You start playing an instrument and realize a musician you like play's really simple stuff........

It's a silly thing, but i have been playing bass a lot these past few months. And as i started reading tabs for a lot of songs... i realized a lot of rock bands are kind of ''meh'' on bass

Like they just play a random simple note the entire song & maybe a rift.. nothign in between. Of course there are some rock bands like Living Colour, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Led Zeppelin, Fishbone, Dream Theatre, Pink Floyd, Opec, Faith No More etc. Have great bass lines & solos.. and they are not afraid to play more then one note at a time

I noticed a lot of this with 80's rock i grew up with, Dokken, The Scorpions, Journey. I can see why the guitar players are so loved & do most of the work. The bass is just kind of there and not really helping to progress the song along in a lot of ways.

What do you cats think?

nursev said:

Nope unless they're playing a clarinet which I doubt

stravros pazarentzis must be more your style

As long as I like the song I don't care how simple it is. BTW I didn't know you played bass Guns. I play piano

aardvark15 said:

As long as I like the song I don't care how simple it is. BTW I didn't know you played bass Guns. I play piano

I play piano as well , i stopped playing full-time for awhile , but me & my roomie got a new one & play quite a lot. I also was in orchestra & do violin & harmonica. I can somewhat and i meanonly somewhat play drums:P

Besides that i suck at other instruments

Gunsnhalen said:

aardvark15 said:

As long as I like the song I don't care how simple it is. BTW I didn't know you played bass Guns. I play piano

I play piano as well , i stopped playing full-time for awhile , but me & my roomie got a new one & play quite a lot. I also was in orchestra & do violin & harmonica. I can somewhat and i meanonly somewhat play drums:P

Besides that i suck at other instruments

How good are you at violin and harmonica? And can't everyone play drums . I'm not trying to whore but if you want to here my music you might want to check out the org's artist thread. I'm thinking about posting a song in a couple days

aardvark15 said:

Gunsnhalen said:

I play piano as well , i stopped playing full-time for awhile , but me & my roomie got a new one & play quite a lot. I also was in orchestra & do violin & harmonica. I can somewhat and i meanonly somewhat play drums:P

Besides that i suck at other instruments

How good are you at violin and harmonica? And can't everyone play drums . I'm not trying to whore but if you want to here my music you might want to check out the org's artist thread. I'm thinking about posting a song in a couple days

Of course! i would love to hear it. Whore all you want

I used to be great at violin, but i haven't practiced in forever so idk now. Harmonica i am pretty good at.

Gunsnhalen said:

aardvark15 said:

How good are you at violin and harmonica? And can't everyone play drums . I'm not trying to whore but if you want to here my music you might want to check out the org's artist thread. I'm thinking about posting a song in a couple days

Of course! i would love to hear it. Whore all you want

I used to be great at violin, but i haven't practiced in forever so idk now. Harmonica i am pretty good at.

I took harmonica lessons when I was about 5. I haven't played since I was about 10.

Here's a song I made:

http://soundcloud.com/aar...15/revenge

I've made some other ones on the soundcloud as well

[Edited 9/9/12 7:10am]

I think I know what you mean. We're kind of picking on rock music but it seems like a lot of rock bands have very basic and unmemorable bass lines in their music. A lot of the time you can't even hear what the bass is doing and if you got rid of it altogether it wouldn't make the songs any weaker.

I don't think there is anything wrong with simple basslines that are very catchy but I do think that a lot of rock songs feature overly simplistic bass lines that don't add anything to the song.

Kiss/Gene Simmons is a band that I would argue got progessively lazier with their bass lines over the years. In the seventies Gene often came up with some basic but solid bass lines but sometime in the eighties he got lazy and stopped trying.

In another forum I was discussing Blur vs. Oasis and made the point that Blur/Alex James were much superior to Oasis in terms of creating memorable bass lines. You may or may not be a fan of Blur but at least in most of their songs you can hear what the bass is doing. With Oasis the bass is often very muted and buried under a wall of guitars, particularly circa 1994-1997. Once Guigsy left and Andy Bell came on board things got a little better.

This is a generalisation but I think a lot of rock bands just stick the least talented guy with the bass and that results in some less than memorable bass lines. In rock music you can get away with having a below average bass player compared to R & B where you usually need someone solid on the bass.

rialb said:

I think I know what you mean. We're kind of picking on rock music but it seems like a lot of rock bands have very basic and unmemorable bass lines in their music. A lot of the time you can't even hear what the bass is doing and if you got rid of it altogether it wouldn't make the songs any weaker.

I don't think there is anything wrong with simple basslines that are very catchy but I do think that a lot of rock songs feature overly simplistic bass lines that don't add anything to the song.

Kiss/Gene Simmons is a band that I would argue got progessively lazier with their bass lines over the years. In the seventies Gene often came up with some basic but solid bass lines but sometime in the eighties he got lazy and stopped trying.

In another forum I was discussing Blur vs. Oasis and made the point that Blur/Alex James were much superior to Oasis in terms of creating memorable bass lines. You may or may not be a fan of Blur but at least in most of their songs you can hear what the bass is doing. With Oasis the bass is often very muted and buried under a wall of guitars, particularly circa 1994-1997. Once Guigsy left and Andy Bell came on board things got a little better.

