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Bands with no bass players.
- Thread starter hwystar
- Start date
My band sometimes doesn't have a bass player. We're a trio (keyboards, bass/guitar, percussion). On about half of our songs I play guitar, because that's what the songs call for. I would prefer to always play bass but we haven't yet found a suitable guitarist and we're not going to let that stop us from playing out.
There was an Elvis gig tribute on telly at Christmas. They had a bass but canned drums, piano / keys, extra guitar and vocal parts... meh.
Everyone....we live in an age where pretty much any position except for the lead vocal is replaceable. Bass can be handled by keys, or synth, or even guitar, or triggered drums. Drums can be handled by keys, or synth, or even bass. Guitar can be handled by bass. MIDI triggering can handle most extra instruments. Anything can be done with an actual backing track. It's just the way things are these days in the live music entertainment industry; the emphasis is on entertainment, not music performance.
I can't help but feel that many folks who would be outraged at a band with no bass player would turn around and make a "fire the drummer and get a drum machine" comment, or a "fire the guitarist and get a keys player" comment. The truth is, not all bands need a bass player anymore. That doesn't mean that they don't need bass or don't have bass frequencies or a bass voice - they just might use an alternate means to get it.
I also can't help but imagine an old snail mailing list of old big band musicians lamenting the rise of jazz bands without a full brass section. "I can't believe that band doesn't have a tuba. I won't go and support any band without a sousaphone player. Audiences these days, they're just clueless..."
The truth is, not all music is rock. Mustang Sally is 55 years old and looking haggard. Talkbass is not a good cross-section of today's culture. A bass guitar is still actually a guitar, just one method of "playing bass". And bands without bassists can be and are successful, just like bands without guitarists.
I can't help but feel that many folks who would be outraged at a band with no bass player would turn around and make a "fire the drummer and get a drum machine" comment, or a "fire the guitarist and get a keys player" comment. The truth is, not all bands need a bass player anymore. That doesn't mean that they don't need bass or don't have bass frequencies or a bass voice - they just might use an alternate means to get it.
I also can't help but imagine an old snail mailing list of old big band musicians lamenting the rise of jazz bands without a full brass section. "I can't believe that band doesn't have a tuba. I won't go and support any band without a sousaphone player. Audiences these days, they're just clueless..."
The truth is, not all music is rock. Mustang Sally is 55 years old and looking haggard. Talkbass is not a good cross-section of today's culture. A bass guitar is still actually a guitar, just one method of "playing bass". And bands without bassists can be and are successful, just like bands without guitarists.
The Doors, and the White Stripes for that matter, were anomalies with their instrumentation. The Doors are remembered for their studio recordings, and not quite as much for their live shows(which were a different animal). On their recordings, yes, for the most part Ray is playing bass with his left hand on the Fender key bass, but even from the first album forward many songs had a studio bass player, with either prominently different parts, or blended in with what Ray was doing. So what the Doors did or didn’t do really didn’t have an affect on other bands. They certainly were an influence on later artists, but not that there was no bass guitarist live, or I should say, they didn’t create a trend away from the use of bass guitar. There were two outfits in particular before them, the Seeds and the (Young)Rascals that had the same line-up, and perhaps influenced the Doors somewhat. It was only with the eventual availability of the Minimoog, its acceptance, and changing music styles that brought this conflict on.
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That was more late 70’s/early 80’s. But your wait is over, that’s what this conversation is about.In the late 60's, early 70's some knuckle-heads were getting their panties in a knot about synths putting bass players out of work. Still waiting.
So why are you bothering to play bass any more?No sampling, no keys, no programming, no electronics.
You'd be blown away by the number of bands that use such things , even without some of you knowing.
What about studio edits and punch ins....is that "legal"???
Your old is showing!!!
I’ll stealthily sign up for a membership at TalkNykelharpa.com and try to gauge the climate over there.
Same conversation, same results - much ado about nothing.
And no, it was late 60’s early 70’s the first time it happened. I was there.
So was I; even though in 1968 you had the pop culture phenomenon of “Switched On Bach” and the extreme underground explorations of Silver Apples and Dick Hyman(yes, seriously) that pointed to the concept/possibility of some sort of synth bass, it was only in the mid-70’s that it began to be perceived as a possible threat with Kraftwerk and Gary Wright in the mainstream, although Kraftwerk was taken as a novelty act, and not a hint of the future.Same conversation, same results - much ado about nothing.
And no, it was late 60’s early 70’s the first time it happened. I was there.
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What acts were you referring to that gave rise to musicians(or bass players in particular)expressing concerns for the future? Granted, in the wake of Walter/Wendy Carlos, there were a couple of all-synth novelty tunes like Hot Butter’s “Popcorn”, but they were just that, novelties. The Minimoog, as a usable, gigable synth, wasn’t even available until 1971, and not everybody could aquire/afford one. Stevie Wonder wasn’t going to be able to take TONTO on the road, but he still had a bass player. It was only after sequencers became available, Moroder/Summer, funk, and then New Wave/early techno pop(influenced by Bowie and Eno, Ultravox being an early example)did the reality set in that the bass guitar could be replaced. That all happened in the mid to late 70’s.Same conversation, same results - much ado about nothing.
And no, it was late 60’s early 70’s the first time it happened. I was there.
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As a junkie of that band, I will say that they did not.
(But some claims came to light in the last few years that Doug Lubahn was eventually asked by the band to join. I think considering how he played within their music, he would have been an excellent choice.)
Doug's entire bass line in "You're Lost, Little Girl" is a thing of beauty. He is arguably the most gifted instrumentalist on Strange Days
There are some good sounding industrial bands and not so good sounding metal bands that go without bass. Outside of those, though... I mean, Sleater-Kinney always sounds great, but I literally always think when listening to them "They'd be so much better with a good bass player". So yeah, unless you're absolutely obsessed with dance music or with metal bands with crappy sound, I wouldn't give it much thought.
Rich, I don't think you're hijacking the thread at all. Yours is a perfectly legitimate point to make. In my experience, a band playing in a festival situation, with full instrumentation, will usually create a better impression than any 'band' using pre-recorded rhythm tracks; provided they are *tight*.
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