Harmony Essentials Guidebook For Bass

If you’ve ever felt lost when a chord symbol throws something unexpected at you — a sus4, a maj7#5, an altered dominant — this guidebook is what you’ve been missing.

The Harmony Essentials Guidebook for Bass Guitar is a complete reference guide to harmony, scales, and chord progressions. It won’t teach you how to practise — it gives you every concept, formula, and chart in one place so you can look things up fast and get back to playing.

Whether you’re working through a TalkingBass course, transcribing a tune, or just trying to make sense of a chord progression, this is the reference you’ll come back to again and again.

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What’s inside

Chapter 1 — The Major Scale & Scale Degrees
The foundation of everything. Scale degrees, the abbreviated notation system used across all TalkingBass courses, and the cycle of fourths and fifths laid out clearly.

Chapter 2 — Intervals
Every interval from unison to the 13th, including augmented, diminished, and compound intervals. Essential for understanding how chords and scales are built.

Chapter 3 — Chord Construction
Triads, seventh chords, extended chords, altered extensions, added note chords, suspended chords, inversions, and slash chords. Plus a practical chord simplification guide so you always know what to play as a bassist.

Chapter 4 — Scales
Every scale you’re likely to encounter: Major, Natural Minor, Harmonic Minor, Melodic Minor (traditional and jazz forms), all 7 modes of the Major Scale, modes of the Harmonic and Melodic Minor, Pentatonic, Blues, Whole Tone, Diminished, and Augmented.

Chapter 5 — Chord Progressions
Roman numeral notation, the Nashville Number System, chords of the major and minor keys, chord function, cadences, common progressions across multiple styles, secondary dominants, and modal interchange.

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Who it’s for

This guidebook is for bass players at any level who want to understand the music they’re playing — not just the notes. It pairs with every TalkingBass course and is especially useful alongside Ultimate Music Theory for Bass, Chord Tone Essentials and Scale Essentials.

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Format

• Downloadable PDF — use it on any device or print it out
• Clean, consistent notation throughout
• Organised for fast lookup — find any concept in seconds
• Lifetime access — yours to keep