Hello, I am doing some research on music theory and just wanted to ask, what musical style or genre does this bass line sound like? I am trying to figure out if resembles a particular genre of playing style of bass?
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Music theory question
- Thread starter nitrateaudio
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Not really a theory question. But the genre is going to depend entirely on context. You could take that bass part and drop it into any number of different settings. Is there a sax playing an atonal wandering solo over a heavy swing drum beat? Or a female singer sticking to a safe major pentatonic melody with a straight 2/4 drumbeat and a B3 playing big open chords underneath her?
Of all instruments, bass is one of the most influenced by the context. You could play the exact same I-V I-V bass line under country, pop, R&B, polka, klezmer, jazz, etc. settings and it would fit fine, because the song's vibe is rarely defined solely by the bass part.
Of all instruments, bass is one of the most influenced by the context. You could play the exact same I-V I-V bass line under country, pop, R&B, polka, klezmer, jazz, etc. settings and it would fit fine, because the song's vibe is rarely defined solely by the bass part.
thanks for reply. i guess maybe my question is more , what style of playing is this? Its not rock bass. I can't figure out if its soul or reggae or something else?
thanks a lot. so there seems to be nothing odd or unusual with the sparce choice of notes the player chose to play here and it seems pretty standard for pop/rock genre? I am just trying to get my head around the musical approach one takes to crafting bass lines in a particular genre.
From some of the background noises it sounds like a bass part extracted from a full song recording, using Moises or something similar.
It's bass playing. That's it. There is no genre because the part has no context. It's like clipping random words from a speech and then asking what the topic was.
Well, tone, technique and feel will sometimes give you a hint as to the "style" of an isolated part. You mentioned reggae as a possibility and I can say that I don't hear this performance fitting into a typical reggae context. First, the part sounds as if it was played with a pick. Picks are not at all common in reggae. In reggae hybrids? Maybe, but the standard technique for plucking in reggae is to use fingers or thumb. Second, the tone is not typical of reggae bass parts. Third, the feel/phrasing is not what I'd expect to hear from a reggae performance. Tempo is a bit fast as well.
If we discard those "long notes" on the track, then, we will have two bass grooves/feels.
It's a very standard bass line.
1. It's a regular syncopated 8th note groove (with the emphasis on the upbeat), kind of, typical for some "easy" rock style bass-line (with some typical rock bass fill-ins.)
(Here is the same bass with just a "touch of the click.")
2. Some variation of the same syncopated 8th note groove.
3. At the end, the whole band, including the bass player, moves the rhythmic groove to the syncopated 16th note feel.
We can even hear some Slap.
thanks so much for all the replies. I was just checking to see if I need to be digging into and exploring specific genrs of music in order to understand how that bass line is constructed. I am adding the drums and bass stems for musical context. its from a commercial release so I did't want to get cliped with copyright issue.
