Some thoughts on playing bass

Last night, I helped out with a friend of mine who is trying to put a band together. By "helped out," I mean I got asked to sit in since apparently nobody plays bass, but it seems like these guys are planning on making this long term, so I may be "helping out" for a while.

I have always thought of myself as a guitarist first. My first instrument was a bass, but I always ended up playing guitar more and it's generally a lot more interesting to play when you're by yourself.

I started playing bass back when I listened to Blink 182 and the like pretty religiously. As a result, my bass technique was boring, I grew tired of it, and I gravitated toward guitar. As I grew up, I started listening to more interesting music and realized there was a lot more to bass than I thought, so I went back. Since then, I've learned tons more technique and playing bass is actually a ton of fun. It is maybe one of the less glorifying roles in a band, but most music producers or "HOW 2 B IN A BAND, FOR DUMMIES" books will tell you it's a pretty key role. So here are some things I picked up.

Learn to think like a drummer

When I play bass, I often feel like I am playing what the drummer plays, except I'm also playing notes and making less weird faces. My bass playing got immensely better when I started jamming with talented drummers. Conversely, I always found it incredibly difficult to do anything mildly interesting if the drummer was boring.
Listen to the drummer's kicks. Are you hitting the core notes there? Are you emphasizing the beat, driving the rhythm, and defining the progression with your bass?
Listen to the snares and cymbal work. Are you accenting in a tasteful way?
Listen for the drummer's fills. Do you have a run to complement?
Make sure you pay attention to the drummer. There are times when I shut out the rest of the band and just interact with the drummer and that's really all I need sometimes. It helps when your drummer is cool person because I think there is an important connection between those two roles in a band.
Last night I had the pleasure of jamming with a really talented drummer. He ended up telling me he hadn't jammed with a bassist who accented his high-hat work while also syncing up with the bass drum stuff. I really hadn't thought about that, but it just felt natural and it was actually a lot of fun.

Learn to think like the other musicians in your band

So as a bassist, we're worried about rhythm, but we also can play notes. This part is actually kind of fun if you jam with people who can articulate what they're trying to do. Knowing what movement feels right and what chords or colors are being played helps as a bass player. There is actually a lot of potential to add interesting tension, runs, complements and other musical terms that I was never taught. Bass players don't have to be stupid. Know what minors, modes, scales, and keys are. In my experience, learning to play just about every instrument in the band not only makes you awesome, but it makes you a more complementary musician regardless of the role you fill.

Learn when to be interesting. Learn when to be simple

Ok, there are times where it's appropriate to be boring. I think I make this mistake a lot where I want to play something cool and it just comes out sounding busy and annoying. So maybe you don't need to arpeggiate through the progression or add slap/pop to every song. I've heard recordings of myself where I was playing what I thought sounded really cool but then it just sounded annoying when I listened to the mixed playback. Remember there is an overall sound that you should support, not dominate.

Learn different techniques

So obviously slap/pop is the cool thing bass players "need to learn," but there are other little tricks that are also cool to know. I recently learned what I can only describe as a weird finger slip over strings that lets me play triplets and do string skipping.
For some examples, the bass player from Portugal. The Man does something cool like what I described in the verses for "Lay me back down". The classic crazy bass line that taught me a lot comes from Rush in the song "YYZ".
The bass player from Pinback is also pretty awesome and has a very innovative and unique way of playing bass. Here's a cool song called "Penelope" by them that is a good example. He almost strums it (you'd have to watch something on YouTube to see what I mean).
This final song is called "Roundabout" by a band called Yes. This is an example of going crazy without sounding annoying. The song is absolutely epic and absolutely long, but you should at least listen to what they have (or had?) going on.
Listen to different bass players for the bands you listen to and find out what cool tricks they do. Then learn them. Seriously, watch a lot of YouTube. Even if they don't teach you the techniques, half of the battle is finding out these techniques exist and then working at it until it becomes your own.

Learn to listen to different kinds of music

This should be a given for any musician. Listen to everything. Find out what you like and don't like and internalize everything into your own personal sound. The fun part about being versatile is you can walk into almost any band and contribute something cool. The absolute best is when the band can put multiple styles into one song and still do it tastefully. I think Kay Kay and His Weathered Underground does that very well. In fact, I'm even going to ask you to watch this video to see how a band that big can still put a consistent sound together.
WATCH THIS:


Mmmk, so I drove to work so I don't have a fancy bus post, but hopefully this was somewhat interesting. Granted, I doubt most of you play bass, but maybe you should learn! I have an extra one if you're ever interested :)

THAT'S IT FOR THIS POST.