The Cycle of Fifths for the Bassplayer – #1 of 5

by Ari 15 Sep 2015 2 minute read 6.8K views 1.5K shares

The Cycle of Fifths for the Bass player – the Underappreciated Tool – #1 in a series of 5

You may know the Cycle of Fifths as a tool for determining key signatures, which is great. But, especially for us bass players, it holds so much more in store… the falling fifth (or ascending fourth if you will) is such a common root movement!

This is what I am talking about in this short video series: how understanding the Cycle can help you be a better bass player, practice more effectively, learn and analyze tunes, and much more. #1 introduces what the cycle sounds like and I show you a great exercise for finding notes all across the fretboard with ease.

Let me know if you have any questions. Please leave a comment how it is working for you.

[Tweet “Bassists: The Underappreciated Music Theory Tool.“]

Votan Marleaux XS by Gerald Marleaux. Strings by Dean Markley

Here is the backing track to jam with. Go round and round… 

The PDF is HERE

Email me a video link of you jamming to these tracks – I’d love to hear what you are doing with this material.

This video is part of a five-segment promotional mini-series I created in June 2015 for the online-education powerhouse TrueFire. Get my Truefire Course Pentatonic Playground for Bass here

For systematic and comprehensive bass learning check out my course  
Thanks for watching!

Stay tuned for Part 2!

 

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Groove enthusiast and learning nerd.

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Hi. I'm Ari.

As a bassist, I have toured/played/recorded with a variety of rock, Jazz, and funk bands, I have worked with some incredible producers (Keith Olsen) and musicians (Paul Hanson, Muriel Anderson) and I toured Brazil with Stu Hamm as a duo.

 

As a bass teacher, I have taught at London Bass Day, Gerald Veasley’s Bass Boot Camp, SBL, Truefire, notreble… I even ran my own music school for a few years before gigs took me back on the road.

 

One thing to know about me is that I teach because I am absolutely fascinated with the learning process. And I am obsessed with helping others realize their musical potential.

 

When I started playing bass, I excelled very quickly because I had an amazing teacher who taught me using a powerful method. This method transformed my playing so quickly that I passed a bunch of high-level university auditions and even tested out of entire classes at university even though I had been playing for only a very short time.

 

That’s what, many years later turned into one of my books, co-written with Wolf Wein, called “The Pattern System for the Bass Player”. I created entire systems of learning based on some of these ideas and wrote books and created courses together with Wolf. Our bass books have sold over 30,000 copies and garnered rave reviews.

 

I started teaching online in 2009 and have embraced technology as a powerful learning tool since then, never losing sight of the importance of providing feedback and personalized guidance to learners.

 

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