Drums And Bass Guitar - 4 Ways To Lock In Tight!
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I've talked about the relationship between drums and bass guitar before on this channel. Rather than focusing on a general overview of the relationship, this video will get into specific things you can do to play better with any drummer.
My linktree: bit.ly/basslinks
Before we start, even though I'm giving you specific techniques, try to view these techniques as things that you could do rather than things you must always do.
My hope is that these techniques will help you think about how you play with a drummer with greater depth.
1. Play In Unison With The Kick Drum
Having the bass and kick drum in unison works incredibly well because both instruments occupy the same sonic space.
Both are low register, low-frequency instruments so when they combine they produce a very solid and powerful sound which provides a strong foundation for the rest of the music and helps to dictate the feel and highlight any prominent rhythms in the music.
We'll see later on that they don't always have to be in exact unison but the point here is that the two parts sound strong when there's some clear relationship between them.
If they both totally ignore the other it can often sound like a complete mess.
2. Work On Beat Placement
The term beat placement refers to playing your notes either before, after or at the exact same time as you feel the beat.
The beat placement massively helps to shape the character and feel of a piece of music and different styles often have different beat placements commonly associated with them.
Punk music often has people playing in front of the beat, soul music is often behind for example.
If you're able to comfortably sit in front, behind and right on top of the beat you'll be able to create many different feels within the music you play and you'll find it easier to play in different styles with different drummers.
3. Note Length
Using different note lengths helps to create different textures in the music you play.
The next time you're locked into a kick pattern try experimenting with short notes, long notes, medium length notes or any other length you like and take note of how that changes the sonic texture.
Long notes tend to sound very full and strong. Short notes, I feel, give a thinner texture.
As long as you can hear how your note lengths affect the music you'll be able to think about the groove you're creating with more depth and this means you'll be much better at serving the music.
4. Try Not Following The Kick Drum
This may seem like I'm contradicting my original advice but stick with me.
We saw earlier that a bass and kick in unison sounds very strong and stable.
However, if we purposefully want something that doesn't sound as strong or something that creates room for the drums to stick out then we can think about avoiding unison patterns and playing less.
A great exercise to try all this is to put a drum loop on, play along and practice all the things I've suggested in this video.
Try locking in to the kick in unison, then only partial unison.
Play behind, in front and on top of the beat.
Change up your note lengths and then finally try playing less and giving the drums room to play out.
Пікірлер: 15
thanks for the informative video. i'm a new bassist who has been learning and a drummer gave me hell for not being in sync with him. this helped.
Thank you for a very informative explanation. Your editing in the clip where you stop not even to inhale is exhausting and unnatural to listen to. This is not the first time I have come across this. Thank you once again 🙏🏻👍🏻🥁
Great lesson!
Great tips - thanks!
This is a brilliant summary of how to play against the drums
Do you know any good exercises for beat placement? Assuming one is in time, I always thought that certain players were naturally behind, on, or in front of, the beat. I also thought that if a bass player plays in front of the beat, they make the music sound rushed, or may encourage the band to speed up, and vice verse when playing behind the beat. Really interesting subject as it is what separates humans from quantised music
Honestly, I don't even use technique. That is something I should work on. I'm going to get some drum tracks and try out these techniques. I try to lock on the drums without technique but I heard myself playing a song cover and I was way off from the beat. I need more practice lol.
2:00 For that whole section of what you were playing.... I can't spot the difference nor can I spot if it sounds odd or not Am I just stupid or something?
Thanks
Geeze, I had to listen at least 10x to discern the beat placement part. Yes, I can definitely hear the beat pulse get both louder and sustains longer during the "beat on center". Then the beat behind and beat in front just doesn't rise in tone. However, I can't quite discern if it's beat before or after?
Yas queen, saved to my bass playlist with the flea lesson
Is it bad that i don’t hear the differences? I have no idea how to lock with a drummer, i just don’t understand what i’m supposed to hear and do with it..
How do i get the $10 lesson you talked about?
I never been able to play with a drummer to much, a few times but that's all, so I was all ways the one carrying the beat and rythm, the best that I could do, all I had was a keyboard, and a lead guitar, and praise and worship team and choir, we had drums but no one could play them, the guy that did play them got sick and had to quit, so that is all the chance I had to play with a drummer, and it hard to find a band,or a drummer to play with anymore, so what do I do with that, I mean I do play with a group on Sunday afternoons, we play funk and soul, and R&B music another bass player and a lead guitar myabe two bass guitar players and two electric guitar players but that's all, so what do I do?
@scottyshepardthesmoothdeep3081
5 жыл бұрын
@@OnlineBassGuitar1 Oh wow I didn't know that, thank you so much, I will check it out, and a person at the church told me the best way to get awesome timing is with a drum machine, you can't always depend on a live person on the drums, but I do have a alesis SR16 drum machine, and my dad give me a extra Yamaha keyboard he had, it was a smaller one but it it has all kinds of options on it it's a very nice keyboard, his is the same but bigger, so he wasn't using it anymore so he gave it to me, would those be good to for me? And my dad plays completely by ear, on the keyboard, on all these old Gospel songs, me and him are going to start getting together to play a evening or two and at his house just to help me out with with playing my bass guitar, at least I hope it will help me out? I check out that website okay thank you so much.