How to listen to the bass

It’s a known fact that in a 4-piece rock band, the player you’re attracted to the most is an accurate measure of your personality (more accurate than the Big Five, in my opinion). So pick your fighter: lead singer, electric guitarist, bass guitarist, or drummer. My favourite’s fluctuated between the drummer and bassist, and so evidently that means that I’m into cool, steady guys who provide a supporting role but are secretly more talented than the leading acts. We can discuss whether that’s that an indication of who I’m attracted to or who I want to be another time.

I won’t go into my entire musical history, but I’m a big fan of music theory and music production. As a result some of my biggest pet peeves are music-related, like hearing overused chord progressions and pointlessly meandering melodies in songs.

But here’s a new pet peeve: I hate that “bass” now refers to some dull, monotonous thumps and booms that frequently appear in pop and electronic music nowadays that serve nothing for the song except to balance out the fancy highs!!!

Edit (02/03/2020): It’s probably fine if bass is simple in songs for effect, especially in EDM, but even so there is a lot of room for something a little better.

There is little to no creativity in bass-lines in pop music nowadays, and for a long time that kept my attention away from bass-lines themselves. It wasn’t until I met some significant bands that I started really paying attention to the bass again and talking about it to everyone I knew, as well as finally learning how to play the bass.

One day my boyfriend asked me to make a playlist of songs that could get him to appreciate the bass. It hit me then – this is how I change the world! I release a commentary with a curated set of songs!

Here is the playlist I sent him, which Sophie the punmaster later brilliantly named “Bassics”.

This playlist covers a wide range of creativity and prominence in bass use, but it’s certainly not exhaustive.

I’ve split these songs and their bass lines into 4 categorical uses of the bass, which forms a beautiful 2×2 matrix:

Audio is *mandatory*. Listen to the songs as you read my commentary.

Let’s get into it.

#1: Main motif

I’ve chosen two songs for this category: Another One Bites The Dust by Queen, and Cake By The Ocean by DNCE. You’ve probably heard at least one of these songs at some point, and you can’t miss the bass.

The important thing about the main bass motif here is that it’s extraordinarily simple – just 2 bars long and nothing very fancy, which allows it to repeat through verses and choruses while still fitting into the chords and melody.

The entire song is anchored around these bass lines. In Another One Bites The Dust, Freddie Mercury’s vocal melody is simple and roughly follows the lead of the bass, while adding some variation to spice things up. A great example of this is when he jumps an octave in the climatic verse How do you think I’m gonna get along / Without you when you’re gone?, which offers a great layer to the energy of the song while still maintaining that iconic motif.

For Cake By The Ocean, Joe Jonas’s vocals have a strong motif of its own that doesn’t mimic the bass. But it’s interesting to note that his melody is really simple in the chorus Talk to me baby / I’m going blind from this sweet-sweet craving / whoa-oh, without much embellishments or variations, and I believe it helps to accentuate the really catchy bass line there. It’s a back and forth: the centre of attention at the verse is Joe’s, but in the chorus it’s really the bass’s.

#2: Main melody

What’s the difference between a motif and a melody? This is unscientific and untechnical, but for the purposes of this guide I’m going to say the difference can be split into two things:

A motif forms the backbone of the song, but the melody is really the star of the song.
A melody is a lot longer than a motif.

There’s no better way to introduce a main melody than with Hysteria by Muse, and an even more creative, non-standard melody can be shown with Dean Town by Vulfpeck, where the bass is as close to the vocals as you can get.

That bass line in Hysteria is legendary, and any rock bassist will be acquainted with it. It’s 4 bars long, which doesn’t seem too much longer than the motif ones, but the sheer speed and complexity of the notes gives it the length and sets it apart from a simple motif. I want you to notice two things I’ve pointed out in this song: when Chris Wolstenholme is ripping on the bass in the intro and verse, the vocals are very simple and the words stretch out slowly by comparison, which really allows you to focus on the bass. And during the chorus, the bass transitions into a much simpler line, and Matt Bellamy’s vocals come through more strongly, so there’s that exchange of attention between the bass and the vocals like in Cake By The Ocean.

