Bass Guitar: Dotted Half notes with Quarter Notes

Good morning friends, sorry if I'm late in getting a post to you; I was going to post last week, but a number of things have happened, including doing a clean install on my computer of an older version of my OS (in which I inadvertantly erased a bunch of files I thought I had made back ups of, including my music files) and having to revert to an older version of the notation software I use to compose my exercises for guitar and bass on. Having said that, it's time to move on to this week's exercise on bass. This week, we're introducing the dotted notes, and we begin with the dotted half note.

A dot (.) at the end of a note adds an extra half count to its original value. For example, a half note counts as two quarter notes, but a dotted half note counts as three. So, instead of counting "one, two,..." for each half note, with a dotted half, you would count "one, two, three."

Here's a simple sixteen bar exercise, again using the simple C-G-Am-Em-F-C-F-G chord progression that I've been using in my other bass exercises. Play bars 1 through 8 slowly, getting a feel for the rhythm, then play bars 9 through 16, and see how the feel of the rhythm changes.

As I always say, take your time, work slowly at first, and have fun.

Next week, we'll look at how dotted quarter notes combined with eighth notes creates one of the most memorable and used bass hooks in the realm of pop and rock music.

Cheers!
G