wrting bass lines for completed guitar songs

Generic Dreadhead

does anyone here write the bass lines over the guitar.. i'm a guitarist but am quite good on bass so i write them instead of our bass player... just wondering how other people do it

i usually just take the root nootes and work off them picking some octave/4ths/5ths depending on the rhytm... i'll use a good few slides and bleeds.. i'll usually try to keep away from the g string.. or sometimes even the d... so the difference in guitar and bass will be heard in the mix

red_ice

yup i do it all the time :] The hardest part of writing a bassline is when theres already one written! I just started in a new band playing bass - im playing guitar 12 or so years now and playing stuff tahts already written is kind of annoying me because i want to have my own input..

I find the best way to write a bassline is to see what way you hear the bass going via the auld 'dododood B'BOM BOM BOM', then taking it to the bass.. that works a treat for me, its not so much the notes i use that makes my bass playing anyway nice, its that i usually try work the offbeats with obscure notation, and try make a nice run into the next part of the song, around whats already written...

The stuff i write over my guitar stuff on the bass tends to be very frantic and stretches the fingers, working the octives alot with my first and second finger while doing runs with my ring and pinky - if any of that makes musical sense :e I tend to try getting as much sound as possible and accents on certain notes, let the drummer know what he needs to work with

Drac the Bassman

Personally, I feel the music by listening to it then fitting as simple a bassline as possible to keep the song clean, Overkill can ruin a good song. The time for wandering fingers on a bass, I feel, is when there are no vocals and the guitars are simple - eg the closing bars of a song.

Generic Dreadhead

cheers for the 5 years later reply
My hunt continues

Drac the Bassman

Oooops - that's what happens when you don't read the date of the post you are looking at !!!

9959

Cormac... wrote: »

cheers for the 5 years later reply
My hunt continues

Perhaps you could ask another question so 'drac' can be 'in like Flynn' within the next five years. Take your time and make it a good one, or if it's a toughie then perhaps you could ask it on behalf of your future grandchildren so that drac's little basemen could answer it on behalf of the Baseman family as such, thereby upholding the grand old tradition of tardiness established by 'drac' in the early 21st century.

Don't stand behind him in a queue at McDonald's, imagine being gripped by terror and the fear of starvation on hearing the last word of the sentence: "Do want fries with that... DRAC?"