The Bass Player Association         

Rock

Who is your favorite rock bass player? There are many greats, Jack Bruce, Geddy Lee, Chris Squire, Paul McCartney, Sting, Jeff Ament, John Entwhistle, Reggie Arvizu, Stu Hamm, Justin Chancellor, John Paul Jones, Michael Balzary, Tony Levin, Bill Wyman. The list goes on and on. Each of these players play bass in the rock style.

Some use a pick to play, others use fingers, but each of them understand how the bass fits into the musical style. There are some common ideas about the rock style that each bassist uses to create great bass parts.

Rhythm plays a very important part when playing in the rock style. Eighth note bass patterns provide the drive to many rock songs during a chorus. Quarter note bass patterns are often used during verses to give the vocalist some space to sing the melody. Of course, syncopation and sixteenth notes provide other interesting bass patterns that give emphasis to a guitar solo or a vocal melody.  

Rock songs are often written in 4/4 time using even numbered measures. The verse can be four, eight or even sixteen  measures. A chorus is usually also an even number of measures. A bridge is usually a unique number of measures not found anywhere else in the song. Understanding the song structure provides the framework to create a bass pattern that drives the song, fits each part of the song and is interesting throughout the entire song.

The choice of notes to play is determined by the chords used in the song. This can affect where the bass part is played on the fingerboard, or neck of the bass. A low E note has a certain sound not found anywhere else on the neck. A 5 string bass can extend this to include notes below E, such as Eb, D, Db, C and B, which is a very low note that sounds great in certain bass lines.

There are many variations on the rock style that a bass player should be aware of and able to use when necessary. A good study of popular bassists in the rock style will reveal these variations. For example, the rock style popular in 1980's hard rock required the use of a pick on the bass, playing eighth note patterns against a double kick drum. This gave the bass pattern a certain drive that could not be achieved by playing without using a pick.

I lived and worked as a bass player in Hollywood during the 1980's and learned these techniques first hand from the very people that popularized the style.

The next time you hear a song from the 1980's, listen closely to Rudy Sarzo's bass parts, it will help you to understand these ideas.  

Rhythm and Blues (R&B) / Soul

There is one name you should know when it comes to bass players:

James Jamerson

The musical style most often credited with fully developing the potential of the electric bass is R&B from the 1950's and 1960's started in Detroit, best known as Motown. It is during this time that Jamerson created some of the most compelling and artful bass parts ever recorded. Other greats from this time include Carol Kaye, Bob Babbitt and Duck Dunn, among others.

This musical style is mostly played on the bass using fingers to pluck the stings. The 4 string Fender Precision bass is the bass of choice for this style. As much as note selection and rhythm, the tone of the bass is very important to achieve the correct result.

It is in the R&B musical style that a bass player often finds unique and sometimes complex syncopations. A bass pattern may sound very simple with a casual listen, but a closer examination will reveal dotted sixteenth notes that are tied to quarter or eighth notes, resulting in a bass pattern that is phrased as a melody all by itself.  Of course, the bass pattern actually supports the actual vocal melody at the same time.

Soul music and the South are synonymous. The  Northern Alabama, Muscle Shoals area along the Tennessee River has a long history of soul music. "When A Man Loves A Woman" was recorded there and it started a trend that continues today, that has included other songs such as "Mustang Sally", "Tell Mama", "I Never Loved A Man" and featured David Hood on bass, Jimmy Johnson on guitar and Roger Hawkins on drums. Soul music is a style all it's own. A solid, sincere, no-frills bass approach that is heavy on letting the vocal melody emphasize the song, while locking into a hard groove with the drums.

Funk/Disco

If there is one style that requires the bass player to step out front and shine, it is funk music. Without bass, funk would simply not exist. The style is actually derived from R&B and soul music and features the "slap and pop" style of bass playing. The style is attributed to Larry Graham who played for the Sly and the Family Stone band. James Brown was also famous for this style and featured BIll "Bootsy" Collins as one of his bassists. He was one of a number of notable bassists that worked in James Brown's band, which also included Charles Sherrell and Bernard Odum.

The style involves using the thumb on the plucking hand to strike a string sharply and the first finger to actually pull up and release quickly a different string (often the octave above the note played by the thumb). The thumb performs the "slap" and the first (and sometimes second, third or even fourth) finger performs the "pop". 

