Doing Bare Bones of Melody as Bass Line

[sixwatergrog]

Hello,
Just for fun I intend to make some home recordings of oldtime and Irish fiddle tunes - recording myself on 3 different instruments - chords on ukulele, melody on Irish tenor banjo and then bass. (Of those 3 I have the least experience with bass). I'm not an ear player but I find the chording and melody playing pretty easy to do because there is tab/lead sheets available to the tunes I am doing and I can read along. But, rarely do I have bass lines, and when I do it tends to just be a simple root/five over all the chords.

My question is can I construct an acceptable bass line by doing a bare bones version of the melody? For example, on a tune like Temperance Reel or Whiskey Before Breakfast, the melody usually has 8 notes per measure. For the bass line on those tunes can I play every other note of the melody - 4 beats per measure - occasionally adjusting the note to fall on a chord tone but mostly mirroring the quarter notes of the melody? Or will that sound too repetitive to what the (fiddle) is doing?

For an example of me playing Arkansas Traveler>Soldier's Joy visit here:
Arkansas Traveler > Soldier's Joy by sixwatergrog on SoundCloud - Create, record and share your sounds for free

Thanks

[sixwatergrog]

Some looks but no replies yet...? I asked this question in a different way on a forum for Irish traditional music and this is one of the responses I got:

Yes, it (the melody) will work. Don't try to do too much though. If you play the whole melody on bass it will be too fussy. Try playing just the emphasized notes, or just the first note of each bar, or start from the root notes of the guitar chords and build something up.

This sounds like good advice. I have no idea what I'm doing with bass yet.