How do I Make a Great Bass Line as a Bass Player?

by Ari 17 Aug 2017 2 minute read

Play in a band and asked to contribute a great bass line to a song?

Happy jamming and want to take it a step further?

Writing a song from the bottom up?

Being Able to Create a Great Bass Line From Scratch is a Useful, Rewarding and Learnable Skill!

While some great bass lines are song defining and iconic (Another One Bites the Dust for example) what makes a bass line great is a lot about context – one juicy whole note at the right time can make or break a song, while in a different spot an exciting and busy fill can be just the thing that is needed. My partner is a composer (and a bassist, too) and he has much opened my eyes to the importance of always thinking about the emotional impact of any piece of music and what role the bass plays to contribute to the song.

If you are skilled in theory and rhythm, and are knowledgable in how to use dynamics, phrasing, articulation, range of the instrument, density of notes versus space and more, your bass lines will earn the label “great” indeed. Note: My course teaches music theory, technique, fret board harmony and lots on great bass line creation.

Theory, rhythm, dynamics, phrasing, sound, range of the instrument etc… all these can be studied and learned.

Analyze your favorite songs asking yourself some important questions using your knowledge and you should be golden.

In this article I talk bullet points how to make a bass line great. If you do not see the box below, please click this link

Read Ariane Cap’s answer to How do I make a great bassline as bass player? on Quora

or a similar question answered:

How can I learn theory faster so I can create my own music and bass lines?

Subscribe to Newsletter

Related Posts

bossa vs swing

MultiBass Collaboration in our Live Practice to make you Smile

The Tie Trick

Tracie Cohort Image

The Power of your Accountability Coach

bass warm-up

Your Hands Don’t Have Muscles (But They Have This)

Shop on Amazon

More articles you might like:

Bassist, author, educator.

Groove enthusiast and learning nerd.

Joined by 15,000+ Bassists

Your Instructor

Hi. I'm Ari.

As a bassist, I have toured/played/recorded with a variety of rock, Jazz, and funk bands, I have worked with some incredible producers (Keith Olsen) and musicians (Paul Hanson, Muriel Anderson) and I toured Brazil with Stu Hamm as a duo.

 

As a bass teacher, I have taught at London Bass Day, Gerald Veasley’s Bass Boot Camp, SBL, Truefire, notreble… I even ran my own music school for a few years before gigs took me back on the road.

 

One thing to know about me is that I teach because I am absolutely fascinated with the learning process. And I am obsessed with helping others realize their musical potential.

 

When I started playing bass, I excelled very quickly because I had an amazing teacher who taught me using a powerful method. This method transformed my playing so quickly that I passed a bunch of high-level university auditions and even tested out of entire classes at university even though I had been playing for only a very short time.

 

That’s what, many years later turned into one of my books, co-written with Wolf Wein, called “The Pattern System for the Bass Player”. I created entire systems of learning based on some of these ideas and wrote books and created courses together with Wolf. Our bass books have sold over 30,000 copies and garnered rave reviews.

 

I started teaching online in 2009 and have embraced technology as a powerful learning tool since then, never losing sight of the importance of providing feedback and personalized guidance to learners.

 

Read more…

Get Ari's
Notes to Self (and Bassists)
into your inbox once a week

Videos • Tips • Practice Hacks • Transcriptions