When I first started exploring jazz harmony on the bass, I did what everyone else did—spent hours running scales.
And to be fair, there’s nothing wrong with that. All of my favorite solos weave in scales or scale fragments somewhere. The truth is, the best lines often combine different devices—scales, arpeggios, chord tones, and shapes.
But if you’ve ever found yourself mentally twisting over which scale or mode to play over a chord, you know how that can shut down your creativity.
That’s where this concept changed everything for me.
I realized that whenever I heard a sound I couldn’t quite place, my ear could still grab onto a triad that fit. That tiny foothold was enough to build from. Suddenly I could play around the harmony—create movement, color, and shape—without ever having to think in scales.
That was freeing.
Why Scales Sometimes Kill Creativity
Scales are a great foundation—but I’ve always felt that accessing them comes with a lot of baggage.
Major and minor scales have seven notes. The diminished scale has eight. The whole-tone scale has six. And then you factor in modes—same material, just different starting points.
At a certain point, I realized I was spending more time calculating than creating.
I could tell you which mode worked over which chord, but my lines didn’t have that same easy spontaneity I heard in players like Joe Pass or Carol Kaye. Their playing never sounded mathematical or “heady.” It sounded conversational.
That’s what I was chasing.
So I started looking for ways to access sound faster—with less mental gymnastics.
And the more I studied how older players thought, the more I noticed a pattern: they often simplified things down to triads.
That’s when something clicked.
The Simplicity of the 5th-Based Triad
I actually stumbled on this concept while sitting with a guitar—not even a bass.
I was playing a basic campfire-style D major chord and, almost by accident, hit a low G on the sixth string.
Instantly, this gorgeous G Major 9 sound bloomed out of nowhere.
That moment stopped me.
If that worked harmonically, I thought, then surely it could work melodically too.
So I began experimenting—playing inversions of a D major triad over that G Major 9 sound.
It sounded beautiful, but at first it was just that: triads. Clean, vertical arpeggios.
Nothing that felt like lines.
Then I applied something I call my nudging concept—ta