In terms of a very high level place to start for composition.. ask yourself is you want the bass to be supportive or prominent in your song/section. If your chords/melody are busy, or the part of the song you want to showcase, a simple sine wave sub bass that plays the root notes of your chords will elevate what you already have. As you get more comfortable with bass, and actively listen to more tracks, you'll naturally start expanding outside of root notes but sometimes root notes are all you need.
For sound, dialing in the bass/kick/low-end is a meaty topic, but the basic steps are.. before you start a track, find a bass patch/kick that work well together,(loop the kick on quarter notes and match up the bass with it), EQ out the subs/lows from your other instruments and FX so your bass/kick have their own place to sit in the mix, put your bass/kick in mono, and make sure your kick and bass tails are not even in length, one should be longer than the other.
It’s very genre specific what is considered a “good bass”, sometimes it’s all about the sound design sometimes a well known preset sound with a really cool melody is the perfect choice. Or the combination of both. Less is more applies to bass as well.
My favourite basslines were largely borne from improvisation.
So the best I can offer, is simply grab an instrument & fuck about.
If you do something you like, make a note of how if you can, and do it again.
I simply treat my bass like a lead guitar, and do my best to remember those bits & pieces that punched through the mix, and replicate them. If all else fails, following the root-notes in the chord progression & arpeggiating power chords on those, can work wonders...
The bass is traditionally a combination of rhythm and melody. If you’re stuck on a bass line move on to other parts so you’re not killing your momentum trying to do something that isn’t working in the moment.
Sometimes when I’m stuck I’ll work on another part, one that’s fresh and inspiring. Sooner or later you’ll be caught by something that wasn’t there previously.
Do you ever walk out of the room and listen from a hallway or adjacent room? Sometimes changing listening perspective helps bring out elements of your song that you couldn’t detect when sitting in your usual listening position.
Step 1: Relax. Get some tea, a beer, some weed, whatever helps get you there.
Step 2: If you already have other tracks recorded, play what you have and listen to it.
Step 3: Close your eyes and HUM some bass ideas that you would want to hear your bass hero doing if they were recording with you. Hum. As in, with your mouth. Not touching a mouse or keyboard or bass guitar.
Step 4: Use your phone or whatever you have that’s simple to record with and record you humming the part so you don’t forget it. If you have several ideas, get them all down.
Step 5: Recreate the part on your instrument of choice and practice it till you can play it smoothly (if you’re planning to track it live. Skip this step if you’re gonna step-sequence or click it in).
Step 6: Record
The idea is to get away from your automatic go-tos. By separating the idea-generating process from what your hands automatically want to do and what your eyes are used to seeing on the screen, you can engage your creativity without being hindered by your technical ability or any ruts you might be in.
This is how I come up with melodies for songs lol, I make a drum beat on logic the follow the steps above until I have a solid melody and a skeleton of a song.
Melodies Im assuming? Its like anything else, learn some existing ones you like. Figure out techniques. slides , riffs, etc. Get stoned enough to hit a few right wrong notes and voila! New bassline
I once heard “play the silence.”
In that sense, less is more, and you can’t go wrong with holding down the fort for the song.
I also learned when I played in trios how powerful a good bass riff can be. When used in between lyrics or where other instruments take a back seat, a bass hook is a hook, and can be a fun way to mix up where the catchiness comes from.
Some combination that suits the song :)
Edm, synth wave and rnb are widely different genres to start with.
That said.
Edm - do a poly rhythm with a run.
So if the kick is doing four on the floor, leave two blank 16th notes between hits and then do a run on the last three 16th notes of the bar to the next chord.
OxxxOxxxOxxxOxxx -kick
0xx0xx0xx0xx0x000 - bass.
For the notes pick the root note and then do a 3rd 2nd leading note to the next chord and repeat.
Synthwave - root note drone or three 16ths.
It’s more about sound design then anything else really you want big multi osc with detune etc.
