The patterns below are the reverse of those on the previous page - filling in the gap between the tonic and the dominant but this time descending rather than ascending. Remember we are thinking of the bass as a linear pattern - a melody - rather than just simply as the root of various triads. The first example descends by scale and the second by way of an arpeggio.

Here is an example of the first pattern. The penultimate step of the falling line is harmonised by chord vi. There are many different ways in which you could embellish or vary this basic pattern of descending by step from tonic to the dominant.

In the final example, an arpeggio is used to embellish the basic pattern I - V - I. The harmonic result in this case is the familiar I-vi-IV-V-I.

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