CREATE PENTATONIC HOOKS

Welcome back! Let’s take a deeper look at some of the rhythmic variations we can bring to our pentatonic-based and soulful bass-lines. Often, creating a memorable line is just a matter of moving one or two notes into a less obvious place in the bar to create a hook. Think about the bass-line in the verse from ‘Knock On Wood’ by Eddie Floyd. On each chord, it’s just a major triad with the sixth added, but it’s the rhythm that gives it its distinct character—the way the notes are moved off the beat. We call that shifting of notes off the beat ‘displacement’.

This month we’re going to look at a number of possible ways to displace the notes in our pentatonic lines: This will help us come up with simple hooks when writing or improvising. Let’s start with the first four notes of an E minor pentatonic pattern. Exercise 1 shows them all as quarter notes.

Displacing the notes in our pentatonic