Why aren’t bands using bass players anymore?
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#arent #bands #bass #players #anymore
Originally posted by UCuhsqwW-9-XDRnTCUy9NWwg at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsG6pG1V9UA
ok here i go … helmet on: From my experience most bass Players CANT DIAL IN A TONE for S*** that fits the track or dont understand the concept of beeing the supporter for everyone and try to standout instead .. OR they just copy the root notes … and VERY RARELY you get someone that blends with the track and actually adds a magic note to a scene that lifts the whole track to a new level.
It's another nasty symptom of stagflation. It's the equivalent of chocolate makers reducing the amount of cream and using icky vegetable oil and more sugar instead. Or baking with margerine instead of butter, and trying to hide it with … sugar. There should be a DOP or DOC equivalent for music. But, what's allowed and what's dissallowed, reverb on the vocals. Compression, EQ, pedals surely? I think Tinydesk setup some rules like this, and it's just the raw live recording, though obviously some artists use electronics artistically. And people seem to really relate to that on a personal level. So I believe they do subconsciously register the intergrity and sincerity of the direct communication with an ensemble of human beings.
Good bass players are hard to find, that's why. Been trying to find a bass player for our band for months.
I'm originally a guitarist and have found myself playing bass for many bands purely because no one else wants to. I have found so much joy in exploring just how much more bass can do for a song. It has also taught me a lot about guitar, how to play for the song etc. I have recently joined a new band on bass and am loving it more than I enjoyed playing guitar for my previous bands.
Royal Blood – yeah, we don't need a guitar player.
bass guitar
I think it definitely varies which genre you’re most involved in, some styles having a good bassist is simply mandatory for a live band
Bro, if you see a bass player tapping their foot onstage they are ahead move-wise than 98% of bass players.
The music industry is in a bad place ????
Art is more important than money…These ""new kids"" not understanding that.
Right now I am becoming a bass player in a metal band, previously I kinda thought about it as just a tool to support my guitar playing. But at the same time, the guitar is also a tool. So maybe I need to retrain my brain that all instruments are tools, and the musician is still me. I can be creative no matter the instrument, and listen for a part to create for the instrument.
Honestly if you even think of considering the bass player redundant, that mostly just says a lot about the music you make, and it's kindof a self-own.
As a metalhead I'm completely saddened by how many examples are in the comments about metal bands ditching bass players.:( As if so many great metal bands weren't partly defined by what the bass player did, posers.
I don't think drums will be replaced. From my experience it's the loudest most noticeable instrument in a live metal setting, also the physical instrument itself has a big visual/novel presence on stage. Unlike bass, people would actually realise it's a backing track and feel scammed.
*fewer
I'm a guitar player, but i hate not having a bass player rocking out with me.
I wonder if there will even be bands in the future.
Drummer here… a whole lot less fun without a bass player to lock in with, and you really notice the difference between someone who know what they are doing (and locks in with the drums) and someone who doesn't
I dropped a Kanye track into my DAW and ran a spectral analyser on it. The kick was at around 100hz and the bass line was mainly 1st and second harmonics and played two notes / chords. The track sounds absolutely huge because all of that bass area is being filled with very little overlap in the frequencies. If the song had more chords or a more complex bass line then this trick wouldn't work. This is a very different approach to rock where the kick is usually the lowest thing happening and everything else takes place above that.
Maybe there's a trend in modern music to prioritise sound over musical complexity?
There is a Power Trio who has an outstanding Bass Player very prominent and delectable, moreover they do Rock only and I guess you probably would end up liking it very much, this band is female (sisters in fact) and I hope you’ll give it a try, it’s name is THE WARNING and live they sound even tighter and better, lets start with Z from their Pepsi Center concert.
