{"id":359056,"date":"2019-03-31T10:01:52","date_gmt":"2019-03-31T08:01:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thomann.de\/blog\/?p=359056"},"modified":"2020-04-22T16:22:08","modified_gmt":"2020-04-22T14:22:08","slug":"creative-bass-lines-4-tips","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thomann.de\/blog\/en\/learn\/creative-bass-lines-4-tips\/","title":{"rendered":"Creative Bass Lines – 4 Tips"},"content":{"rendered":"

Providing only the root notes of a chord on the bass can be perfect for some styles of music. <\/b>Thunderstruck<\/em> by AC\/DC consists ultimately of nothing more than these mono-rhythmic\u00a0root notes, which give the song stability and at the same time a driving force. But there is much more that you can tickle out of your bass if you’re not a “one-note warrior”. With a bit of harmony and some rhythm skills, bass players take their bass lines to a new level. Ultimately, it’s about letting the song and the melody breathe noticeably more. Below you will find bass line tips from Nathan Navarro<\/a>…<\/b><\/p>\n

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1. Pimp up basic notes with leading tones<\/h3>\n

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Let’s take a couple of sixteenth notes<\/strong> and brew a straight bass line. We move over a guitar chord progression changing from A minor to D minor<\/strong>. Immediately, we should not think about these two tones, instead, we use different nonchord tones<\/strong> for the chord changes. For example, try to use the G<\/strong> or the C<\/strong> as leading\u00a0tones,<\/strong> more tones are conceivable to season the bass line tastefully<\/strong>. The blues<\/strong> and rock<\/strong> character is preserved with sounds from the pentatonic scale.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Should it be more melodic,<\/strong> you use the traditional Gregorian mode<\/strong> in the leading tone.<\/strong> There are many ways to get from one chord to the next. Incidentally, Paul McCartney<\/strong> of The\u00a0Beatles<\/strong> has used such melodic bass movements splendidly; it was his trademark.<\/p>\n

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2. Add extended chord tones<\/h3>\n

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What’s important to bassists is to decode the harmonies<\/strong>. As an example, let’s play the A minor chord<\/strong>\u00a0on guitar<\/strong> with the notes A, C, E<\/strong>. We add another note to the minor chord – the F<\/strong> – and thereby make an Am6<\/strong> – a four-note chord. If we play an F#<\/strong>\u00a0on the bass<\/strong> now, the chord transforms into a Fmaj7<\/strong> as if by magic. While an\u00a0A minor\u00a0<\/strong>is a fairly clean chord, the F in the bass provides a completely new, somewhat round sound character.<\/p>\n

You can also experiment by reversing the chord\u00a0structure,<\/strong> which is especially appealing in four notes. In music theory this is called an enharmonic confusion<\/strong>, meaning that the stacked thirds and modal tones of a chord do not begin with the fundamental tone. The bassist doesn’t have to play the root or the fifth. It becomes much more diversified when s\/he plays along the third, the sixth or the seventh.<\/p>\n

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3. Syncopation & Space – emphasize the unstressed<\/h3>\n

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Another interesting variant is to work with syncopation and space, a question of rhythm. The bass player sometimes needs to disconnect from the rhythm structure<\/strong> of the rest of the band<\/strong>. When s\/he plays in the spaces between notes, we can get some striking results!<\/p>\n

Syncopation<\/strong> means that the accent pattern is broken up by playing on unaccented beats. For a better understanding, let’s take a simple example: you play in a 4\/4<\/strong> cycle where the emphasized counts are the one, two, three and four. As a bassist, you can either join in monotonously<\/strong> or make yourself a rhythmic outlaw<\/strong> and break the pattern<\/strong>. You start with your line, for example, on the two-and<\/strong> beat and work with accented tones.<\/p>\n

The particular attraction is that the rest of the band plays straight<\/strong>\u00a0even while the bass player fills gaps,<\/strong> making everything mesh into a larger whole. It’s worth a try, you’ll see.<\/p>\n

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4. Double it up at the right moment<\/h3>\n

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The guitarist plays the hook<\/strong> line, the bassist provides the rhythmic foundation<\/strong> with very even eighth<\/strong> and sixteenth notes,<\/strong> keeping the framework streamlined. A special,<\/strong> and surprising, accent<\/strong> can be achieved if the bassist doubles the riffs of the guitarist<\/strong>\u00a0during certain sections of the song, playing a few notes identically, and then returning directly to the groove pattern.<\/p>\n

That is to say, you do not play in unison permanently<\/strong>\u00a0with the guitarist, instead only short parts<\/strong>, such as the last half measure of a bar. Only leave the groove during certain moments and vary these doubled inserts irregularly<\/strong> to please the listener’s ear. Experimentation<\/strong> is required here to get the right effect or mood.<\/p>\n

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Watch\u00a0Nathan Navarro\u00a0<\/b>as he teaches us a few bass line tips with the help of our\u00a0Kris<\/strong>…<\/p>\n

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These techniques can, and should, be combined with each other. Remember that as a bassist you are the leader in the low-frequency range, so make sure that the bass lines do not become too hectic<\/strong> or overly busy.<\/strong> This would probably cause the song framework to wobble<\/strong> or become muddy.<\/strong> Just rely on your instincts, then you can develop freely. Have fun experimenting!<\/p>\n

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How do some bassists keep coming up with such interesting and catchy bass lines? Here are things you could try out…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":359796,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tblog_post_audio_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10720],"tags":[3837,7012,7014,7010,7016,3268,4968],"class_list":["post-359056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-learn","tag-bass-en","tag-bass-guitar","tag-bass-line","tag-electric-bass","tag-theory","tag-tips","tag-tricks-en"],"category_colors":{"color_key":"learn","css_classes":{"text":"cat-learn","text_light":"cat-learn-light","bg":"cat-bg-learn","bg_light":"cat-bg-learn-light","border":"cat-border-learn","text_on_bg":"cat-text-on-learn"}},"reading_time":{"minutes":4,"formatted":"4 min"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thomann.de\/blog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thomann.de\/blog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thomann.de\/blog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thomann.de\/blog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thomann.de\/blog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=359056"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thomann.de\/blog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359056\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thomann.de\/blog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/359796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thomann.de\/blog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=359056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thomann.de\/blog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=359056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thomann.de\/blog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=359056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}