How to Get Big Sounds from Little Steps | Part 1

It's often a challenge for an aspiring piano player to add something to some otherwise very plain sounding music. It's very useful to have a chord chart or lead sheet in front of you. And it's less stressful when they're simple and easy to read. But the very nature of them being simple can also make then uninspiring. In this article, I'm going to cover a concept called "step wise descending bass".

The step wise descending bass creates strong support for your chord sequence when the bass line is moving down (descending). This bass line can be descending in whole steps, half steps, or a combination of the two. As you'll see in the following examples, a descending chord sequence with simple triads in root position will get the job done, but doesn't make for a very tasty sound.

Here we have a very plain sounding descending bass chord sequence.Notice that these chords are all diatonic, meaning that they're native in the key of C Major. In addition to them being diatonic, I purposefully withheld the option of using extended tones to voice these chords. I wanted to keep things simple at first.

Now let's look at how adding some little steps will give us that big sound we're looking for.

Our first two chords are going to give us an indication to what this descending bass is going to sound like.

We're starting out on a pretty simple C Major chord voicing. Then we move to our G chord with a B in the bass. It's important not to just look the G Major chord and think of the B simply as a note. The question we should ask ourselves is: How does this note relate to the chord I'm playing in my right hand?If you're familiar with the intervals of a Major triad, it will be easy to understand.

A Major triad has a root, third and fifth intervals.So as you can see, the B in the bass is the third of G Major chord. This is nothing more than an inversion of G Major chord, but highlights the importance of learning your chord inversions.

You should also notice that the C and B are a half step apart which aids in a very smooth transition between them.

Our bass line has descended down to A in our next chord. This will be a chord in root position for this example. We have an A minor 7 chord. The flatted 7th of the chord is G and is added to extend the chord. The 7th gives the chord a very noticeable color. There's also something else very noticeable about this chord. I"ll give you a hint. It's in the right hand.You're right on track if you noticed that the right hand is simply playing a C Major chord. By adding the A in the bass, we're redefining the chord to be A minor 7.

Moving down, we have G in the bass with an E minor chord in our right hand.  Just as we played the 3rd in the bass with our G Major triad earlier, we're playing the G in the bass which is the 3rd of an E minor chord. Can you see the importance of also learning Major and minor chords also?

Now we're down to our F Major chord. There's actually nothing unique about this Major chord. It's a Major triad with the root of the chord in the bass. This simple Major chord can be a nice break from the inverted chords you've played so far.

Moving down to E, it looks as if we may be playing an E minor triad again but no. It's actually the C Major chord we started on in our step wise descending bass chord sequence. We have the C Major chord in our right hand over E in our left. If this concept looks familiar, it's actually the same as the G Major chord with B in the bass as shown earlier (Major triad over its 3rd).

Again, we have a similar chord as the A minor 7 played earlier. Here, we have D minor 7 in root position. The C is the flatted 7th of this chord.

If you're familiar with chord progressions, you'll recognize that this D minor 7 chord has a strong tendency to move to the G chord which is the 5 chord in the key of C Major. So let's create a chord voicing on C Major that really wants to move back to the tonic (the C Major chord we stared on).

I've referred to this chord as an F over G but it can also be seen as a G7 sus2 chord. You'll notice when you hear it that it really wants to move back to C.

Now we're back home with our step wise descending bass chord sequence. As you may know, this works in any key and what I've shown you here is definitely not the extent of your options with this concept. Interject this idea into one of your favorite songs and you'll find that a plain sounding chord progression can be easily transformed into something really inspiring.

Until next time, Go Play!