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Playing bass along with a drum machine
- Thread starter Ari Nobody
- Start date
Might sound kinda harsh, but if you can't make a line groove with a drum machine, it's all on you. Not the drum machine's fault.
Having thought some more about it, I think as a bassist, your most important job is to have good time feel. As it happens, one of the talkbass denizens wrote a book called Groove 101 and for me, it's one of the best tools I've found to work on your time in a fun way. I have no affiliation with the author. I just like the book.
The way it works is, you learn and play various basslines along with a track. A drum track, to be sure, but the sort of unique thing about it is, as the track progresses, more and more of the track starts to drop away. You lose the tom, lose the snare, lose the high hat, or some combination. And over time you might end up with one hit of the snare or kick, over a span of two measures. It really gets your time solid since the time has to come from inside you and not from a bunch of stuff happening around you. It really makes you see how uneven you time can be.
The tracks are pretty cool and seem suitable for rock songs mainly, so if you're into that, it will give you some material to mess around with.
The way it works is, you learn and play various basslines along with a track. A drum track, to be sure, but the sort of unique thing about it is, as the track progresses, more and more of the track starts to drop away. You lose the tom, lose the snare, lose the high hat, or some combination. And over time you might end up with one hit of the snare or kick, over a span of two measures. It really gets your time solid since the time has to come from inside you and not from a bunch of stuff happening around you. It really makes you see how uneven you time can be.
The tracks are pretty cool and seem suitable for rock songs mainly, so if you're into that, it will give you some material to mess around with.
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Check out the YouTube tracks above. That's me and a drum machine.
Ahh ok. I guess I misunderstood your question and comments. Your playing is good. Having been raised on R&B and funk, behind the beat playing sounds normal to me. I like the kind of Talking Heads vibe of the first track.
Still,
I think a good drummer is the most important member of a band. A good drummer can use the noise others make as mere "background aural scape" to ply his art, and even turn what is otherwise literally just noise, into something interesting merely by imposing some structure upon it -- sort of like putting a frame around a piece-of-crap modern art which can then be hung in a museum.
But you can't do the opposite: the best musicians in the world will never be able to mitigate the fact that the drummer sucks.
