PLAYING EIGHTH NOTES, PART TWO

Hey there, bass players! I hope you’re positively jazzed about our discussion of rhythmic nuance—I know we’ve been walking, pedalling, and pushing our way through these concepts, and I’m glad you’re with us on the bandstand. All kidding aside, there are so many ways to interpret how to play eighth notes, so we’re going to do a quick review of terminology, discuss how to vary the feel of eighth notes, and then dig in with new exercises.

As we learned in my previous column, we can subdivide quarter notes—in other words, four beats per bar in 4/4 time—into smaller