Composing Using M.H.B. Style. Part 1 Bass Lines

You may be wondering why the sudden shift in topics from the technical d.a.w. based articles that I usually write.

Well the truth is I am a composer there I said it! As a composer in the modern age we have to wear a lot more hats than the more traditional composers and songwriters. Now we must have a bit of an understanding of studio techniques as well as marketing skills to get our work out there.

Today's discussion will be part of a series of composition-based articles. This is based on what I call the M.H.B. Structure. Those initials stand for; Melody, Harmony, Bass. We will be focusing on Bass today as it supports the rest of the tonal music.

If you take a close listen to just about any song, there are 4 distinct parts of any song.

• 1. The melody
• 2. The harmony
• 3. The bass line
• 4. The percussion or rhythm

We won't talk about the percussion today since percussion varies in a huge amount depending on the genre you're writing.

Basically if you break down the other 3 you might see them in a master score in 3 sections.

For example we could have a violin, Piano, and cello.

Of course these could be placeholders for a more expansive instrument list to be arranged later down the road but for now we will focus on these.

All you need before you can start writing in this style is a chord progression. Once you have that you can actually do all 3 sections for that chord progression.

The first thing you should start with in this method is the bass line.

Now for this example we will be using a cello. Keep in mind this is only on sheet music. Whether you have a cello at this point is irrelevant because you could replace it with a number of bass instruments. Once you have the range of the bass you might start with writing matching notes for just the chords, use the lowest note in whatever inversion you're working with.

The next step in this is to make sure you have chord tones on the strong beats. This is very important! If you do not do this it will sound really weak. And it won't have a good sounding structure.

In between the strong beats you can place non-chord tones. These tones are best used in a neighboring or step-wise motion.

Truth be told you will probably not want to make huge leaps in your music. By that I mean that you probably won't want to take say an A on your downbeat then the very next note jump to an E. Those big jumps make the part kind of annoying and no matter how good your rhythm is it will make it seem less tight. There are uses for it however dynamically speaking but it's a very rare occasion when this will be a useful tool. Listen to most of the music you really like. Notice that there aren't too many huge leaps unless there's a big change in the songs structure.

I remember a specific instance of this in college. I was in one of my main composition classes and I was asked to review several of my classmate's final projects. Most of them were fantastic and well done. But there was this one, (there's always one) that wasn't off key at all. But her use of huge leaps actually made it seem like the piece was written out of pitch. I mentioned this to the student in the review and she became very angry because I found something that didn't quite sound right. I didn't berate her or anything like that. So I ended up telling her what I'm about to tell you:

"There's nothing wrong with writing as a basis of self expression, but if you want more than just your family and closest friends to like it, then you'll have to adhere to a few musical guidelines."

On a side note before I get into harmony (which will be the last in the series) When you write your bass line. In this instance cello, do not write it to be the same as your left hand piano. This actually creates mud in your mix and will actually kind of ruin the whole point of writing a separate bass line. It's supposed to be a bit different. That being said all 3 parts should be different but they shouldn't clash. When writing each portion take what the other instruments are doing in consideration.

I can't remember how many hundreds of times I would be writing a song and not applying that concept. I would go to the mixing stage and not understand why the mix was so terrible. It wasn't in the recording it was in the writing.

I hope you had a great time learning from this article. I also hope that you will join me for future parts of this series!