sounds the most “classical” of all the songs listed here. It isn’t based on any specific piece, but it does sound a bit like the opening bars of Air on a G String, and also parts of Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme (Sleepers Awake, BWV 645). The tune is in C, and the bassline walks down the C major scale from C, from F, and from G.

The chorus bassline in David Bowie’s “Changes” (1971) also walks down the C major scale.

You can hear yet another walk down the C major scale in the bassline to the verses of “Piano Man” by Billy Joel (1973).

“I’ll Be There” by the Jackson 5 (1970) walks down the F major scale in its verses. 

Lament bass

A walk down the natural minor scale from the tonic to the fifth, harmonized with root-position chords: i, bVII, bVI, V. In C minor, that’s Cm, Bb, Ab, G. It was already a standard when Henry Purcell used it in “Dido’s Lament” back in 1689, and it’s still a widely used formula. 

Lament bass doesn’t have to be sad; it creates a very different feeling in “Hit The Road Jack” by Ray Charles (1962). It’s in G# minor, and it goes G#m, F#, E, D#.

The verses of “Happy Together” by the Turtles (1967) use lament bass in F# minor. The chords are F#m, E, D, C#. Once again, the mood here is not especially sad; it feels more dramatic. I associate this tune with the movie Adaptation.

The Beach Boys use lament bass for the verses of “Good Vibrations” (1967). It’s in Eb minor, and it goes Ebm, Db, Cb, Bb.

Chromatic Descending Lines

You can enhance your lament bass by adding a chromatic connector between the flat seventh and flat sixth. In C, that means that your bassline will go C, Bb, A, Ab, G. You can use this line in major or minor keys, and there are several different ways to harmonize it. The most common way to handle the sixth is to treat it as the third of the IV chord. In C, this gives you C, Bb, F/A, Ab, G. You can also just walk all the notes down under the tonic chord, especially in minor: Cm, Cm/Bb, Cm/A, Cm/Ab, Cm/G. This is called a line cliche.

The Beatles love chromatic basslines, either as the basis of a full chord progression or as a line cliche. They use them in “Eleanor Rigby”, “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”, “Dear Prudence”, “Magical Mystery Tour”, “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” and probably other tunes too.

Portishead uses a line cliche in “Glory Box” (1994). It’s in D# minor, and the main groove goes D#m, D#m/C#, Cø7, Bmaj7. This is a jazzier harmonization scheme than the Beatles would use.

You can further enhance the pathos of your descending line by adding natural seven in between the tonic and the flat seventh. In C, that means going from C to B to B-flat to A to A-flat to G. That’s the entire chromatic scale from the tonic down to the fifth (though sometimes people stop at the sixth or flat sixth). You can use this line in major or minor and there are lots of ways to harmonize it. Once again, the Beatles are a useful reference here: they use full descending chromatic basslines in “Michelle”, “And Your Bird Can Sing”, “Something”, “Cry Baby Cry”, “I Me Mine”, “Fixing A Hole”… where don’t they use them?

“Life On Mars?” by David Bowie (1971) has some especially creative descending chromatic lines. The bassline in the verses moves from F down to D and then from G down to E. The prechorus has an ascending chromatic line, which is rare. The chorus puts a descending chromatic line in the inner voices of the chords, and then the “life on Maaaaaaars” tag has yet another descending chromatic bassline.

Root-Position Chords

Aside from the specific case of lament bass, it’s not very common to build a stepwise bassline using all root-position chords. I do want to draw your attention to “Blind Alley” by the Emotions (1972), which walks all the way up the F major scale, with a root-position chord on each root. This happens over one of the all-time great hip-hop breakbeats.

Inversions

You can create nice basslines through careful use of chord inversions (though historically the basslines came first, and we only started explaining them as chord inversions retroactively.)

“The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin’ Groovy)” by Simon and Garfunkel (1966) is in G. It’s a loop of C, G/B, Am7, G. Putting the third in the bass of that first G chord creates a walk down the G major scale. 

“Rocket Man” by Elton John (1972) uses a similar idea in the second half of the verse. This part is in Bb. Under the lines “and I’m gonna be high as a kite by then”, it goes Eb, Bb/D, Cm, Eb/Bb, F7/A. The bass notes walk down the Bb major scale from Eb to A.

“Ain’t No Mountain High Enough”, most famously recorded by Marvin Gaye and Tammi Tyrell (1967), is remarkable because it’s a descending chromatic bassline that starts on the flat seventh rather than the tonic, so the first chord in the loop is in third inversion. It’s in B minor, and it goes Bm/A, G#ø7, Gmaj7, Bm/F#. Hip!

Cadential Six-Four

This is a special case of chord inversion: using a second inversion tonic chord as a kind of suspended dominant. It’s more of a classical music thing, but it shows up in pop occasionally. The clearest example I can find is “Till Kingdom Come” by Coldplay (2005) at the end of the chorus (listen at 2:05). It’s in C, and the chords in this part go Am, C/G, G7, C. The C/G is the cadential 6/4 chord – the numbers refer to figured bass notation. You could think of it as acting like Gsus4(add6).

Pedals in the Bass

The simplest bassline is the repeated single note. By moving chords around on top of the pedal, you can create some nifty harmonies. In pop, you usually use chords whose inversions include the pedal. In jazz, you can use chords that clash with the pedal to create rich dissonances.

 “Don’t Stop Til You Get Enough” by Michael Jackson (1979) is in B Mixolydian. The chords alternate between B and A over a B pedal all the way through the tune.

The verses of “Dancing in the Street” by Martha and the Vandellas (1964) are in Eb Mixolydian, and they begin by alternating Eb and Db over a repeated E-flat in the bass.

In Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time” (1983), the verses alternate Dm and C over a C pedal.

Some noteworthy jazz tunes that include pedals: “Naima” by John Coltrane, “Mercy Mercy Mercy” by Joe Zawinul, “On Green Dolphin Street” as recorded by Miles Davis, “Que Pasa” by Horace Silver, the intro to “Delilah” by Clifford Brown and Max Roach… this could be a whole month of the semester by itself. I have to give a special shoutout to “Resolution” by the Mahavishnu Orchestra, which starts on a paint-peeling Ab/A, and then moves through Bb/A, Am and D/A before going back through those same chords in reverse.

You could extend the concept of the pedal bass to include repeated multi-note riffs that loop independently of the chords on top, as in “Under Pressure” by Queen and David Bowie, but that is getting to be way too much material for one week of class. Maybe we’ll come back to it.