Bass is the instrument that few musicians in a band understand or even know what the bassist is doing. Possibly sometimes the bassist doesn't know what he is doing......
I jest of course. From my perspective, the bass is the only fully interpretive instrument in the band. Take any song and five bassists will likely play bass differently for this song. And all will be right as long as they are playing in the right key! Googling the original band and learning the bassists chops is not the only way to play bass on the song. The original bassist has, himself, interpreted the song and he played it as he felt it should be played.
Guitarists have not got this freedom. Well known riffs like SCOM, Sweet Home Alabama etc need to be 100% right by the original as the audience know the song and expect it to sound as per the record. The 'correct' way to play bass on Brown Eyed Girl does not work for me. By correct I mean the way the guys on YouTube play it. I hear it differently and play it differently. And at no stage did any of the band members say that my efforts sounded wrong. For some songs they might say - we will play it with a shuffle feel and leave it up to me to make sense of that.
So: is bass the final frontier? It may well be. No other instrument, jazz guitar, sax etc. allows the player complete freedom to play a song as he hears it in his head. And if the groove is good, nobody in the audience is even aware of this fact.
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. [Albert Einstein]
Nil Satis Nisi Optimum
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Studio: https://www.voltperoctave.com
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Football is rubbish.
Studio: https://www.voltperoctave.com
Music: https://www.euclideancircuits.com
Me: https://www.jamesrichmond.com
Football is rubbish.
"I like Bass, it gives people something to listen to if they don't like the music"
“Theory is something that is written down after the music has been made so we can explain it to others”– Levi Clay
To answer it seriously (ish)- it all depends on genre and setting.
If you are playing in a wedding band and playing jazz then you have to mostly stick to the script across all the instruments.
There is a bit of room to move for improv, but not much.
If you are in a 3 piece power trio playing original music then you go do whatever the fuck you want and it goes down as 'artistic expression'.
The rule is generally that the more instruments you have the less sonic space each member has.
I played (drums) last night at a functions gig- normally we are 8 piece, but last night there were only 5 of us.
Usually I mostly keep time as 8 people fill things up.
Last night I was able to stretch out a bit more.
More instruments also means more places to hide and fewer instruments means you get heard but if you fuck up then everyone knows.
Bass isn't any different to any other instrument in this regard- if our bassist went off-piste in Vehicle, River Deep Mountain High, or Let's Dance then it wouldn't work that well and I'd throw sticks at him mid-set.
Other songs, such as It Must Be Love, Mustang Sally or Midnight Hour, he has a bit more flexibility as the horns and guitars carry it a bit more.
We recently lost a keyboard player and the guitars are picking up the slack. Some of the parts they have come up with aren't exactly like the original but it is close enough that people recognise the songs, or at least they do by the time the vocals start. Up until that point it sounds like a 'mysterious' intro.
Studio: https://www.voltperoctave.com
Music: https://www.euclideancircuits.com
Me: https://www.jamesrichmond.com
Football is rubbish.
Another interview ( I’ve spent a lot of my life on the toilet reading guitar magazines) was with BruceThomas ( of the Attractions) saying he learned bass by playing along to Motown records and that getting the notes right didn’t matter, it was getting the feel ( or groove or rythmn or whatever e exact term he used) that counted.
He came across as a complete twit.
Nil Satis Nisi Optimum
I know he’d be incredibly proud of me.
The guitarist I lay with now always plays over my solo in Brown Eyed Girl.