If you’re impatient, go to 0:50 for where the melody really starts.

In Dean Town there are no vocals, and Joe Dart on the bass has the spotlight the entire time, playing a lengthy 16 bars for the entire cycle of the melody. Around 1:26, after those initial 16 bars, the electric guitar comes in and picks the exact same line, and at 2:55 (after a beautiful surge) the keyboard comes in too. These other instruments are vital to the depth and quality of the song, but you’re never taken away from the bass as the melody.

#3: Supporting motif

Now this category, supporting motif, is how most people would think about the bass. It plays a steady set of notes in the background, adding to the rhythm but not taking centre stage. That’s completely fine, and bass provides most of its value from this role. But people, there is a way to do it properly!

It’s not just a “duh duh duh duh” on the same note throughout the song. Like the main motifs, it has a structure of its own. It’s a little less flashy than in Cake By The Ocean, but that simple structure and shape of the bass line is vital. Here I present No You Girls by Franz Ferdinand, and Alone, Together by The Strokes.

No You Girls is a really sexy song in my opinion, and I think it’s the swing in the bass that really gives it that. I don’t know how to express this verbally, so here is a handy graphic:

That swing is done by how bassist Bob Hardy expresses the bass in that dip in beat 2 and the lift in beat 4. Listen carefully and hear it! He slides in and out of that dip, smooth as butter – what musicians might call legato.

Another cool thing you can see is in splitting beats 1-2 and 3-4, which are essentially expressing the same pattern. Look at how the second half of the phrase mirrors the first half, in the sense that they both start out with two of the same note, but in beat 2 it steps down where in beat 4 it steps up. All these help the bass line to contribute to a beautiful swing throughout the song, really bringing out the seductive themes of the song.

(I’m beginning to think a video essay might have been a better medium for this post.)

Alone, Together has an intriguing, almost playful kind of motif in the intro and verse that’s partly shared by the bass and electric guitar, and really sets the hide-and-seek tone of the song. What I want to point out in this song, though, is at the chorus at 0:46. The bass has a particularly wide range of highs and lows.

The shape of the melody is mirrored here in the chorus as well. There’s also those prominent jumps in the second beats, where the bass ascends an octave that reaches the same note that Julian Casablancas is singing. Which is very interesting, because bassists almost never touch the same realms as the vocals/electric guitar! That lift makes me see the bass in this song as really adding an extra layer of a harmony, beyond just being a ground support.

#4: Supporting melody

“Supporting melody” is a bit of an oxymoron, given that melody implies it’s the star. In this case I take melody to be that it wanders in its own direction, with no anchor tying it to the mortal realm. It really adds to layering at an extra dimension than with Alone, Together, as I demonstrate with these songs: Watashi Igai Watashi Janai No by Gesu No Kiwami Otome, and The Birdwatcher by Vulfpeck.

Let’s start with Watashi Igai Watashi Janai No, played by a band where instrumentalists who really like to venture off into their own worlds of melodies manage to magically fit them all together in a beautiful mess. The bass isn’t particularly loud here so try and listen hard for it. In the verses the bass has a cute loopiness about it, before maintaining a slightly more steady line in the chorus, but it’s always full of little trills and fills instead of just holding one solid note. I think it’s really unique and can be used to give a song or band a lot more character.

And speaking of character, if there was ever a song that convinced me that a bass could mimic a bird it was certainly The Birdwatcher. The bass is exceptionally jumpy and staccato (opposite of legato/smooth), like it weighs nothing, and the little part where it sings in 0:11 makes me smile every single time. It’s easy to listen to this song and focus on the synthesizer and electric guitar, but the surprise is really in the bass that manages to balance the lows of the song while maintaining the freeness of a bird’s fluttering wings.

Hopefully this guide, as un-technical and confusing as it must be, has helped you understand how to appreciate the bass better.

We must demand higher standards. No more lazy bass, no more monotonous booms. Music is about creativity and expression, and hopefully I’ve demonstrated how the bass can achieve this while still fulfilling its role.