> Intro > Background and method > Give the Drummer Some > Play the Chart > Get inspired by Bass AI > Record and reflect > Bass Out
Introduction
Alright, so Songzap seems pretty focused on singer-songwriters and tracking acoustic instruments. Of course, it does makes sense to put the mobile phone mic to good use capturing ideas on the go with your acoustic guitar and voice, and – if you’ve subscribed to Premium – letting the Beat, Bass and Pad AI session buddies surround you with groovy accompaniments.
But what about electric instruments? Specifically, what if you’re an electric bass player?
Well, the good news is that Songzap works great for recording both acoustic and amplified sources, and it doubles as a great practice tool, too, whatever your instrument of choice.
In this blog post, I’ll focus on the electric bass, show you how to best mic your amp, and harness Songzap’s AI power to create grooves and arrangements that will infinitely support your bass practice.
Background and method
If you’re like me, you’ve tried all sorts of things as part of your low-end practice regime: books, metronomes, online courses, hey, even bass camps (yes, I’ve been to Victor Wooten’s bass/nature camp – highly recommended!) These are all invaluable tools and learning contexts as part of one’s lifelong musical journey. But nothing beats putting your theoretical knowledge and technical skill to the test. And that means: playing to music, playing to songs, unfolding in front of you, in real time.
I came to bass late in my musical life and, at that point, I had already been an educator for close to 20 years. I realised, by having taught thousands of students over the years, that folks learn most effectively when they fuse theory, practice and real-life application; pretty much in equal measure. So, when I embarked on my PhD (a practice-based thesis on Hip Hop musicology that resulted in this book and album), I decided I wanted to fast-track my bass learning in parallel, so I could incorporate original basslines in my sampling/research endeavours. As a result, I devised a three-hour daily practice routine that involved:
- an hour of learning (bass-centric) theory;
- an hour of technical training (scales, arpeggios and the like);
- and one hour of playing to/with music.
This last hour could be anything from jamming with human beings live (the best kind), to playing alongside records or minus-bass jam tracks (the kind that comes with books or online courses). What’s really powerful about the notion of putting your theoretical and technical chops to music unfolding live in front of you, is that you have to think and respond “on your feet”, so to speak, or reflexively as we say in academia. Music unfolding as a live organism challenges you and asks you to respond with: rhythm, feeling, tone, energy, dynamics, intonation, note duration, stamina, attitude even. And that results in faster and better musical development.
Now if you’re lucky enough to be in a band or work in another musical job (session player, MD, etc.) you probably get your daily application of playing-to-music by default. For many musicians on their learning journey, however, this scenario is not always feasible, so we have to look for alternatives that help us incorporate this, applied, aspect of our practice into our routine. In the following sections, I’ll break down some of the ways in which I use Songzap as a practice tool for Bass.
Give the Drummer Some
After we developed the first version of Songzap in 2022, I discovered a new and unexpected way to use the Beat instrument of the Groove feature for my bass practice. I was always fascinated by bass players who locked like glue to the kick pattern of a drum groove and it’s something I’ve always pursued when playing along with drummers. But, these days, I don’t get to play live as often as I’d like. So, I wanted to recreate this experience as part of my practice.
Locking to the kick drum may sound simplistic, but it requires attentive listening, tight rhythm and control of note duration, too. Of course, playing to records is invaluable, but there’s often already a bass in there and you do get accustomed to your favourite records pretty soon – so the element of surprise and variation fades away performatively speaking. Before Songzap, I’d program beats with as much variation as possible on my MPC or DAW and play to those as well. But unlike a real drummer, drum machines and computer software are rarely tactile or intuitive enough to allow you to quickly flip the groove or to keep doing so infinitely (especially if your hands are busy with the bass strings).
Enter Songzap’s Beat instrument: the three control dots in the kick, snare and hi-hat areas let you variate the groove playing back at the ease of a tap-and-drag. So, come up with a bassline for a one-bar beat, loop it around, play it with feeling, perfect it, then… move the kick dot a tad. Now adapt your bassline to the new kick drum pattern. Looking for a harder challenge? Move the kick dot more drastically. Increase the tempo. Bored of the drum sound or looking for inspiration to take your bassline in a different stylistic direction? Change the sample pack and go at it again. Notice how the different sample packs feature individual drum sounds of different envelopes and lengths? Adapt your bass note duration to match. Play more legato. Play more staccato. Palm mute. Play fingered. Play with a pick. Slap!
In the video below, watch me lock bass root notes, initially, to a beat and its variation focusing on the kick drum; and gradually adding some fifths and octaves that lock to the snare.
