Bass Etude No. 1 "The Bass Riff"

How much of a melody do you need to hear to recognize it? That question was the central thought behind this piece.

For the longest time, I've come up with little melodies on the guitar. 90% of them are currently on my phone, still as a voice note. This is the first one that I decided to write out at the recommendation of my guitar teacher.

It started as the main melody. As I wrote the piece, I started thinking about lessons from class - how the silence in music is as important as the notes themselves. So, I started wondering how I could use the off beats and silence to make the melody progressively groovier, still incorporating the feel yet using less notes to do it.

I had the melody in my head and was humming it, trying different variations of silence and the notes that felt right to me. The end product I decided to name an etude, after hearing that it could make a good study piece for exploring rhythms.