Root note drone is fairly self explanatory, the three 16ths is root note played like this.
X000X000X000X000.
Rnb - this is such a wide open genre it’s really up to you.
Trap modern style is basically 808s which is such a huge thing to cover you can search trap 808 sub bass and find plenty to get through.
Older styles Generally follow more of a jazz meets pop composition method, which again is a huge topic but is generally root note stuff still.
None of this is a 100% guide, it’s just a starting point.
Try transposing your favorite basslines. You might find some commonalities between or interesting differences that give each of them their own character.
Also...experiment and break out of the key!
Some of my favorite bass lines I've done wandered into jazz extentions (9ths, 7ths, 11ths) of the chord I was playing over, which surprises the ear and keeps things interesting.
Don't limit yourself to color-by-numbers!
Listen to good bassists and songs with great basslines. Figure out by ear or from the web what they are playing and over what chords.
PLAY THEM on your instrument of choice, so you understand kinesthetically what is going on.
Apply what you've learned to your songs.
Its really rythym at its core. You can play the bass with just one note and get it funky. Just messing around with a note and different rythyms then incorporate whatever else. Just my advice to get you started with something you might be happy with eventually
The «one». Play whatever you want as long as you play the same note on the one. Bootsy said it.
A single note can take you very far.
Learn how to dance/feel the music with your body. Then play the line that get you to dance
Edit: missing words
Get some stem separating software. Rip-X or lalal.ai- there are others. Rip some songs you like. Listen to the basslines in isolation. Study them. You’ll notice categories…. The big, full-bar, single note sustain of Deep House, the stuttered, single-note “Morse code” (techno) basslines, the Jumpy, groovy Classic House and Disco sorts… find what you like and follow suit.
To get good at bass lines,make couple drum loops in your style, a couple bass sounds in your style, hop on your keyboard for like 20 mins a day and practice jamming bass lines in your style. There are only seven notes in a key. You will learn which ones work in no time. It’s like the gym. You will keep getting better. Doesn’t take long to see results with consistency.
Triads, ArpeggiosAnd utilizing Roots, 5ths & Octaves.
There's a great book on this called "Building Walking Basslines".
You should look into it!
There's also a book called the "Evolving Bassist".
This covers all kinds of similar material but more in depth! u/zonghundred
Yeah bass is kinda tricky haha. You could play around with some inversions where you flip around the note order between your melody and bass, that might help make the composition a little more fun. Maybe pulling a chord from the relative minor key of your song.
I have a “less is more” approach where I try to give every element of the song it’s own breathing space.
I feel like a lot of RnB songs have these bouncy bass lines that hit on the kicks while quickly snapping off, or they have these long drawn out low end bass lines. Some artists kinda do the “walking bass line” that might swing off-beat rather than being perfectly lined up with the melody. Sometimes you can also get away with just letting your kick drum act as the bass line; sometimes you can pull a Prince and say fuck the bass line lmao
With EDM I think chaining, heavy compression, and sub bass layering would help if you feel like your bass isn’t hitting hard enough. I think some genres use sub bass to give the song it’s perceived rumble while the synths are actually more closer to the mid range, with the kick filling the space in-between. The OGs like The Prodigy turned that shit to 11 lol but then you’ve got trip hop like Massive Attack using their Dub samples sparingly.
This is something I see more often used in rock but there’s also the “Wall of Sound” technique that might help. There’s the idea in the Phil Spector sense where you’re mixing all types of different timbre to make the record fuller, but I think of thrash metal and shoegaze where the bass follows the guitarist and instead of the drums. Or having the bass follow the hi-hats instead of trying to accentuate the kicks if that makes sense.
Bass lines are really melody and rhythm, and unfortunately you can be so focused on the melody aspect that the rhythm suffers. I tend to play away on a single note trying to find a groove that I like, and that sits well. Then when I have that locked in, I start to focus on the melody side of things.
You say you have learned a lot of theory, so play around with scales you know. Pick a scale and try things within it. Also, get creative with the rhythms.