So that’s great: instantly variating drum grooves for your bass practice. And you don’t have to stop at locking to the kick – snares and hi-hats are fair play, too. But what if you want to practise long-form, without having to stop and touch the mobile screen now and again? Easy: pre-program a series of beat variations using song segments, structure them out in the Arrange page and tap “play” on the first one. You can even loop the whole song structure around to test your calluses and stamina 🙂
Play the Chart
So we focused on rhythm and timing in the section above. What about chord changes and harmony? Here’s another cool way to use Songzap and, additionally, recreate the experience of playing to actual songs with an ensemble. Tap on the Open Chord Chart button and you can enter your own chords into each song segment/section. Turn on Groove’s Pad instrument, too, choose a keyboard sample library (say, Hammond organ or Rhodes piano) and now you have harmonic content on top of your beat variations. Adapt your basslines to follow the chords and think about song structure in your bass parts and dynamics, too.
In the video below, watch me lock to a Verse and then a Chorus beat, whilst transposing and variating the bassline to follow the harmonic changes played by the Organ pad; once I get comfortable locking to the groove, I start introducing fills and licks at the end of the four-bar sequences. to spice things up a tad.
Get inspired by Bass AI
Of course, Songzap Premium includes a Bass instrument as well, as part of the Groove feature. You may want to leave that off if you’re a bass player. But here’s another interesting approach that may enrich your practice. Let Songzap’s AI spit out some basslines to the chord progressions you gave it and then analyse them. Radical, right? Learning from a bot – what is the world coming to! However, it’s actually the other way around. We taught our AI engine rhythmic and harmonic rules, and we looked at historic bass approaches (and my own playing) to educate it. Then we gave it various drum-lock features. And we added a transition (‘fills’) engine that variates the last beat of each bar according to triad, pentatonic, scalar or chromatic choices (read all about it in the Bass AI User Guide tutorial).
So, you can look at it, instead, as a bassline generator/database, which you can modify to your heart’s content (just use the control dot on the front of the amp cabinet interface). By reverse-engineering your analytical listening, you’ll hear it follow the rules of harmony and rhythm, lock to the drummer and come up with some out-there fills, too. Turn the Bass track up in the Mixer (and compress and EQ it if you’re using Premium), tap the track to solo it, make it stand out in the mix and then emulate it with your own playing, putting back your humanity and individual style into the equation. Controversial, I know, but what a cool generative resource to create an additional challenge or to inspire new ideas in your practice routine.
Record and reflect
Now, nothing beats recording your own basslines and analytically listening back. Reflection and hearing back your performances recorded are invaluable tools in your practice arsenal. I’m always fascinated by the difference between how I remember my performances being (the aural memory), and the way they sound when playing them back recorded. There are many reasons for this. When putting down a bassline you’re often in a different zone, perhaps even in a flow state. You’re breathing differently, you use your muscles and fingers differently, you might even be ‘swimming’ in the sonic bass waves of your amp’s resonance hitting your body while you wear headphones to monitor your recording. (In fact, I always find my timing and groove to be better when I record with amps, rather than D.I.’d, very much because of this embodied aspect.) But when you play back the recorded result, there’s just the sonic ‘record’ of the notes, sounds and energy you generated. In wave form.
You can focus in on the detail, the tightness to the drums, the length of the notes, the tone. So, it’s important to get a good sonic representation of your performances, to aid your analysis. Here’s how I record my bass amp…
Songzap uses the mic near the bottom of your mobile device to record and you can get surprisingly good results (check out the Tracking User Guide tutorial for more). A few things to be aware of:
- don’t record a source that’s too loud, to avoid distortion or over-compression on the way in – any unwanted artefacts tracked at the source stage are almost impossible to heal in post-production;
- you can just leave your phone on top of the amp cabinet, but if the (big) bass resonance shakes or moves your phone, you may get some rattle recorded – so, I prefer to use a gooseneck phone holder, or simply position the phone on a sofa or table just across from the amp (by the way, a little distance from the source can often produce a sweeter sound);
- and don’t forget that you are also generating acoustic noises while you play your electric bass (especially if you slap or use a pick) – e.g. string noise, breathing, hey, even funk grunts – so, be aware of where the mic is in relation to the amp and your bass, body (mouth) and fingers.
Bass Out
That’s it! Experiment with tracking your performances, analytically reflecting on them, re-tracking, analysing and then tracking some more. Not only your bass-playing, but also your awareness of recording the bass will dramatically improve. And remember to try drum-locking and harmonic playing using Songzap, as a way to spice up the applied part of your practice regime.
