Good idea. We just discussed this a little in that "Should I stop playing guitar?" thread. McCartney was a kind of primitive genius at this: defining the chord by changing the bottom note.bassjones wrote:and encourage your bass player to get off the root, he can imply a chord inversion by playing the 3rd, 5th or 7th instead and may open your ear to the next chord.
In that other thread I mentioned that I was doing a jingle demo last year, a kind of Phil Spector-y/R&B thing with a feel similar to Mariah Carey's "All I Want For Christmas Is You." There was a gospel turnaround in the hook that really felt right, but was just a little too every-day... screwing around with the bass part, I stumbled over a really unexpected note choice that transformed the chord into this huge, massive, Ambrosia-esque thing that tore your head off.
One note.
That's a tough thing for guitar players to get under their skin. We often learn to play sitting alone, playing songs, and so we tend to strum all six strings, leaning on our favorite inversions, thinking "That's a G, that's a C" as we play the same voicings we always play. But some of the really interesting harmonies work best when you only play three of your available six notes, for example, and experiment with raising and lowering just one of those notes to hear what happens.
Hey, there's another nice way to change your head a little: buy a set of fingerpicks.
