What came first the progression or the beat?

[Bass_Bear]

In my exprience, which is relatively limited, I've only ever had the opportunity of creating basslines around a pre-existing chord progressions. What I wanna know is in your experience, when your creating a new groove, what is your process? Do you establish chord pregression first? Do you lay down a funky line and then build a progression around it? Is the beat more important that the chords?

Lemme know what you guys think.

J

 

[Goatman]

from my experience, that depends on the type of song.

1.) For audience-friendly tunes that have their roots in singer-songwriter musicianship, I pick up my acoustic guitar and come up with a pretty structured chord progression to match whatever lyrics I have in mind. Everything else falls underneath it afterword.

2.) For more open-ended, jam style music, the bass definitely comes first (possibly after you get a drumbeat in mind). And then I look at the line to see what key it's in in order to improv guitar chords that just kind of dance on the rythym section.

Examples of 1 = pop-rock, punk, most metal, folk, blues, reggae

Examples of 2 = funk, jazz, experimental rock, new wave, disco


Just my humble observation of where the melody seems to be "started." Maybe I do things differently than some.
I hope that helps a bit. There is nothing wrong with being a songwriting bassist

 

[mambo4]

For pre existing chords, I usually do this:

1.) play quarter notes on the root note, and go all the way through the song. Reinforces the harmonic motion of the song in my ears/head.

2.) Find a simple rhythm that works. either by A.) asking myself if the song feels like a specific genre where the bass has a well defined rhythm (like jazz, latin, country etc) and cop the feel of said genre. Books like the Bass Bible can be handy for reference
or B.)With no specific genre, or something broad like pop or rock, I listen to the drums and vocals for a cue to the rhythmic flavor. But I keep it simple, and stick to the root.

3.) once I have a solid rhythmic idea, I examine chords themselves to see if they imply any interesting motion. sometimes you can find a nice step-wise or chromatic run across several chords by swapping the root out with another chord tone on the 'in between' chords. If the song stays on the same chord for a long time, I look for a nice groove within that scale. If the chords change rapidly, i look for opportunities to pedal.

5.) Next I'll listen to the band for any other instrument who is doing something I could follow either rhythmically, tonally, or both. Especially around transitions to new sections.

4.) finally, i listen to the rest of the band for spaces that that would allow me to tastefully wank with my mad skillz. not all spaces need to be filled, however.

As you can see from the order of the list, I'm giving precedence to the song and the ensemble before indulging myself. I know it's not very explicit in terms of note choices/theory, but at an abstract level that's how I think.

If I'm not working with an established progression, It's all ears I guess. I usually come up with what sounds good and figure out what chordal motion, if any, is implied. And these days, I try to create without the bass in hand: I sing somehting and once it feels solid, I reach for the instrument and figure it out. a fellow TBer mentioned not reaching for the bass unless he can easily recall what he had sung the next day, that way you know its catchy.

 

[DudeistMonk]

Books like the Bass Bible can be handy for reference

Dude...Thats the entire book online!...Now I know its Christmas time!

EDIT: It's not the entire book, now that I've looked at it some more....but it is a heck of a lot of content and all the reading music/basic music theory/scale/chord/walking exercise stuff is fully intact.

 

[Bass_Bear]

Number 1, great find on the bass bible, fluke or not that's awesome.

Number 2, thanks for the input definitly helps answer question. Guess there isn't one methodoligy for creating basslines, you gotta go with the situation.

Thanks,
J

 

[Deacon_Blues]

I see the melody as the one thing that defines a song more than anything else. Over that melody, various chord progressions might fit well, and the alternatives for the rhythm or beat behind everything is virtually endless.

With "melody" I mean any line that is strong enough to define the song or a part of it. Also the bassline can be considered the melody if it is the one thing that defines a certain section of a song. IMHO.

 

[JimmyM]

I usually think of both at the same time.

 

[JimK]

Is the beat more important that the chords?

"Feel" comes first for me.
(Is it a Blues feel, Rock feel, R&B feel, Latin feel, Swing feel, odd feel, Reggae feel, etc).