I like where I’m at with this sound, but this bassline is sounding sort of boring. Any advice? Thanks.
Maybe shift the overall rhythmic composition so that the second kick/bass hit wouldn’t land on the 3th beat but 1/8 offsetted forwards.
So instead of this:
0-------0----0-0
The kick/bass hits would do:
0--------0—0-0
I’d say it would push the rhythym towards something more suspended, and maybe more interesting. You could mix that rhythmic pattern with the original one too. It would probably work with a simple zig-zag-mix of (original)(shifted)(original)(shifted)…
Thanks–KMaki, I’m trying to understand, but not sure I do. Something like this?
(Sounds better than the first to my ears anyway)
Skolskoly–sorry, I need to learn more about pentatonics, but could you be a bit more specific?
Not quite I’ll try to illustrate with a quick render maybe tonight (If the Mayans were wrong)… Working. Hard. For. The. Money…
–EDIT
But, yeah, that already sounds better!
Sorry, MarcC!
I think that the blues scale is good for adding a bit of harmony into the bassline.
As for what to do with it? The most important thing would be to play around with it, but adding some very short rhythmic notes in the sections between bass notes higher in the octave can sound good. Of course, it’s all up to you.
I know this may not be the most helpful explanation, maybe I could come back this afternoon and give you some better examples?
This was what I meant. Quick illustration of the rhythmic idea I tried to convey. Doesn’t work as well as I thought it would…
Link to MP3
Oh yeah, original first 1 round, then my idea 1 round.
That would be awesome
Ah, that makes sense now. I appreciate the explanation. Just for fun I added some additional parts and I think the bassline isn’t as bad anymore:
…kicks in after my son’s intro
Hello again, I’m back!
Okay, now that I’ve listened to it a bit more, I see that you’ve taken the song in a direction I didn’t have in mind - It actually sounds really good though, I like it!
http://soundcloud.com/skolskoly/marcc-bass
So here’s what I was thinking of - skip to the middle, that’s where the difference is. It really adds a lot of rhythm to the bass, but I’m thinking this would probably clash a little with your melodies and the ambient style of the song, so you might just want to leave it as it is. It could be fun for some sort of the bridge in the song though - just cut out the other instruments and rock on! The blues scale is great for anything, really :3
Sorry, I guess I’m getting ahead of myself, cause I’m not really sure what you know. You can probably find some good tutorials online about pentatonic scales that can explain them better than I can, with diagrams and the like.
Hmm…I like your idea of thinking about basslines for bridges. That makes sense to me. Thanks again.