Bass Guitarist
 

I'm having one hell of a time finding a bassist and I'm close to giving up. How empty is our sound going to be without it? I have a drummer, a ryhthm guitarist, me (lead guitar), and a singer. Will having the rhythm guitar be enough?

No! It will not be enough. You neeeeeed bass. This is coming from a bassist.

Nah, not really, it depends what sound you are going for and personal preference. Personally, I like bass so for me it would feel as though it was missing something.

Can't you just play without a bassist until you find one?

Just find another guitarist and make him play bass.

^ This.

Just don't make the mistake my band did, of finding two guitarists, needing a bassist, and then asking a guy who was a lot better of a guitarist, than the guitarists. Guitarists tend to have ego. There's not much WRONG with that, but we totally do have ego, and if you get a guy in to play bass who rips on guitar, the other two guitarists will get weird about it and start assuming things.

Our situation worked out. I moved from bass to guitar when one of our guitarists quit the band, but before then, along with bad practice rooms, our band suffered a lot from the other two guitarists feeling intimidated when I would show them licks before moving back to the bass. The phrase "Why are you not playing the guitar, I'll play bass" got said a lot and I would always make it clear I was just happy to be playing anything.

Depends on what kind of sound you're shooting for and what sort of tones you already use with the guitars. I seem to remember the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion being the exact same lineup as what you describe and no one complained about missing bass.

I'm going to assume the reason neither of you pick up bass duties is because no one in the band owns the instrument, right? It wouldn't be a bad investment, and you might end up surprising yourself with new techniques and abilities you pick up that can apply to both instruments.

On that note, have you or the rhythm guitarist ever considered a baritone guitar? The scale length of the neck puts it between a standard electric and a bass, generally it's around 28" and the instrument is tuned from B to B. Essentially you get an extra low string with a lot more low-end tone. Great for surf rock and more percussive lines.

Maybe try looking for a tuba player instead. :D

You should just have your rhythm guitarist play bass since rhythm guitar is pretty useless

Nobody cares about bass in rock bands. Just pull some bum in off the street & teach him 2 notes.

I've come to this conclusion with my own band, although it really does depend on the sound you're going for. I knew a couple of guys who had a metal project and all they needed was the drummer and guitarist, but then I've seen a few guys play in a blues rock/jam band and they absolutely used the rhythm guitar and bass to full effect.

Depends on what you're playing. For example, if you're gonna play Rush you'll need some bass in there. If it's just a jam band, then you could get away with a beefy rythm guitar. Or you could go the way of Local H, or The White Stripes which utilize a mock bass tone from a guitar.

Yeah, go for it. Its not like the white stripes have always sounded terrible live, or anything...

Don't do this.

If you want a bass tone invest in a cheap bass guitar. Playing a bass line on a guitar sounds like crap, regardless of the amount of effects you apply to it. Either re-write the songs to feature a heavier and more prominent rhythm part or get the actual instrument and have one (or both) of the guitar players pulling double duty.

Switch a guitarist to bass and get a synthesizer, which you can take turns to play.

Why didn't I think of that. :D

Was just giving the OP some vaiable options.

It would sound terrible. I don't call that viable.

I just finished a song that has NO bass in it, and I used a "Mock" bass sound from a guitar. It doesn't sound terrible at all. But that is certainly my own opinion.

Believe me, if it doesn't sound like crap, it'll be a first as far as I'm concerned.

Judge for yourself:

SoundClick artist: PRD Ideas - page with MP3 music downloads

The above doesn't sound bad at all, and I've heard other people do it and it sounds just fine. So long as you're not trying to make the "bass" part too prominent in the mix, it should be okay at doing its job. I've attempted to resort to this a couple of times when I was just too lazy to grab my bass from a friend's house. I didn't end up liking any of it, but I did find it convenient enough to just stack an additional guitar behind the lead and give it a heavier sound.

Thats just it. The main guitar riff in that piece serves as the bass line as well as the rythm, and is not real prominent but lays low for a backdrop.

...and thanks.

Aren't the guitar parts on Pink Floyd's One of These Days played on two bass guitars? If so, it must be possible to play bass parts on a guitar. Or, am I just confused?

That would be a bass guitar w/delay, and a lap steel.

You sir, are confused.

This is probably the best route for you. In the studio, it doesn't really matter because you can keep layering the tracks you need. For live, the only time a rhythm is crucial is for harmonies and the such. Lots of bands get away with just a bass anchoring rhythm with solos over it. Bryan Beller from Dethklok re-wrote the bass lines to cover the bass and guitar parts while the other guitarist were doing some harmony thing. That could work to.

Indeed, but I am certain I read or heard an interview in which Gilmour or Waters said they used two bass guitars. I could be wrong and I don't think it was in Wikipedia. Nevertheless, this is what Wiki says:

"The song is instrumental except for a distorted, low voice that says 'One of these days I'm going to cut you into little pieces' and features double-tracked bass guitars played by David Gilmour and Roger Waters. Waters' bass is panned hard left with Gilmour's fading into the right channel. Gilmour's bass sound is quite muted and dull."

Tell that to Geddy Lee god damnit.

No, it won't be enough. The bass and drums make up the rhythm section and that is the foundation of the song that you sing and play lead over. And a riff sounds better if a guitar is double by a bass than another guitar.

I don't know if you are going to take the advice from anyone here, like buy a bass, a synth, guitar synth, or pitch shifter pedal etc but what ever your decision is make sure that the financial responsibility falls on the shoulders of the rhythm guitarist.

Yeah, it's all about money...

whata crock.