This is a generalisation but I think a lot of rock bands just stick the least talented guy with the bass and that results in some less than memorable bass lines. In rock music you can get away with having a below average bass player compared to R & B where you usually need someone solid on the bass.

This was a good read rialb

grant i mentioned some rock bands have killer bass players, Flea is an obvious one. Doug wimbish from Living Colour, Fishbones few bassists.

Another great one is Roger glover!, but i noticed if rock bands have good bass players theya re eitehr funk-rock types or blues-rock types where they have to adapt to more styles on bass.

As for Blur, Oasis & Kiss. Blur is liek way superior on bass i can barely hear bass on many Oasis recordings, same with a lot of Kiss 80's songs! it was a wall of guitar and most songs the bass was just there.

The Scorpions the bass is loud & it seem's it's grooving.. but i played the zoo for ex.. homeboy is hitting open string D for 90% of the song

Gunsnhalen said:

rialb said:

I think I know what you mean. We're kind of picking on rock music but it seems like a lot of rock bands have very basic and unmemorable bass lines in their music. A lot of the time you can't even hear what the bass is doing and if you got rid of it altogether it wouldn't make the songs any weaker.

I don't think there is anything wrong with simple basslines that are very catchy but I do think that a lot of rock songs feature overly simplistic bass lines that don't add anything to the song.

Kiss/Gene Simmons is a band that I would argue got progessively lazier with their bass lines over the years. In the seventies Gene often came up with some basic but solid bass lines but sometime in the eighties he got lazy and stopped trying.

In another forum I was discussing Blur vs. Oasis and made the point that Blur/Alex James were much superior to Oasis in terms of creating memorable bass lines. You may or may not be a fan of Blur but at least in most of their songs you can hear what the bass is doing. With Oasis the bass is often very muted and buried under a wall of guitars, particularly circa 1994-1997. Once Guigsy left and Andy Bell came on board things got a little better.

This is a generalisation but I think a lot of rock bands just stick the least talented guy with the bass and that results in some less than memorable bass lines. In rock music you can get away with having a below average bass player compared to R & B where you usually need someone solid on the bass.

This was a good read rialb

grant i mentioned some rock bands have killer bass players, Flea is an obvious one. Doug wimbish from Living Colour, Fishbones few bassists.

Another great one is Roger glover!, but i noticed if rock bands have good bass players theya re eitehr funk-rock types or blues-rock types where they have to adapt to more styles on bass.

As for Blur, Oasis & Kiss. Blur is liek way superior on bass i can barely hear bass on many Oasis recordings, same with a lot of Kiss 80's songs! it was a wall of guitar and most songs the bass was just there.

The Scorpions the bass is loud & it seem's it's grooving.. but i played the zoo for ex.. homeboy is hitting open string D for 90% of the song

Yep, an awful lot of rock bands just go dum-dum-dum-dum hitting the same two or three notes for the majority of the song. Listen to Van Halen, those are some very basic bass "riffs."

Dust off your copy of Kiss and check out a song like "Cold Gin." I'm not saying that the bass on that track is on the level of a James Jamerson but it's a nice little groove. Love Gun is maybe the album that best showcases Gene's bass playing. Of course a song like "Sure Know Something" has some nice bits in it too:

It's very simple but it pushes the song along quite nicely.

I think Ace played the bass on this one:

Nothing else really jumps out at me but I'm guessing that Dynasty and Unmasked might feature a bit more bass than usual (those two albums being from their "disco" phase).

rialb said:

Gunsnhalen said:

This was a good read rialb

grant i mentioned some rock bands have killer bass players, Flea is an obvious one. Doug wimbish from Living Colour, Fishbones few bassists.

Another great one is Roger glover!, but i noticed if rock bands have good bass players theya re eitehr funk-rock types or blues-rock types where they have to adapt to more styles on bass.

As for Blur, Oasis & Kiss. Blur is liek way superior on bass i can barely hear bass on many Oasis recordings, same with a lot of Kiss 80's songs! it was a wall of guitar and most songs the bass was just there.

The Scorpions the bass is loud & it seem's it's grooving.. but i played the zoo for ex.. homeboy is hitting open string D for 90% of the song

Yep, an awful lot of rock bands just go dum-dum-dum-dum hitting the same two or three notes for the majority of the song. Listen to Van Halen, those are some very basic bass "riffs."

Dust off your copy of Kiss and check out a song like "Cold Gin." I'm not saying that the bass on that track is on the level of a James Jamerson but it's a nice little groove. Love Gun is maybe the album that best showcases Gene's bass playing. Of course a song like "Sure Know Something" has some nice bits in it too:

It's very simple but it pushes the song along quite nicely.

I think Ace played the bass on this one:

Nothing else really jumps out at me but I'm guessing that Dynasty and Unmasked might feature a bit more bass than usual (those two albums being from their "disco" phase).

Idk if u remeber, but i actually said i like Dynasty there are only a few kiss records i go back & listen to every track. I Liked the funk rhythum on that one & Love gun.. PLaster Caster & I Stole Your LOve are fun grooves.

I also like All Hells Breakin Loose... other then that not many kiss songs i admire on bass