This style requires a good sense of timing and a relaxed wrist on the plucking hand. The thumb must strike the string over the fretboard to get the sharp attack of the slap and the pop comes from a very quick motion of pulling up and releasing a different string over the body of the bass, not over the fretboard. To get a good clean slap and pop, it's necessary to use the note playing hand to mute the unused strings at the same time as both the slap and pop.  As you can see, this technique requires a good deal of coordination.

Jazz

Musical styles have become more integrated today than in years before. The jazz musical style is used in pop, rap, gospel, and even rock today.

It's a good idea to go back to when the jazz musical style stood alone. It truly is an original American music.  The blues was a foundation of the development of jazz and  it transformed how music was performed, enjoyed and sold. The bass played a big part in the development and success of the jazz style.

The acoustic upright bass (traditionally referred to as the double bass) has been  the bass instrument of choice for playing in the jazz style. It is a large instrument that requires an approach unlike that of an electric bass. A common pattern known as a "walking bass line" was developed in the jazz style on the acoustic upright bass. The use of open strings (E, A, D and G) is common in jazz bass patterns. Since the instrument is fretless, it is necessary to be very familiar with the bass neck so as to know exactly where the notes are located when played and  which helps the bass notes sound in tune with other instruments, such as piano.

Walking bass patterns often follow scale structures that allow the player to move from one chord to another in the song. Variations on scale structures (commonly referred to as "modes") are important for creating bass lines that meet the need of the song's melody.  

Rhythm in jazz can be four beats per measure, three beats per measure (this is called a waltz), five beats per measure (Dave Brubeck's "Take 5", for example) or any number of odd time signatures. This requires the bass player to have to count and always know when the first downbeat of each measure occurs.

Some bass masters of this musical style include Ray Brown, Oscar Pettiford, Jaco Pastorious, Ron Carter, Leroy Vinnegar, Paul Chambers, Eddie Gomez, Charles Mingus, John Pattitucci and many others.

Blues

In the early part of the 20th century, there were two guys named John and Alan Lomax that went on a road trip with something like a portable recording studio in the trunk of their car. They stopped at little roadhouses along the way and found local musicians that were playing music they had never heard before. They would invite different musicians to their hotel room, or go to their house, and record them on the portable recording machine. The music they were playing was the blues and not many people knew about it at the time.

The typical blues song style is usually 12 measures, using I-IV-V chord progressions and played as a shuffle. The rhythm of this musical style is deceptive. Bass patterns used in blues are quite often major or minor triads, played in a walking bass line style. Usually, the root note of each chord is emphasized on the downbeat of one of each measure.  The style includes other unique bass techniques such "ghost notes", or playing ahead of, or behind the actual beat and the ever so subtle, shuffle beat.

If you know who Albert Collins is you may know Johnny B. Gayden, one of the blue's  finest bassists. Other notable bass players in this style include Willie Dixon, Jerry Jamontt,  Jerome Arnold, and Tommy Shannon.

Southern Rock

After living in Alabama for a while, I realize that there are unique things about this style of music. Methods that produce a very specific type of bass part. It was not obvious to me before living here (...I moved here from Seattle..!!), but I have been actively gigging, recording and rehearsing with musician's here in the South and it has revealed a style of playing that really helps to define the "southern rock" genre.

Think Leon Wilkerson (Lynyrd Skynyrd), Berry Oakely (Allman Brothers Band). The methods they used helped to make the bass parts in southern rock songs very unique. The very first thing in approaching this style is to always play with a pick. Roundwound strings with an amp that can deliver very heavy low end.

The bass patterns are based on diatonic scales that play around the key. If you are playing in A Major, the 6th note is an important one to include in a bass line, usually as a passing tone, or if the song includes the VI minor chord, then it's a root note for that chord in the song. But, the jamming style is very much the norm, as long as it is within the scale. Every once in a while, a chromatic note can be used to move from one scale tone to another, but in passing. Root notes help anchor phrases and it's important to figure out if the phrase is an 8 bar phrase, a 4 bar phrase of 12 bar phrase (that's a long one!). Returning to the root note of the key gives the song a solid flow that really locks everything in, especially after you have wandered all over the neck, playing scale tones not found in the chords.

There are exceptions to bass players in southern rock bands that have defined this style, as well. I think of Carl Radle (Derrick and the Dominoes) as a great example.

Try jamming to a southern rock song and see what you can do to get the approach right, you never know when you might be ask you to play "Sweet Home Alabama"...!