My role as a bassist is to make the other guitarists look good. My bass lines mostly just mirror whatever the guitarists do. It's that damn easy. Or is it?
Normally, people think that bassists are not really that important to a band. I've had my fair share of "hey, I can do that too" or "your guitarist is doing that, how come you're copying it?" or even "you call that playing? that's too damn easy!" comments (varies with language - tagalog, english). I can grasp creative criticisms, but I don't get why people have to point out the obvious. Moving on. So yeah, being the bassist in the band is not the most flashy position in my opinion. Most of the time, people will be more enticed to listen to the parts the guitarists are playing and thus the bassist gets ignored. Well, that happens alot to me. It's not that my bass parts are inaudible, it's just that the sound I produce register at a low frequency making it a bit unnoticable.
Why the fuck did I choose bass anyway, given all these negative shit?
Well, mostly because I don't want to stand out. I don't like being "flashy", therefore I can't be a guitarist (guy playing 6-string electric guitar). It's not that I don't have the skills to play solos or complicated riffs so don't get the wrong idea. Trust me, I can play shit that you'll never expect a bassist to play *wink*.
My roles as a bassist are:
- To provide solid sound foundation.
- To emphasize chord progressions.
- To "glue" together the sound of the drums and the guitars.
I like making the others sound good. Good in a sense that I provide the foundation for their sound by juxtaposing (copying-repeating-duplicating) the progression of chords and shit like that. The emphasis of chord progressions make the sound more solid and neat rather than fucked up and messy. I've actually tried to not play bass in a song (Peace Sells by Megadeth) during one of our band's practice session. It sounded like absolute shit. Think of it as eating ramen without the soup. The sound's still there, but it's not that solid without the bass backing up the guitarists. With regards to "glue-ing" together sounds, the bass keeps the guitars and drums in check by providing the basic chord progressions. As you can see, all three roles coincide with each other.
About bass parts being easy, well not all. There are some cases where you can just play an open E-string for the whole song. There are also some cases where you have to do fills and solos. Depending on the song, the mirroring part may be easy or hard. Let's say you're doing a song by AC/DC, chances are that you'll only be plucking three or four notes which make up the main progession of the song, now that's Goddamn easy. However, let's say you're doing a song by Lamb of God, chances are that you'll be mirroring some fast riffs, now that's quite challenging.
As a bassist, I've learned to keep my act clean and simple. Clean in a way that I don't mess up my parts or be a distraction ot my fellow band mates. Simple in a way that I reduce the chances of my pride getting blown up, with relation to showing off. After all, there's no point in chasing your own tail right?
I like being a bassist. I care about what people tend to say or how people tend to generalize the concept of being a bassist. With that in mind, I want to prove them all wrong. I want them to see that bassists are capable of amazing things, take a look at Victor Wooten for example. Now that's an amazing bassist right there. Bassists are underrated, underappreciated, and sometimes even taken for granted. Well, we bassists have an answer for that and it's a big fat middle finger with a big fat smile :]
Til next time,
Kim
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