John Entwistle and Chris Squire are great bass players.

Hold on. Double and triple tracking is NOT AT ALL the same as having multiple bass lines happening at the same time. That's a studio trick that Jimmy Page popularized to really thicken up his sound (before the advent of Octaver pedals). Multiple bass lines within a piece of music is generally uncommon due to the fact that it's far too easy for the lines to become muddy and obscured due to the limited range of frequencies available within the instrument. If anything it becomes a bit of a novelty where one person plays 'normal' bass lines while the other is basically playing the equivalent of lead guitar. That's not to say it never happens or results in greatness (like a small handful of Tortoise tunes I can't pinpoint at the moment), just that it's quite rare.

Essentially double or triple tracking is exactly what it sounds like, 2 or 3 tracks of the same part recorded separately then layered over top of each other. Check out Led Zep's Black Dog for a great example, Page actually played the different layers in different octaves, same notes, same riff, but the end effect once all the layers are compressed into one is a SUPER thick sounding guitar.

As for the whole thing about mimicking the bass line with a guitar, as we've said it's generally a poor idea. Though it's worth clarifying that it really depends on the style. If you just need some simple bass tones to punch things up a bit and essentially just beef up the root note of whatever the guitar is doing then it's not so bad. If you're trying to play any sort of independent bass line by mimicking it through a guitar it will sound horrible.

Like it or not, it is, and playing music is one of the most expensive hobbies out there. So yeah, money will ALWAYS be a factor.

Not for me it aint. Just gimme a string on a plank brudder and I'll make my noise.

Yes it is. Any electric instrument is bound to keep you spending money. If not for electricity then new strings and if when things go wrong with it. Amp, and pedals, tuner... If you ever want to record you need even more.

If you are content strumming an accoustic on after work at your house thats fine, but if you plan on taking it anywhere you will need more. Can definitly be done cheaply though. I have a 300 dollar guitar and 300$ amp with about 150 in pedals. Thats much less than many spend on an electric alone.

That's actually the amount I'm hoping to get when I finally put my LTD up for sale hahaha (it just collects dust for the most part now).

Sounds ****ed up but I keep my tube amp for 2 reasons.

1. Its ****ing awesome.

2. If I ever cant pay my rent I can sell it and have time to find another job.

Didn't check this for while.

Honestly, the mix as a whole is pretty poor there. There's no definition to anything and your lowered guitar thing is indistinguishable from what happens when you just mix a regular guitar with the bass whacked all the way up. Its muddy all over.

On top of that, your kick drum is actually so quiet in the mix that its barely audible even during the lower break.

And I'm not saying this just because I don't like using lowered bass tones from guitars. I'm saying this because that genuinely IS a pretty poor overall mix, and a big part of that is that your kick drum is too quiet (and too soft sounding, there's no impact to it, it soudns too much like WHUF and not enough like THUD and you've got way too much bass in the mix on everything, which is robbing everything of attack and definition. If you compare what you've done there, with something like, say, this:


10. Pet - A Perfect Circle - YouTube

You can hear that despite the mix being just as, if not more, bass heavy, than what you've made there, nothing is stepping on anything else. You can clearly seperate the bass from the guitars, and the guitars are doing their job in holding down the MIDRANGE of the mix, where they SHOULD be.

Because of that, the mix has been handled properly. You'll find very swiftly if you hang around with anyone who mixes properly, that one of the basics of mixing guitars and bass together is actually to run a High Pass filter on the guitars at about 100Hz, to remove the low end flub inherent in the instrument when playing powerchords.

Why only powerchords? Easy. There's a shared harmonic between a note and its 5th. When playing the two together, a beat frequency is created with a frequency exactly half of the root funadmental. That means when you play powerchords you can actually hear a tone an octave below what you're playing.

That ruins mixes very quickly, because the guitar starts to step on frequency ranges the bass should be covering with its own timbre. The bass of the whole mix becomes very undefined and in some cases even starts to show signs of chorusing as the instrument that SHOULD be handling the low end, fights for it with the instrument whose actual fundamentals should be in the midrange.

And thats why getting a proper bass is way better than using mock bass tones.

Umm, ok. You can blame orDrumbox for the kick drum. It took me all of about 10 minutes to DL it, and set up a drumtrack. All my tunes are created in Audacity, which is likely way below standards for professional recording such as the PC you posted. I put up my tune as an EXAMPLE but if you want to pick it apart, thats your perogi.

Dude, I'm just a hack with a guitar.

Phhhhhhht... I'll whittle me a plank and tie a piece of string to it.

Cost = $0.00

You put up your tune as an example of getting a good sound without a bass.

I pointed out it isn't a good sound.

Now you're trying to back out of the discussion as if I'm being an ******* for standing by what I've said since the start?

Yeah, my apologies. I does suck. Back to the drawing board for me. It's a shame I don't have someone like you to do all the sound engineering when inspiration strikes, and I'm being serious.

Just for clarity. I offered the tune in question up for some other guitarists to hear and here's a couple responses:

But the "Guitar as Bass" wasn't in question, so... I really don't know what that hell I'm trying to say. I'll just stop now before I dig myself any deeper.

I got positive responses to a lot of stuff years ago I'd be ashamed to show people today. People tend to be nice for the sake of it. It takes someone informed to make a constructive criticism.

I'm not going to change my mind. I listened, I analysed, and I posted why I think that mix is bad, and I also posted a number of things you could do to fix it, first among which is to high pass the guitars and get a proper bass sound, just like the vast majority of rock production you will ever hear. They're not doing it because they can do without it, they're doing it because its better. A *lot* better.