THE ALTERNATIVE ROCKER

Therapy? man Mike says ‘Don’t (double) stop me now!’

This month I’m going to have a basic look at an often overlooked part of playing bass. A lot of rock bass demands tight, grooving lines, normally composed of single notes, but there’s a whole world of bass chords out there. Used right, these can really broaden your playing and songwriting.

Being in a three-piece band, I’ve found that playing chords when there’s a lead break or instrumental part has been a great help in filling out the sound. Coupled with the right note choices and sound, they are a very dynamic way to push the feel of a song in a slightly different way. If you’re not used to playing chords, you may well find it hard to fret all the strings accurately – so I’d start off with two-string power chords (root plus fifth) and build up when you’ve got the strength.

One of the biggest challenges I find with playing chords on the bass is shifting them accurately around the fretboard, because it’s very easy to have one finger miss a position. Again, practise playing the parts slowly and precisely before building up the speed. The nice part about chords is that you can arpeggiate them if you want something more busy-sounding, or simply dig in and strum them if you’re going for a wall-of-sound approach. If you’re feeling adventurous, instead of playing a single-note melody line, try a two-note approach that keeps the melody line moving along on one string while keeping the root on another. This is great for song intros or middle eights.

Sound-wise, you’ll need to roll back a bit of the gain and bottom end from your tone. Overdrive can make note combinations sound nasty – and not ‘good nasty’! A slightly less bassy sound will help the individual notes of a chord to ring out. Check that your basses are intonated correctly; once you start stacking twoor three-string chords, any inconsistencies will become very obvious. I also find that chords using the low E string to sound far too muddy to be effective. Finally, keep an ear open for any effects that can help out with smoothing these parts out – some subtle chorus or reverb can really make the chords sing. Release your inner Lemmy today!

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