I was reading through the Bass for Beginners section last night & read the Play the Box lesson, & something clicked.
Is this the same as the "box" on the guitar, that I hear about people playing solos with? Im pretty much stuck on pentatonic scale with no theory, so its interesting to read how the root & the fifth are in the box twice, seperated by 2 strings & 2 frets! Not quite sure how to make use of this yet, but ill get there.
The reading on Bass is actually pretty enlightening. Ive been working through some of the exercises just on my guitar & it seems a little more straightforward in the beginner stages.
My ultimate goal is to play surf music, so i dunno if I will make the switch, but it sure is tempting!
S.
I don't know if it's related to guitar; I'd think so, but hopefully box-builder Laz will come along to offer some insight.
As you've quickly seen, it's a very useful way to play in a given position, as most of the notes you'll want to hit are right there. Root and 5th - some bass players have made successful careers with not much more than that! For some reason I find a lot of "sus" chords in the songs we do at church, so I need the 4th very often, and it's right there too. When you "see" the box on the fingerboard, you will also see where the 3rd and minor 3rd are in relation, so that becomes easy as well.
You can get pretty crazy just grooving within the box in one position. And as you use it more, you'll find it gives a framework for building bass lines up and down the neck. All in all, a pretty nifty tool. 8)
"Everybody got to elevate from the norm."
Not much to add here. It's really simple and lazy (like me!), and gives you a good starting point for going forward. It works fine for the thicker 4 strings on the guitar. If you play an open Em, you can fiddle with the open box on the E, A and D strings.
And once again, for the record, the Box has been around as long as there have been frets - I didn't invent it!
Now that ive looked at it a lil more, it is real easy to find the root & the 5th in the box. Did somebody say powerchords?!
I am working at finding the triads on the guitar neck, so this has been pretty helpful
S.
