Let the bass player handle the bass note in slash chords...

CaseOfAce

I posted the my guess at the chords to Sam Ryder's Space Man in the Eurovision thread
and it's chock full of slash chords (not the Gnr fella) - which I guess means it was written on piano / synth?

Verse - E  then B  followed by an Eb / G  to  G# minor

on the last go round  F# down to an E and then that well worn trick move (IV to IVm) to Em before landing on the B major tonic

Chorus is E to B / Eb to C# minor
which then goes to a B major before doing that run up of F# to Eb/G to G#minor 
and then a quick B to C#..
ending with some sort of F major to the B major tonic

When covering such stuff do you as guitar players have confidence in letting the bass player emphasise the bass notes of such chords or do you end up playing the full slash chords on guitar.

I tend to do the latter but I'm coming round to the idea of trusting the bass player to get the idea across - and have found in the heat of battle full slash chords can just get you buried in the mix with the lower registers.
(we do Cher's Turn Back Time and in the pre-chorus - there's an E / G# and a F# / Bb - I really would be better off just playing E and F# power chords there)....

viz

Nooooo - inversions are great, the bassist can then do the root when the music demands both the root and a non-root note near the bottom. Plus they allow you to play mid lines; Brian May did that a lot. Also they allow you to do the inverted note as an octave - it sounds really cool. 

Summary: Keep yer inversions, inversions are ace. Or should I say eac. 

shufflebeat

As an acoustic fingerpicker on slow Irish tunes I like to focus on maj/min3's on the bottom to leave the key ambiguous til the fiddle player comes in and spoils everything.

RocknRollDave

A very good question. 
The bassists I play with are all very good, so I don't worry about them playing wrong notes or notes that don't support the harmonic content of the chords, if that doesn't sound too pretentious... But, yeah, I probably play the slash chords anyway, in most cases. 

slacker

If its written as a slash chord I'll play it unless there's a bassist. If its written as a normal chord I'll play it. However if there's a bassist I might play 6 strings and let the bassist play the root. So root position d with an a and f# on the bottom and let the bassist play a d.

mart

If there's a bassist then it doesn't matter whether you play the slash chord or not - the bass will determine what the heard chord is (unless your bassist is Peter Hook etc). 

Say if the slash chord is E/G#, and you play that inversion, but the bassist just plays the root E, then all your fanciness will go unnoticed - the audience will hear the root, and they'll hear a straight E chord. But if you play a straight E (or any inversion), and the bassist plays the G#, then the audience will hear it as the correct slash chord.

TheMadMick

Leave the slash to the bass player. That's what's intended in my view.

roberty

The answer is 'it depends'

merlin

If there's a good sounding line to the root notes then it's worth bringing it out and playing it, although a nice melodic line in the bass is also lovely. As @roberty says, it depends. 

roberty

merlin said:

If there's a good sounding line to the root notes then it's worth bringing it out and playing it, although a nice melodic line in the bass is also lovely. As @roberty says, it depends. 

Yep you can double it for emphasis, eg if there's a step-wise walking pattern that you want to bring out

viz

Yeah like in Champions after "we'll keep on fighting to the end" duh-duh-duh-DUH - that last chord - well it’s usually notated F#(dim 7), but harmonically speaking I think of it as a D7 (b9) in first inversion. And it’s bloody great. 

Stratavarious

I am happy if the bassist is in key and on time

merlin

Stratavarious said:

I am happy if the bassist is in key and on time

You are VERY demanding.....

viz

Stratavarious said:

I am happy if the bassist is in key and on time

What, at the same time?

joeW

Rarely play more than 3 note chords anyway, so happy to leave it to the bass player 

PolarityMan

Why are your bass players playing anything other than the brr brr deng?

JanekLubanski

I play at home. Slash chords? I don't give a f**k.

Stratavarious

viz said:

Stratavarious said:

I am happy if the bassist is in key and on time

What, at the same time?

One can dream, can’t they?

mart

JanekLubanski said:

I play at home. Slash chords? I don't give a f**k.

If you're playing on your own at home, then using the right slash chords will often make a bigger difference than when you're playing in a band. So give it a go, and you may find the enjoyment outweighs the challenge. 

And if it doesn't, you can feel smug knowing that you were right all along about not bothering with them!

horse

I think there's room for either approach depending on the song and arrangement. It can be nice and chunky for the guitar to not include the shifted bass note sometimes.

Off topic, but this reminded me of the (possibly) opposite concept of "pedalling the bass". My GCSE music teacher back in the 90s (who had played sax in the spiders from Mars gig film) taught us that term / concept, but in later life with other musicians I've found they've not always known what I mean when I say it - not sure how common the term is in use?

TheBigDipper

Just limiting my comment to electric guitars in a band context…

If you're playing by yourself, then play the slash chords, because you will be adding the bass line to the song and it will sound better and more faithful to the original composition/arrangement. 

If you could break down the recording, it's not that likely that the guitarist played a slash chord unless they wrote it on an acoustic guitar and wrote the part for the bass player. It's going to be the bass players notes doing something interesting as they take the band from one chord to the next whilst the guitarist plays a simpler chord. You see slash chords in sheet music because the songs are generally transcribed by pianists. They hear the notes being played, accurately put them onto the stave and then try and find a guitar chord they can give the guitarist in a chord chart that represents what an entire band is playing. 

I find bands that have guitarists playing slash chords as the bass player plays the bottom notes will sound a bit mushy unless their timing is very good. Stay out of each other’s frequencies! :-)