The Power of Descending Bass Lines and Creative Chords in Songwriting

Hey everyone, Steve Stine here from GuitarZoom, and welcome to the Steve Stine Guitar Podcast! In today's episode, we're diving deep into the fascinating world of descending bass lines. I'll walk you through how to create dynamic and intriguing musical passages by using descending bass lines with different chords. We'll explore various chord transitions and how they can open up a world of creative possibilities in your playing.

But that's not all—I'll also share my personal tips on how you can find inspiration by experimenting with new guitar tones and effects settings, even from affordable plugins. You'll hear how I use these tones to fuel my songwriting process and why it's important to break out of your usual setup to spark new ideas.

We'll get hands-on with some examples, including the classic sounds of Led Zeppelin's "Babe I'm Gonna Leave You," and I'll show you step-by-step how to maintain consistency in your chord structures while exploring new bass transitions. Whether you're adjusting to different fingerings or keeping the creative flow without worrying too much about technicalities, this episode is packed with actionable insights.

So grab your guitar, sit back, and let's get creative! And remember, if you're listening to this podcast, you can always check out the accompanying video on GuitarZoom’s YouTube page for a more interactive experience. Keep practicing and stay inspired.

Links:

Check out the GuitarZoom Academy:
https://academy.guitarzoom.com/

• Steve’s Channel → https://www.youtube.com/user/stinemus...
• GuitarZoom Channel → https://www.youtube.com/user/guitarz0...
• Songs Channel → https://www.youtube.com/user/GuitarSo... .

Chapters

• 0:00 Discussing descending bass lines and guitar tones.
• 16:18 Creative Chord Progression Inspiration

Transcript

Steve Stine [00:00:00]:
Hey, Steve Stine from GuitarZoom here. Thank you so much for joining me for the Steve Stine Guitar Podcast. Today we're going to be doing is we're going to be talking about descending bass lines and how you can come up with some really great stuff by utilizing descending bass lines and, of course, what to do with the chord that exists underneath it. Now, along with this discussion, I also want to talk about how motivating it can be to find new guitar tones or effect settings that you might not normally have in your amplifier. Now, you might not know, but I'm a big proponent of plugins. Like, I enjoy plugins, and one of the reasons for my computer amplifier plugins, and one of the reasons why I love them so much is because they are very motivating for me in terms of the tones that I might get that I don't normally get out of my standard amplifier that I would use on stage. So, for instance, today I just purchased an by tune track. It's called EZ Mix E Z Mix.

Steve Stine [00:01:01]:
Okay. That's what the software is called. And the pack that I just purchased is the Metal Amp Anthology. So I think this is the first actual guitar plugin pack for EZ Mix 3, which is the newest EZ Mix that is out at this point. So what I like to do with these things is I'll buy them and they'll have, you know, 20 or 30 different guitar tones in there that I can kind of explore, similar to what I might do on a Kemper or an AX effect or something like that. And I came up with this tone. Nothing crazy, just a nice clean tone. And it spawned, like.

Steve Stine [00:01:40]:
Let me show you another one that I've got here. This is another clean sound in here. This one's a little bit more full of effects. Now, I don't want the whole discussion to be about easy mix 3 and this pack that I bought. But for me, when I hear things like that, it can really inspire songwriting for me. And so it's not just this thing was like $39. And so I didn't spend a bunch of money on it. And if I can come up with one or two or three musical ideas that can spawn compositions for me, it is well worth the money.

Steve Stine [00:02:28]:
So it's something to think about. And so because of that, I started thinking about this descending bass line thing. Let me go back to my other tone there. There we go. And so what we're going to do, I'm going to use this sound, and we're going to talk about descending bass lines. Now, the thing that Always comes to my mind is Led Zeppelin. You know, we hear similar to. Babe, I'm gonna leave you, okay? Now if you need to, you can always.

Steve Stine [00:03:02]:
If you're listening to this, if you're listening to the audio and you need to, you can always check out the video. If you head over to YouTube and go to the GuitarZoom YouTube page, you'll find the video on this. And you can actually watch me as well, if you need to. So basically what's gonna happen here is I'm gonna take an A minor chord and I'm just choosing four down toward the floor and four up in whatever capacity. The picking pattern is really irrelevant. You could do whatever you want, but I'm going to keep that A minor constant. And I'm going to change the bass note by adding my pinky on the six string third fret. And again four toward the floor, four toward the ceiling.

Steve Stine [00:03:44]:
In my picking, in some capacity, you can keep it completely constant. You can, you know, make variations of it, whatever you want. But once I'm done with that, I want to go to the second fret of the sixth string. Now, in order to go to the second fret of the 6th string, I'm going to have to reposition my fingers so I can play in A minor. Yet press on the sixth string second fret. Now you might be doing that with your thumb over the top. And if you can do that, that's just great. That doesn't work very well for me.