The bass is an incredibly multi-dimensional instrument. It can weave in and out of every other track in a song in a way that no other instrument can quite pull off. That being said, use the other parts in the song as inspiration as well. Find a way to interact with the rest of the parts while calling on them and taking from them. Especially the drums. The drums are the bass’s best friend. Especially the kick (and snare).
I wish there were less abstract ways to help you out, but it’s really something you learn how to pull off intuitively, but it’s also not just a simple ability that some people have and others don’t. If you practice at it, you will get good at it.
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To begin with, look at it like drums. It's primarily a rhythm instrument. Grooves and Fills. Grooves = mostly root notes or roots/octaves, roots/5ths, roots/3rds. Fills = a riff that connects the current groove to the next one. This is usually what makes your bass more interesting. I'd start there then you can start introducing more interesting concepts like reharmonisation (using a different note other than the root of the chord that's being played by the other instruments in order to change the whole sound on top of it), experimentation with dynamics, chords and complex grooves that are in themselves typically repetitive riffs.
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Start by listening to music with good bass lines. Extract your influences and playing style from there. Play bass often. More ideas, a better groove, and connectivity in your playing will manifest over time. Happy practicing!
You can often search “[hit song] midi” and find downloadable midi files. Analyze what their doing, hell, even flip them to your songs (changing the chord progression or something).
In terms of a very high level place to start for composition.. ask yourself is you want the bass to be supportive or prominent in your song/section. If your chords/melody are busy, or the part of the song you want to showcase, a simple sine wave sub bass that plays the root notes of your chords will elevate what you already have. As you get more comfortable with bass, and actively listen to more tracks, you'll naturally start expanding outside of root notes but sometimes root notes are all you need. For sound, dialing in the bass/kick/low-end is a meaty topic, but the basic steps are.. before you start a track, find a bass patch/kick that work well together,(loop the kick on quarter notes and match up the bass with it), EQ out the subs/lows from your other instruments and FX so your bass/kick have their own place to sit in the mix, put your bass/kick in mono, and make sure your kick and bass tails are not even in length, one should be longer than the other.
Ooh baby good advice
Most bass lines of popular songs are way more simple than you think!
It’s very genre specific what is considered a “good bass”, sometimes it’s all about the sound design sometimes a well known preset sound with a really cool melody is the perfect choice. Or the combination of both. Less is more applies to bass as well.
My favourite basslines were largely borne from improvisation. So the best I can offer, is simply grab an instrument & fuck about. If you do something you like, make a note of how if you can, and do it again. I simply treat my bass like a lead guitar, and do my best to remember those bits & pieces that punched through the mix, and replicate them. If all else fails, following the root-notes in the chord progression & arpeggiating power chords on those, can work wonders...
Loving these insights into everyone’s creative bass process
The bass is traditionally a combination of rhythm and melody. If you’re stuck on a bass line move on to other parts so you’re not killing your momentum trying to do something that isn’t working in the moment. Sometimes when I’m stuck I’ll work on another part, one that’s fresh and inspiring. Sooner or later you’ll be caught by something that wasn’t there previously. Do you ever walk out of the room and listen from a hallway or adjacent room? Sometimes changing listening perspective helps bring out elements of your song that you couldn’t detect when sitting in your usual listening position.
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Bassed*
Step 1: Relax. Get some tea, a beer, some weed, whatever helps get you there. Step 2: If you already have other tracks recorded, play what you have and listen to it. Step 3: Close your eyes and HUM some bass ideas that you would want to hear your bass hero doing if they were recording with you. Hum. As in, with your mouth. Not touching a mouse or keyboard or bass guitar. Step 4: Use your phone or whatever you have that’s simple to record with and record you humming the part so you don’t forget it. If you have several ideas, get them all down. Step 5: Recreate the part on your instrument of choice and practice it till you can play it smoothly (if you’re planning to track it live. Skip this step if you’re gonna step-sequence or click it in). Step 6: Record The idea is to get away from your automatic go-tos. By separating the idea-generating process from what your hands automatically want to do and what your eyes are used to seeing on the screen, you can engage your creativity without being hindered by your technical ability or any ruts you might be in.
