by Nick Sterling.

Nick Sterling

With Entswistle’s booming growly tone playing fifth power chords and moving lines all over the place, Jones writing bass lines and parts that worked perfectly with Page’s unorthodox playing style and McCartney’s genius lines often landing on 1sts to 5ths, octave jumps and moving lines going seamlessly from every chord change and key change; they all had a huge impact on the music their bands created.

Unfortunately, it seems nowadays that the modern rock bass guitar is used more so as a low end sub-supporter for the kick drum than another instrument in the song. It just seems like a lot of things have the bass guitar just following the root note of the guitar all the way through the whole song very rarely doing anything really.

Why is this? I know we’ve all heard the countless bass player jokes about them being in the band because they own the P.A., or they just want to be the cool dude in a band, but really!? All joking aside, so much can be accomplished in altering the feel of a song by just getting a little bit creative with the bass lines, note choices, and bass tone. In the case of the guitarist as well, so much can be accomplished both live and in the studio by using different approaches to what the bass guitar is doing.

I’ve been fronting a three piece band now for about eight years, supplying the lead and rhythm guitar, as well as lead vocals. One thing I’ve really learned over the years is that sometimes it’s tough to sound as big as you want with only three people. Obviously, a band with two rhythm guitarists, a keyboardist and a vocalist is going to sound like a lot more going on than a mere three-piece. One way to quickly fix this situation is to just try and beef up the tone and style of the bass guitar live. Don’t be afraid of distortions, fuzz or even synth sounds on the bass, especially during guitar breaks or solo sections.

One problem I always had with my band was that when I went to take a solo, the core sound of the band would just drop off. Everyone would be playing the right parts and individually we all sounded right on, but as a whole something was missing. Having some dirt on the bass really filled things out. Also, my bass player live uses a pedal from Akai called the Unibass.

Unfortunately it is discontinued, but you can still find them online for sale. What it does is duplicate the bass signal up an octave. You can then add some distortion to the octave signal, and you have the option to send the effected signal out to a guitar amplifier. You can also add in a fifth to the octave to create a sort of power chord effect coming from the Unibass. This works great in a three piece because it’s like having a rhythm guitarist with a slightly different flavor. Very cool effect.

Here is a sound sample of an original tune of mine that is very much carried by the bass guitar. It’s a song called “Something to Believe.” The guitar part is playing a very, very simple passage repeating over and over again. The chord changes are mostly carried by the bass guitar line and the tone of the bass. This is an example of how the bass guitar can make a strange guitar part work in a song and still be interesting.

Another thing to consider is having the bass intentionally not play the root notes of chord changes. Say as in a I-iii-IV-V progression in G have the bass guitar play something like G-F#-E-A over those chords. The first chord the bass plays the root (G is the key of the passage). Over the second chord it plays the lower fifth (F# over a b minor chord). The third chord it plays a lower third (E below the C major). Lastly, the fourth chord it plays the lower fifth (an A under a D major chord). This is an easy way to make a few fairly simple chord changes have a little different flavor by changing the bass line.

Sometimes changing the lowest note in the structure of a chord can make it sound a lot more colorful and hard to figure out really what chord it is. It makes things a lot less black and white with the changes in a song.

A great example of this is in the song “God Only Knows” by the Beach Boys. Rarely does Brian Wilson play the basic roots for all of the difficult chord changes in this song. The verses are a good example of this as well as the bridge section ending a short line of the chorus in a different key than the other choruses, which somehow leads back into the last verse.

Another song that does this sort of thing is “Michelle” by the Beatles. McCartney starts off playing root notes and a fairly basic line. Later in the song some walking parts come in with him landing on strange notes for the chord changes. Such a strange unorthodox part for the song, but without it I just wouldn’t be the same, the line he plays just builds tension all the way through.

One last great example of a creative bass line that makes the song more interesting and gives so much support to the guitar part is “Ramble On” by Led Zeppelin. So many great parts in that song by Jones, the verse section playing that little line dancing around on the upbeat between Page’s super simple I-IV progression is great. Then the chorus kicks in with even more strange moving lines on the upbeat then landing on the four chord over the seven played by the guitar. Great part!

I guess what I’ve been trying to get at throughout this whole article is to stress the importance of the bass guitar from a guitarist and songwriters point of view. I know this article is for Modern Guitars and it might seem a little bit funny for me to be writing an article about bass, but really, without the bass a lot of the ultimate guitar riffs, great songs, and catchy chord progressions and melodies would have so much less impact! Bass; the foundation of rock and pop music, not just another kick drum that looks like a guitar.