Steve Stine [00:04:15]:
So I have to readjust the way I'm fingering that chord. So there's just A minor. Add my pinky. I'm fine, but when I get here, I gotta flip over, put my middle finger on the sixth string. And then my third and fourth fingers are covering the rest of the A minor now. So it's just an A minor with F sharp in the bass. So I got A minor, A minor with G in the bass, A minor with F sharp in the bass. Okay? Now if we were writing that, it would be written A minor and then A minor slash G and then A minor slash F sharp.

Steve Stine [00:04:53]:
That's how it would be written. Now think about how many things you could do that would be really cool with that. You could go back and forth between those in some way. Maybe you descend and you stay there. Or maybe you go right back to A minor. Now in the Led Zeppelin idea, what I would do after that, I would go to the note F, but I've still got A minor. So I'm just moving my middle finger over to the first fret again, however, it works for you. But let's just listen to that a little bit.

Steve Stine [00:05:41]:
A minor, G in the bass. F sharp in the bass. F in the bass. Now, maybe what I do is if that was going to be my pattern, I might change up the way I'm picking it when I get to the end. Maybe slow down a little bit. You see, there's lots of really cool things that you could do with that. Now, if we reference back to Babe, I'm going to leave you again. Now, maybe what I would do is put the note E in the bass.

Steve Stine [00:06:31]:
So I'm going from A to G to F sharp to F E, staying with the A minor the entire time. Now, this is where I want to talk about some differences that can happen relative to what's comfortable to your fingers. Not so much that you have to define every single thing that you're doing on the front end when you're trying to be creative. What I always tell people is worry about the names of things until the end. Worry about how it sounds and how it feels on the front end. When you're writing something, don't go, what is the name of that? And do I know what that is? And if I don't know what that is, I probably shouldn't play it because I. I don't know what that is yet. You kill your creativity by doing that.

Steve Stine [00:07:18]:
Don't do that. Just do whatever feels good to you when you're playing and then go back and go, well, what was that? Or, you know, I always wind up charting my stuff, and I always record myself, you know, with a video, I'll just make a short little video clip of me playing something so I can always come back to it and watch what I was doing and go, oh, okay. So that's what I was doing. So if I took this A minor we were doing before, I'm going A minor, G in the bass, F sharp in the bass, F, E. Always keeping the A minor in the bottom, but as the main chord. But now what I'm going to do is I'm going to start thinking a little more about how the comfort feels. So if I'm on A minor and I go to G, we're all good. Everything is good.

Steve Stine [00:08:03]:
But when I get to the next note, the F sharp, what I often will do is I'll move to that F sharp and I'll make a D chord with my other fingers. Now, because I'm playing a traditional A minor chord, and then I'm putting my pinky on the Note G on the sixth string. In order to go over to the F sharp. It's easier for me to just move my middle finger up to the sixth string on the F sharp and then move my pinky onto the second string, third fret. And I'll leave that first string open just like it was in the A minor. I'm not pressing on it like a D chord. I'm not making that chord major or minor. I'm just leaving that off and leaving it open.

Steve Stine [00:08:45]:
So there's still some consistency between the A minor, that note G in the bass. But here I go to this, what is now going to be a D sus 2 with an F sharp in the bass. But again, I'm not concerned with the title. I'm just thinking if I was on A minor, naturally, with my fingers and I use my pinky on G and I want to go to F sharp, it's just very easy for me to throw my middle finger up on the sixth string and then make the D with my third and pinky on the third and second strings. And then just leave that one open on the bottom so I have, see? And it changes the sound of it. And then when I go to F, go to an actual F chord. E go to an actual E. Now, in the key of A minor, you should get an E minor.

Steve Stine [00:09:38]:
But I'm playing E major, which gives it that kind of harmonic minor kind of sound, you see. And you could keep adjusting it however you want. Maybe when you went to that F chord, you know, you leave one of the strings open, for instance, that's the second string left open on the F major bar chord and then E. And you could do like an add 9 or something like that. I mean, whatever works for you. I don't want to get all crazy on the names of these things. Like I said, the most important thing is that you try and get creative, because I'm going to show you another one. Now let's take a look at a typical D chord here or D minor.

Steve Stine [00:10:42]:
But if I started with a D sus sound, so I'm not defining it as full major or full minor, I'm just leaving it open. And then what I could do, I could go to the C sharp, you see. So I'm playing D major, but instead of playing D major, I'm playing D sus 2 again. So I'm taking my middle finger off the guitar from D major, okay? And then all I'm doing is taking my pinky up to the note C sharp on the fifth string. So I'm playing a D, taking my pinky to the fifth string, fourth fret, C sharp. And then I could go to the C with my middle finger because it's not doing anything at this point. And then it could actually move over to B and I could keep. I could maintain that D sus 2 underneath that entire thing.