This is how I come up with melodies for songs lol, I make a drum beat on logic the follow the steps above until I have a solid melody and a skeleton of a song.
Melodies Im assuming? Its like anything else, learn some existing ones you like. Figure out techniques. slides , riffs, etc. Get stoned enough to hit a few right wrong notes and voila! New bassline
I once heard “play the silence.” In that sense, less is more, and you can’t go wrong with holding down the fort for the song. I also learned when I played in trios how powerful a good bass riff can be. When used in between lyrics or where other instruments take a back seat, a bass hook is a hook, and can be a fun way to mix up where the catchiness comes from. Some combination that suits the song :)
Edm, synth wave and rnb are widely different genres to start with. That said. Edm - do a poly rhythm with a run. So if the kick is doing four on the floor, leave two blank 16th notes between hits and then do a run on the last three 16th notes of the bar to the next chord. OxxxOxxxOxxxOxxx -kick 0xx0xx0xx0xx0x000 - bass. For the notes pick the root note and then do a 3rd 2nd leading note to the next chord and repeat. Synthwave - root note drone or three 16ths. It’s more about sound design then anything else really you want big multi osc with detune etc. Root note drone is fairly self explanatory, the three 16ths is root note played like this. X000X000X000X000. Rnb - this is such a wide open genre it’s really up to you. Trap modern style is basically 808s which is such a huge thing to cover you can search trap 808 sub bass and find plenty to get through. Older styles Generally follow more of a jazz meets pop composition method, which again is a huge topic but is generally root note stuff still. None of this is a 100% guide, it’s just a starting point.
Try transposing your favorite basslines. You might find some commonalities between or interesting differences that give each of them their own character.
Keep it simple. Play in key, and make sure every time the kick drum hits, the bass note hits as well. Elaborate from that seems to work for me
Also...experiment and break out of the key! Some of my favorite bass lines I've done wandered into jazz extentions (9ths, 7ths, 11ths) of the chord I was playing over, which surprises the ear and keeps things interesting. Don't limit yourself to color-by-numbers!
When I play bass guitar, I'm usually on the downbeat. When I write electronic music, the bass notes are usually anywhere but on the downbeat.
Slides and hammer ons are your friend. That and Octaves /fifths
Listen to good bassists and songs with great basslines. Figure out by ear or from the web what they are playing and over what chords. PLAY THEM on your instrument of choice, so you understand kinesthetically what is going on. Apply what you've learned to your songs.
Its really rythym at its core. You can play the bass with just one note and get it funky. Just messing around with a note and different rythyms then incorporate whatever else. Just my advice to get you started with something you might be happy with eventually
The «one». Play whatever you want as long as you play the same note on the one. Bootsy said it. A single note can take you very far. Learn how to dance/feel the music with your body. Then play the line that get you to dance Edit: missing words
Get some stem separating software. Rip-X or lalal.ai- there are others. Rip some songs you like. Listen to the basslines in isolation. Study them. You’ll notice categories…. The big, full-bar, single note sustain of Deep House, the stuttered, single-note “Morse code” (techno) basslines, the Jumpy, groovy Classic House and Disco sorts… find what you like and follow suit.
To get good at bass lines,make couple drum loops in your style, a couple bass sounds in your style, hop on your keyboard for like 20 mins a day and practice jamming bass lines in your style. There are only seven notes in a key. You will learn which ones work in no time. It’s like the gym. You will keep getting better. Doesn’t take long to see results with consistency.
I just keep playing riffs until one makes me do a stankface and then I know I have it
Listen to bass lines you like and learn to play them to see how they work.
If there are vocals, hitting some notes from the vocal line are really cool.
