Yes, I admit, the title can be quite deceptive.
It therefore seems right to make a premise: it is not looking at a video of a few minutes that you can pretend to learn to play so many musical genres (“all”, as I say in the title, it is virtually impossible to even classify them, if we want).
So why this new video? Why this article?

 

The real reason why I realized this lesson is that I would like to invite you to reflect on the importance of knowing how to deal with the most musical styles possible, without prejudice of any kind, only worrying about the fact that every new element can represent an extra piece in your bassistic knowledge .
Whether you are aspiring artists or aspiring session men (I invite you if you have not already done so, to read this article of mine to understand what I mean), having a wide musical background is of utmost importance. If you are session men (or would like to become one) you will have to be ready to face as many situations as possible, even very different from each other, and therefore it seems obvious to know at least the basics. If you are an artist, you could apparently seem to be exempt from this type of work, but in reality, if you think about it, it is perhaps even more important to you.
The knowledge of more genres and styles brings improvements to your global vision of music, and if you let yourself be influenced by styles that may even be very different from your favorite, you will be able to find new ideas during the composition and arrangement that otherwise you never had.

First of all let me give something: if I speak of genres, I refer above all to the big “blocks” of music: rock, blues, funky and jazz.
Imagine simply thinking about these 4, and then extend the discussion to all the genres we want. Each of these genres is always characterized by 2 basic factors: harmony and rhythm.
Of the first we immediately notice it when we refer to jazz or derivatives. It will also happen to you, at least once, to hear someone trying to make more “jazzy” a song with very simple harmonies: the use of particularly “tense” chords, as they say in jargon, with the addition of notes altered, seventh, none and anything else, is what will lead us in this direction. On the other hand, if we want to make a song more “rock”, we can turn its chords into “power chord”, omitting the third and adding a healthy distortion, and for sure we will approach the desired result.
Now, given that we need to think in detail about harmony, it would take time and expertise, and we can not afford to elaborate on the subject in these few lines, let’s try to focus on the rhythmic question.
The speech is fundamentally similar to that done on harmony, but not having to care about chords, we can check everything right away only with our instrument and the aid of a drum machine (or even a drummer, if we had one willing to experiment with us).
The work to be done is very simple: establish a simple progression of chords; I for example, in the video, I used the classic progression VI-IV-I-V which is nothing but the sequence of agreements of … “Despacito” (ok, I deserved it, start to insult me ​​…).
Look what happens if on these simple chords we try to play different rhythms. What sounds similar, starts to take different forms, making one perceive a “mood” rather than another, even very different from each other.
How to learn to manage these rhythms and consequently these styles, as well as others?
Here you find the complete scores of what I have done in the video and in addition also a pdf containing some reference patterns. You can use them as you like, adapting them to any context, any chord sequence or song; learning to know a particular musical genre takes time, and in particular the time you will have to use it to learn what the basic ideas of that genre are; rhythmically speaking, therefore, the more patterns you will know and the better you will be able to manage that way of accompanying. Obviously it is equally important that you develop the ear on a certain genre, even going to listen to the records of its main artists, but this, after all, is pure fun …
So, what is your favorite kind of music?