Steve Stine [00:11:47]:
Now what I want you to think about is that I'm playing D and then C sharp and then C and then B as my bass, my descending bass line. If you wanted it to be a little more whatever, you could play D and then C sharp, then go straight to B. And now it's going to be more what we call diatonic. It fits in the key properly. It's that C that throws it off a little bit in there right here. I love the sound of it. But you might not. You might go, you know, just the C sharp and the B really works for me.

Steve Stine [00:12:23]:
Or let's skip the C sharp and just play C and B. And then where do we go after that? Well, we could go to A by just taking the middle finger off. Okay. If I wanted to go to the B flat, which, you know, I do, I would have to again switch my fingers around to get there. So if I play this just the D sus 2 there, go to the C in the bass. And then right here, instead of moving that middle finger over to B, that's where I might flip over, put my first finger on the fifth string of the second fret, put my middle finger on the third string, second fret, where my first finger used to be, which now makes B flat very easy to get to. So proactive thinking about what you're going to do next is very important. And understanding that if you do need to alter that chord in some way to make the fingering more comfortable and accessible for you, but it changes the sound of the chord.

Steve Stine [00:13:31]:
There's nothing wrong with that. Like, you don't have to feel like that D cannot change all the way through, or, you know, you've broken the laws of the rules of guitar. It doesn't work that way. It's just you have to decide if you change something about it. Do you like the sound of it? Right. Right now, I'm staying pretty consistent with that, you see. But I could have gone to an open third string, would have been a nice thing. I could have added in.

Steve Stine [00:14:00]:
Maybe I add the open third right here on the B right there. And then it's still going on the B flat. So I pressed on the third string for the D And then the C in the bass. But when I went to the B, I just let off that string and used the open third string instead. And that sounded pretty cool. I could do something like that. So now you've got moving from A minor and descending from there and a host of different ideas that you could do. You've got moving from the D sus 2.

Steve Stine [00:14:29]:
The beauty of using the sus 2 is that I'm not defining it as major or minor. It could be whatever I want. But the other thing is, it's allowing that finger to be loose already as I'm doing all of these dissensions, which is kind of nice. Okay, now let me show you. The last one I'm going to show you here is going to be C. So I'm going to take a traditional cowboy chord C here. Now right off the bat, I'm going to go to the note B, which is going to be the second fret of the fifth string. But instead of trying to change anything about it, I could literally just take that middle finger and move it up to the B, take my ring finger off and just do that.

Steve Stine [00:15:08]:
Okay. Instead of having anybody on the fourth string at all, I'm just. I'm just leaving it open. And that sounds quite nice. Sometimes what I'll do is I'll take the pinky again and I'll put it on the. On the second string, third fret to get that kind of sound again. It doesn't matter. It's not hurting anything or it's.

Steve Stine [00:15:41]:
What do I like most about it? There's my C. Just putting B in the bass, B flat. And then, you know, whatever we want to go to afterwards. Maybe we go to F or something like that. You could do that and it'd be great, you see? Or maybe I go from C, add that B, just moving my middle finger up, go to A minor, you know, I mean, I could tie these together however I want. So something for you to think about on a creative level, being able to take the chords that you already know, being able to add some sort of bass descension in there. Okay. Descending bass line, and then readjusting the chords underneath as needed to make it A comfortable for you, and B musical.

Steve Stine [00:17:04]:
And understanding that you don't have to follow any particular laws to this, where you can only play, you know, the A minor chord and you can't ever deviate from the A minor. You could move it however you need to. Learning songs is of big help. If you learn things like, babe, I'm gonna leave you or whatever it might be. You're gonna see those things in action from guitar players that you might enjoy or music that you enjoy listening to. You're gonna see people doing these sorts of things and then finally understanding that sometimes inspiration doesn't just come from your brain. Sometimes it comes from your ears. Sometimes it's hearing something like this new piece of software that I got, and you try out a preset, and there you go.

Steve Stine [00:17:46]:
Oh, my gosh, that's really nice. Because if I just plug into my amp every single day and I get the exact same tone with the exact same settings all the time, that can be inspiring. No doubt about it. Maybe it's something I listen to in the car or something that inspired me. But I'm just saying, very honestly, sometimes I'm inspired by the tones that I'm getting from some of these other things. You know, I know when I plug into my amplifier exactly what it sounds like and exactly what I'm going to get out of it. But if I plug into a piece of software or something, like, again, a camper or whatever it might be that you might have access to. You know, software is nice because it sometimes is just very inexpensive.

Steve Stine [00:18:25]:
And then all of a sudden, you play through one of those sounds and go, wow, that's really neat. It makes you start thinking about something comp. Completely different that you wouldn't have had you not experienced that. So just be aware of that. All right? So take care, stay positive, and, of course, keep practicing, all right?