Making Music Made Easy As Soup

Bass Guitar

The most common purpose of the bass instrument is to provide HARMONIC FOUNDATION. What this means is that the bass instrument plays the notes which define the harmonic structure of the piece. If you have already planned out the harmonic structure (which chords you are going to use) then as a basic beginning for laying down the bass part, you can record the bass part as just playing the root notes of each chord. This is the most basic bass part. However, in most cases, this will not be enough.

NOTE: As a general rule, if there is a drum kit plaing, the bass instrument should play a note at least whenever the kick drum is played. This will fortify the kick drum and the bass instrument making them more powerfully connected. Not doing this is an immediate sign of bad bass writing. There are, of course, exceptions to this rule. You will want to add more than just the root notes at the start of each chords.

Here you can try several things.

• Try adding passing notes e.g. if you were going from a C chord to an F chord in the overall harmony, the bass guitar might play a C and then D, E, F; the D and the E are passing notes; the C and the F would be slightly accented because they would (probably) be on a strong beat of the bar (beat 1 and 3).
• You could add octave notes e.g. C, then C an octave higher, then F, then F an octave higher.
• Similarly, you could add 5th notes: alternating between C and G for a Chord and alternating betwen F and C for an F chord.
• You could add slides, where the bass instrument slides from one note to the next.
• Try to add dead notes; dead notes are when the bass instrument plays a note which is muted so it has no pitch; this is a purely percussive feature, however, it is good for diversity.
• You could add a walking bass line; this is not a particularly easy technique for an inexperienced composer/arranger, however, it is doable.
• If you're writing for a real bass player, just write out the chords and tell them to play a walking bass line.

Next: Learn about Piano And Orchestra.