Bass Guitar Recording Lesson for Guitarists

"Eye" Like to play guitar.

There comes many a time when a guitarist may need to write or even record his/her bass lines. Being a bassist takes a different skill than a guitarist so please do not think I am going to downplay the role a bassist plays. There are hundreds of songs where the bass carries the song more than guitar and in a perfect world both at 100% simultaneously. Doesn't always happen, even on a "hit" song. 

Nevertheless, I wanted to post something I wrote a few years ago on another blog that didn't get much exposure. I have permission as I am the owner of the article. Here it is . .

How Guitarists Can Record Quick and Easy 

Bass Lines For Demos or Projects

Fellow Axe men (and axe women), I want to show you how to record your own original quick and easy bass lines for your demos or home projects or even your albums to be released.

My Dilemma: I play all my own guitar tracks for my solo projects and many of the bass players I know want to improvise too much that the song strays away from my original vision. On band projects, that is OK but on projects where you have a clear vision and need it played the way YOU want it played, sometimes its best to play the parts yourself.

Solution: I record a lot of my projects onto a stand alone mixer, edit it, upload it to my mixing software on the computer, convert it to the various digital formats. So what I do initially is record a guitar work track which is called my skeleton.

The skeleton has the intro and the rhythm chords and the outro. The chord section determines the beat of the song as well (I don’t like metronomes). Once the skeleton is done, I prepare for the real rhythm guitar sound and rehearse the rhythm until it feels right. When it’s right I record.

Everything is based on this skeleton. The skeleton of a song is also something you can sing to live on an acoustic guitar (like Unplugged). Now once the real rhythm guitar is recorded you do not put in anything else or it may throw off your timing. Your next step is to grab your bass guitar. If you ain’t got one, your mixer can simulate your guitar into bass.

Now here’s the easy part. Play your track and play bass along with it ONLY KEEPING TIME with the song. Don’t worry about the notes. Then, start over but this time play the single bass notes that correspond to the chords. Rehearse this several times keeping in time and playing single notes.

Finally, once you are “in the groove”, you alter bass beats or add secondary notes. For example: let’s say your first chord is A major and it repeats four times or is 4/4, whatever. Instead of going A A A A, you play A stop A stop, or A E A E.

Going into more difficult techniques or methods is beyond the scope of this blog but for now this method is good especially if you are not a bass playin’ guitarist or want your demo done the way you want it.

Well I hoped you enjoyed my little article.