As a musician, I’ve been playing music for people for years. Playing drums alongside my best friend and guitarist long enough that we know each other’s quirks and ways of improvising. All this time spent together, but we’ve had no bassist for almost all of it. Just the two of us. There have been many times when we’ve had great ideas put together between the two of us but couldn’t perform them to our liking because of not having a bass player. Perhaps you are in a group facing a similar situation. If you are, stick around because I’m going to tell you some of the things that we’ve done to still make some great tunes. I’ll tell you about the main challenges we’ve faced, ways to still grab an audience without a bass, and how to still get the sound you truly want.
It doesn’t matter who you are, if you want to make music, make it happen. There have been several times we’ve gotten frustrated and wanted to give up on the project we were working on. Whole song ideas that we’ve let go of because, at the time, we just didn’t have a bassist to make it right. If we’d have known the little tips and ways around doing things then that we do now, I’m sure there’d be many more songs we’d be playing places.
Now, the first tip I have works for any new musician or someone whose name has already been around town. It’s what you did after you understood the basics, you learned a few songs to play. If you want to capture an audience but aren’t capable of doing a whole lot, play some covers. I’ve seen it in every spot I’ve ever played in, our own material gets some people moving but there’s always one or two people that hear our rendition of a cover, and their head snaps towards us. Covers will always gather some people, but notice I said our rendition. That’s something that’s important if you want to make an impression. play the song but give it a little twist, play that real catchy part a little longer, or our favorite thing to do was jam the solo section for a few minutes. Either way, put your impression on it and give people a reason to listen to it.
The picture to the right is my band when we played at the Ford City Festival last year. At the time we did have a bass player, however soon afterward our styles just didn’t mix and we stopped playing together. So, we were back to all we’ve ever known and trying to make things work. Both my guitarist and I can play a bass part if need be but if we’re on stage, we prefer to stay on our main instruments. One way we’ve managed to get around our dilemma of making the sound we want is by using GarageBand on the computer. Using it in our own little home studio, we can put down the guitar track, drums, vocals, and bass parts we may want in a song and actually create it. This doesn’t necessarily fix the issue of playing on stage I know, but it gives you the satisfaction of knowing what your work can sound like.
Now you may be saying, “I don’t have a Mac so, like now what?” well, GarageBand is on all IOS platforms meaning that you could use it on your iPhone or iPad. “I only have an Android!”. There is still hope. The home studio we use at my guitarist’s house may be on GarageBand, but on my phone, I put all of the ideas I come up with into an app called BandLab. It’s usable on both IOS and Android and can help you put down several tracks making it a fully capable studio in your pocket when you need it.
If you’re struggling to come up with material or cant figure out ways to motivate yourself as a musician, I hope some of my tips have been helpful. Like always, if you like my post, feel free to comment on it and share it with friends or family. If you want to see more by me and stay up to date on my blog follow me for another day in the life of music and media.