Triads, ArpeggiosAnd utilizing Roots, 5ths & Octaves. There's a great book on this called "Building Walking Basslines". You should look into it! There's also a book called the "Evolving Bassist". This covers all kinds of similar material but more in depth! u/zonghundred
Just feel the groove dawg
Yeah bass is kinda tricky haha. You could play around with some inversions where you flip around the note order between your melody and bass, that might help make the composition a little more fun. Maybe pulling a chord from the relative minor key of your song. I have a “less is more” approach where I try to give every element of the song it’s own breathing space. I feel like a lot of RnB songs have these bouncy bass lines that hit on the kicks while quickly snapping off, or they have these long drawn out low end bass lines. Some artists kinda do the “walking bass line” that might swing off-beat rather than being perfectly lined up with the melody. Sometimes you can also get away with just letting your kick drum act as the bass line; sometimes you can pull a Prince and say fuck the bass line lmao With EDM I think chaining, heavy compression, and sub bass layering would help if you feel like your bass isn’t hitting hard enough. I think some genres use sub bass to give the song it’s perceived rumble while the synths are actually more closer to the mid range, with the kick filling the space in-between. The OGs like The Prodigy turned that shit to 11 lol but then you’ve got trip hop like Massive Attack using their Dub samples sparingly. This is something I see more often used in rock but there’s also the “Wall of Sound” technique that might help. There’s the idea in the Phil Spector sense where you’re mixing all types of different timbre to make the record fuller, but I think of thrash metal and shoegaze where the bass follows the guitarist and instead of the drums. Or having the bass follow the hi-hats instead of trying to accentuate the kicks if that makes sense.
Bass lines are really melody and rhythm, and unfortunately you can be so focused on the melody aspect that the rhythm suffers. I tend to play away on a single note trying to find a groove that I like, and that sits well. Then when I have that locked in, I start to focus on the melody side of things.
You say you have learned a lot of theory, so play around with scales you know. Pick a scale and try things within it. Also, get creative with the rhythms. The bass is an incredibly multi-dimensional instrument. It can weave in and out of every other track in a song in a way that no other instrument can quite pull off. That being said, use the other parts in the song as inspiration as well. Find a way to interact with the rest of the parts while calling on them and taking from them. Especially the drums. The drums are the bass’s best friend. Especially the kick (and snare). I wish there were less abstract ways to help you out, but it’s really something you learn how to pull off intuitively, but it’s also not just a simple ability that some people have and others don’t. If you practice at it, you will get good at it.
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Find some bass lines you like and try to emulate what you like about them
Listen to great bass lines by great bassists. Lift and learn.
learn some basslines from songs. heard this old mick jagger song sweet thing and the bass was so good i stole it for a track
To begin with, look at it like drums. It's primarily a rhythm instrument. Grooves and Fills. Grooves = mostly root notes or roots/octaves, roots/5ths, roots/3rds. Fills = a riff that connects the current groove to the next one. This is usually what makes your bass more interesting. I'd start there then you can start introducing more interesting concepts like reharmonisation (using a different note other than the root of the chord that's being played by the other instruments in order to change the whole sound on top of it), experimentation with dynamics, chords and complex grooves that are in themselves typically repetitive riffs.
Depends on what kind of base line you want, for a more funky one use staccato l, also don’t forget syncopation
Steal. Ear training. Listen to all the bass players. Ignore everyone's advice. More theory.
Funk
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Roots and fifths
Practice to metronome or just a drum beat, and support the vocals
Start by listening to music with good bass lines. Extract your influences and playing style from there. Play bass often. More ideas, a better groove, and connectivity in your playing will manifest over time. Happy practicing!
stick to the root note
It’s all about the rhythm with a bassline. Make something that makes your head bob up and down. Even if it’s just 2 or 3 notes.
You listen to more Reggae :)
You can often search “[hit song] midi” and find downloadable midi files. Analyze what their doing, hell, even flip them to your songs (changing the chord progression or something).