This one took me a while to get.  But I was always wondering how come it took so long to get the song sounding “right”.  I’m the bass player usually for the music projects that I do with my friends, and it always seemed like it wasn’t “locked in” when we played songs and stuff. 
As a guitar player turned bass player, I never had the in depth study that a bassist thinks about all the time.   Or maybe not even.  Again this is one of those posts where there are a lot of different ways to do it, but I can only talk about the things that I have learned. 

But I’ve found that I think of bass playing and laying down the “bottom” differently now than I did when I began playing.  And I thought I’d write about that today.

MELODY & RHYTHM

When I first started playing, I tried to make my bass lines sound like melody lines, or riffs.  And I was experimenting with chords on the bass, and doing guitar like things as I played.  I think of it as two different sides to music.  Melody and Rhythm.  At the time that I first started playing, it was all melody and no rhythm.  What do you expect from a former guitar player?

Now this is not to say that melody isn’t good for a bass line, in fact the best ones are the hummable ones.  Again depending on the song itself.  When does the bass line stand out in the song?  Does the section “build” towards a musical crescendo?  How does the bass help that section?  Without getting into too much western music theory, I’ll just offer this little thing that I think of sometimes as I’m trying to come up with bass lines.  I read this somewhere….

Music can be seen as consisting of two categories… consonance and dissonance.  The consonance is the “tonic” or “key” or first chord of a song.  And the dissonance (in varying degrees of dissonance) is everything else in the song.  In a scale the first note is the “tonic” or consonance.  Then every other note in the scale “wants” to get back to the tonic.  The dissonances are called Supertonic, Mediant, Subdominant, Dominant, Submediant, and Leading Tone.  You’ll never use those phrases again. 

All this to say that the bass can help get the chord progression from dissonant chords, to tonic chords by the lines that are chosen.  Leading into the “tonic” chords by walking up to them, or jumping from the (V, Dominant).  Of course all this is too technical right?  Probably, just something to think about.  Emphasize the different sections in the song that you are going to.  And use your ear to do it.  Do what sounds good.

LOCK INTO DRUMMER

So, then one day while I was recording.  I realized this. 

I really didn’t need to play that much.  Some of the best lines I’ve heard really aren’t melody lines, but they are just notes that are rhythmically locked into to the kick drum of the drummer.  It’s like the bass drum and bass are one instrument. 

When I first did this on a song, it kinda opened up a whole new world in how I put together bass lines.  Because it sounds so tight and locked in, and it freed up the rest of the band to play on top of that rock solid foundation.  The whole band began to play better because I started to play less but totally in sync with my drummer. 

I think drummers appreciate it also, because it makes their bass drum sound huge.

You’re not going to be able to catch all of the hits, but if you and your drummer get together, and figure out the bass kick pattern, then go off of that.  I think you’ll notice a big jump in the sound of the entire band as a whole.

good luck.