Guitar arrangements: How to do them (2)

The arrangement up to now is starting to sound decent. Played as written however it sounds a little "classical". Not to put classical music or guitarrists down...maybe I should say it doesn't sound like jazz. Let's look at different ways to make this sound hipper. We'll work on the bass part first because bass players (good ones) add alot of movement and interest to any musical piece.

The most basic bass part, like the one that's in the previous arrangement, plays the root (or tonic note) on beat one of every new bar. A more interesting bass line would have the bassist playing on beats one and three of every bar. On beat one the bass would play the root and on beat three (for now) the note played will be the 5th of the chord being played at that moment. (The 5th of a chord is determined by counting up 5 notes from the root which is 1. So, for the first chord of our arrangement, which is Fm7, the root is "F", which is played on the fifth string. The 5th of "F" is "C". (F=1 [Root]; G=2; Ab=3; Bb=4; C=5; etc...). Now I'll show you how the 5th of each chord is played in the arrangement we've done so far.



Take care to hold each note and give it its full value. Notice that in some chords you're holding down notes while others are being played. Here is where you need to work on finger independance if you don't have that down yet.