Basslines

Basslines are just as important to music production as the drums are. They serve to complement the drums and fill out the lower end of the frequency range. Basically, they provide the *thump* in your tracks, they’re the *boom* in the jeeps with the boomin’ system, they’re the part of the track that makes the car shake as you roll leanin’ to the side.

In this post we’ll show you: 1) How effective bass lines can have and the impact they have on a track, and 2) how to create a simple bassline.

To begin with, let’s listen to a drum pattern with no bass:

Not too bad, but we’re going to add some flavor by adding the following bass notes:

So when we out it together, this is what we get:

sounding better already, right?

All that was done was the bass notes were played the same time as the kick to help accentuate that part of the track. It was one bass not we used, but you can vary the notes to get different effects. Here an example where, instead of playing the same bass note, different bass notes are played:

As you can see it gives the track a different feel. The bass notes played are part of the same chord and are played in the same scale. Chords and scales is a whole ‘nother topic and we’ll definitely get to that is later posts. The point is you can play different notes if you like to get a different feel for the track you are producing.

So far we just looked as simple bass notes that are layered on the drums, but we can play longer notes too and have a whole bass line. I also added a couple extra notes here. Check it out:

In addition, you can keep adding and make a whole bass riff. The more you add the more the bass will line will stand out. Check it out: