GET BETTER BASS TONE

I once heard Cory Wong describe the role of the bass guitar as “calculated strikes on the groove”. As a musician who spent years behind an acoustic guitar, leading countless sets without a band, I simply couldn’t appreciate at the time how important that description is. While the acoustic is about strumming, percussion, and sustain through sub-division (longer sound=more strumming), bass is far more stingy with the notes it plays. The listener only hears the bass when it’s most impactful, making every note the instrument plays that much more valuable to the experience.

When it comes to church music, bass guitar is often misunderstood and therefore, misapplied. Today, I have 8 tips for you on how to apply your bass guitar to the songs being written today:
 

1. Don’t fear the whole note

It’s easy to get bored when playing whole notes, especially if you’ve played the song a LOT. Even though that’s common to almost every bass player at some point in their career, it doesn’t change this simple truth about being an effective part of your band: the whole note is often times the best note. Everyone loves a killer bass run that lands with every drum hit like the marble hitting pegs in plinko, but a fancy fill is only as good as the unremarkable parts it joins together. Your impact comes just as much when you DON’T strike a note as when you do.


2. Know your neck

If someone tells me that playing the bass is boring, 9 times out of 10 I find they’re probably just boring players. While every good bassist knows that more is less in the majority of situations, there’s still plenty of opportunity to elevate a song with runs, fills, and creative note choices to advance the dynamics of a song as it progresses. If you don’t know the neck, you can’t navigate the different options with confidence. 

3. Use octaves for dynamic tension

As the bassist, you have an incredible amount of control over the dynamics of a song, and the position on the neck you choose to play your notes have a massive impact on them. Playing high creates tension that opens up when you go back down low. Try using a higher octave of a chord progression for lower dynamic sections, such as a verse, then drop to the low octave as the verse builds into a chorus. The contrast will aid the drums as the lift the song during a pre-chorus or fill.

4. Overdrive is your friend, but don’t lose your low end

Overdrive is an increasingly popular effect for worship bass as it helps add energy and harmonics to explosive builds, choruses, and refrains. Heck, many songs, I just leave my overdrive on the entire song. One thing to be aware of though when selecting an overdrive pedal is that many drives made for electric guitar will drop low frequencies for the purpose of accentuating the guitars more “present” frequencies. With bass, you NEED the low end that many of those pedals drop. Many of those effects have a version made specifically for bass, adjusting any low cut to be appropriate for accentuating pleasing bass frequencies. When using an overdrive pedal, make sure it’s either made for bass or has a “blend” knob that allows the dry, unaffected signal to pass through alongside the driven signal.
 

5. Plan to use your volume and tone knob - bake the knowledge that you’ll have to into your rig

When it comes to dialing in your effects, it’s easy to get to a place where you’re chasing your tail a bit. In certain settings, your tone is perfectly overdriven and bright. Not too crunchy and the top end sits nicely within the rest of the signal- no ice pick moments where you feel like you’re being stabbed in the ear by how bright the bass is. Then other times, it’s the opposite. In these cases, it’s best to dial in your tone KNOWING that you’ll NEED to use your volume and tone knob to adjust your sound to the setting on the fly. It would be awesome to be able to set effects to sound exactly how you want them to in every situation, but the reality is that being a musician means you’re listening to and adapting your tone as you play. 

6. Use a compressor

Compressors and bass go together like peanut butter and the jar peanut butter comes in: you don’t get one without the other. Hardly ever anymore. Use a compressor to add punch and sustain to your tone. A compressor with a medium attack (~100-200ms) and ratio (4:1-8:1) and a long release (1.5 secs or longer) will help lock your signal in place so it doesn’t jump out too much when you play a note and so that your notes last WAY longer and stronger than they would on their own. I like my bass compressors set to be 100% wet, but you can play around with reducing the mix setting and increasing the compression to apply some parallel compression. 

7. Know how to play with a pick

There’s an old tradition among bassists that you “never play with a pick”. I used to live by that total nonsense myself. I think it probably originated in styles where playing with a pick is understandably inappropriate, and in cases where bassists were using a pick as a crutch instead of learning proper finger technique. However, the use of overdrive in particular has led to frequent use of the pick in rock, country, and worship contexts. You’ll find many popular recordings today that employ the use of a pick on the bass guitar as it functions as a low rhythm electric in these cases as well.

8. Use more than “just an amp” or DI

As mentioned, many songs in modern church music employ overdrive and compression in addition to the direct signal of the bass. The sound of an amplifier and speaker cabinet impact the sound further. Finally, a chorus effect, synth effect, and an octaver are used in select circumstances to add a finishing touch of production and interest. Chorus can make higher chords shimmer, and a synth and/or octave effect brings incredible energy to high dynamic sections where you really want to send it. Here’s a video I did breaking down the way I use my effects for bass in worship on Sundays, followed by a complete set:

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