EDIT: Mike Portnoy have their latest album as one of its favorites of 2024.
https://youtu.be/n1pKCzIUMeA?si=LkS31Q7sxyejwxGb
https://youtu.be/Z-bU17hLfsQ?si=Cyf5zup1Da5_t0Pw
Two words to your point :
John Entwistle
I love when l meet a guitarist who says 'l can play bass, too, l just don't have one'. Then l hand him (it is always a guy) my unlined fretless five-string and then they hand it right back.
Most musicians should play the piano and be forced to play above middle C. Bass is absolutely needed. Now if you’re using 8 string guitars AAL type music thats passable but otherwise no you need bass
How society killed the bass:
1.) Chord progressions:
The role of a bass player used to be to support the harmony by adding low fundamentals by which the harmonic series clashes and resolves. There's a reason the baroque period only wrote the bass and the melody, -because that's what's most important. There's a reason chords like D/F# have the bass specified, -because that creates a whole new function than just D. But the bass used to play so much more of a role than one note per measure; they used to set the groove, play the ostinato or the riff, and create interesting patterns leading in to the next chord in (D F# | G). But once music became about strumming basic chords on a guitar over and over again, bass became relegated to playing whole notes to hold up the sound. The bass player was no longer a musician, but a moving drone.
2.) "Oh yeah, I can play bass; it's just the same four bottom strings down an octave":
Guitarists who think that they can play bass because it has a similar design to the guitar have killed bass innovation. Growing up, I enjoyed listening to piano players play simply because they have a better understanding of what the role of bass is. When guitarists try to play bass, it's either simple fundamentals to the chord progression, or attempts to solo. A bass line is not just a low pitch melody; there are many methods and tricks bass players use to completely change the mood of the music. If you're trying to play melodically, you're likely going to be going against every tool in the bass kit. There are few guitar players who understand bass lines. Bass is not just a low pitch guitar; it's a bass instrument in the shape of a guitar.
3.) Sound design:
Modern music doesn't care much about interesting musical ideas; it's much more about interesting sound effects. What's one of the coolest sound effects? A low crispy tone that just washes over the audience and fills the room. This requires lots of precise EQing and lots of compression. And it could just as easily be produced by a keyboard synth. The problem is that sound engineers set the sound of the bass for this "ideal bass tone", which leaves the bass player little room to do anything other than "THOOOOOOMMMMMMMMmmmmmmmm!!!" Don't get me wrong, that big low open beefy tone feels great, and to be able to produce it with the pluck of a finger makes your feel super powerful, but being stuck in that big beefy zone makes anything you try to add during a quiet moment really over powering, and without anything above 500Hz getting put in the mix, it keeps you from adding interesting stuff in the middle register of the instrument.
4.) The Natural Outcome:
So, with music being hardly more than four chords on repeat, and require hardly more from the bass than the fundamentals, and with modern sound design being little more than big low beefy tones, why would you want to have an entire extra musician just to play four notes, when you could have a synth sound that sounds just as good if not better? Anything interesting (like a riff) can just be recorded by the guitarist who's playing that same riff up an octave anyway.
It's not that we don't have great bass players like Marcus Miller, Victor Wooten, or Getty Lee anymore; it's that modern music doesn't allow bass to contribute anything more than beefy drones, and sound engineers would prefer getting those beefy drones from a plug-in rather than an musician who can make mistakes.
Animals As Leaders doesn't have one. 8-string guitars give an argument to ditch the bass, but I've heard bass players fill in that part: immediately better. The timbre is different, the style can be matched, the richness of the sound cannot be understated.
These extended range guitars are not a replacement for bass. They are a wider pallette for guitar. For the most part, extended range guitars argue for a baritone guitar in addition to bass in the mix.
Automated tracks do seem a bit cheeky. I understand the logic in using them, but even a DJ has skills he brings to the table that are not to be trivialized.
Interesting video. I’m a bass player and have as many opportunities to play as I want. There are a lot of singers who use backing tracks, but the bass and drums are essential in my view. Obviously I don’t support recorded backing tracks. I’m for live music, real instruments and ideally no loop pedals. There is a small band I play with who sometimes do a quiet gig in a cafe or restaurant and don’t want a thumping bass. But that’s the exception.
No one likes the bass players. The drummers are next
A band without a bass player isn't a real band.
Crazy thing is i played bass when i was 11 and could never hear the difference in bass and guitar on songs till i started playing guitar
Naw man. Dua Lipa has sick bass lines.
I had no idea this was a thing.
In much of modern metal specifically you don't really "need" a bass player to be honest. A lot of modern metal doesn't even have guitars that stand out, they fuse into the mix and composition or play more percussive stuff and bass even more so. Unless you have music where the bass provides a lot of extra groove or melody or even has parts playing without (following) a guitar, it won't matter all that much. About the live mix, playing bass off a backing tracking is not necessarily the problem of the mix not sounding right. There are sound guys that will bury your live bass in a mix, there's those that can't make guitars cut through no matter what, you're totally at their mercy unfortunately. On the contrary, I've seen/heard bands without a live bass player or even without a live drummer sounding totally huge and bands with all members playing live having bad mixes. Just recently I was at a gig where the sound guy obviously forgot to mix in the kick drum and it killed the show.
well my bass goes: brrrrrrrrr but my ableton sub bass that im clipping like crazy goes: BBBBBBBBRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
I play in a synthpop/postpunk band and even my band play some of the synthbasslines live.
A rock band or even some kinds of old school goth/postpunk (the era when synthpop and depressive rock merged) is better with a real bassplayer.
I didn't know bassplayers was rare. I've been in several rock bands.
We still are! In fact, on our latest EP "Neon Nostalgia" the only stringed instrument used was a Bass Guitar (aside from the last track which uses a Bass VI converted to a baritone guitar).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvPKJNuu1Ng&list=OLAK5uy_l2Pw0USTIEy95hAgqj3XlQr9E1xnDNcgo
I play bass in a few different projects. A while back one of my bands lost our guitar player right before a show so I was forced to switch to guitar and we used bass tracks to fill in the vacant bass position. Within minutes of our set being finished our entire band said that they hated using bass tracks, they felt like there was no low end on stage and that it made the performance feel hollow and weak. So maybe there is some hope
I think the bigger question is why use a backing track? If you aren’t going to have a bass player, write your music around it. In my opinion backing tracks for a rock band is unforgivable. Especially for a festival gig.
Geddy Lee. Enough said. ????
Mike Rutherford (Genesis) played bass guitar, acoustic and electric twelve string guitar, AND BASS PEDALS!!! HOW COOL IS THAT!?
Bands form around aesthetic, sonic, artistic, musical and/or social ideas. And when some people's ideas do not include or require a human bass player, well … accept it and move on.
Having said that: the number of bands that did not iclude/use human bass players AND made music that sounded good to me is somewhat … small.
Also, playing live using prerecorded bass or drum tracks (or such provided from MIDI devices) is a viable decision in 2025. Yet it always limits the spontaneity a real live band has or should have. Also a matter of […] ideas or simply personal taste.
Not adding a bass guitar is like listening to music through a cheap pair of ear buds. Once you start listening to music through a good set of headphones or sound system you start to really appreciate the bass guitar.
As a bassplayer i gladly cannot agree on that. It might be true in modern pop music, hiphop or metal. In most other styles a bassplayer is still needed, so i still have plenty of work. I would even say – if a bassplayer is not needed anymore the music is not good anymore so i don't miss out on something.
I believe the necessity of perfection fed by social media has bled into live music heavily. Why watch someone be any less than on pitch and on beat when the studio recording is perfect? We’ve removed so much human out of it, especially in metal. Half the time the bedroom “bands” can’t even play what they wrote.
The Omnific prove you don't need guitarists
Start looking into the Jamband scene.
We need more bass!
Check out BAND-MAID their Bassist is very front of the mix, has solo duels with the lead guitarist, has the lead in on many songs.