How to cover Bass in a band?

[Roseweave]

Here's the thing, I'm jamming with two guys at the moment. One is a drummer, one is a guitarist and occasionally bassist.

I play guitar and keys. I wanted to play guitar more, but they want me to play keys a bit more. I'll probably end up using loads of guitar effects to make synth sounds, which is fine by me since most bands aren't so tolerant of that, but I have to try and convince them it's a good idea(because really synths and effects heavy guitar have the same kinds of effect).

Generally I'l play guitar when he plays Bass. I'll play keys when he plays guitar.

But that means I'm kinda stuck to using Bass synth sounds. I've made some sounds that are kind of trebley on top and bassy on bottom ,if that makes any sense, but I'm still a little limited. And what if we both want to play guitar? To get that really big nice chug it really helps to have two guitars with different tones.

It's an interesting situation, but in the few months I left them alone it doesn't seem like they found a fourth person. I think it'd make sense starting out to work something out. I know other bands do it.

Both of us tend to like Trebley guitar tones, he likes his punky guitaring through Solid State amps, and I like my brighter Marshally/Vox tones and Lunchbox. So it's a bit tough trying to fill out the low end. I do find the Soda Meiser is really good for giving the guitar some bass, but again I tend to use more trebley tones.

The only things I can think of is to split off the guitar signal and use that to create the bass somehow. Or have the bass lines be simple loops that the drummer sets off.

[effetebomb]

yeah, sending a split of your signal off to some kind of octavey thingy, then to a bass amp is a pretty good compromise. my friend wants to do this, sending his signal one way to his normal effects, then fender DRRI, and the other part to a HOG and on to a bass amp from there. haven't tried it yet, but seems cool.

you could use a digitech whammy pedal, sending the dry out to your guitar stuff, then the wet out to bass amp (assuming you are on a 1/2/3 octave down setting)


other than that, you could try out a baritone guitar?

or just find a fourth band member for bass, or bassy synth, or whatever (though this is almost certainly the biggest hassle)

i play in a band that is drums, guitar, keytar, and sax. while the keytar sometimes covers bassy sounds its generally all mid range stuff.

[Ghost Hip]

I say mix it up even if you end up playing without a bass, adds more variety to the band's sound. two guitars, keys/bass, guitar/bass, etc. Low end is great but its not necessary to have a good time at a show. Personally I crank the bass on my amp and still get pretty nice treble heavy punk tones.

[effetebomb]

Low end is great but its not necessary to have a good time at a show. .

this is what i was trying to get at.

[Roseweave]

Yeah, the Lunchbox is quite lacking in the low end though, I might convince the other guitarist to turn up his bass or use fuzz, or do some kind of bassy reverb effect on the dorums.

I think if you have a big boomy amp you probably don't need a bassist to cover the low end. Though I'm curious as to what the Lunchbox sounds like through a bigger cab, given it sounds a lot like a Bassman to my ears.

[metalmariachi]

Find an old school sealed or Thiele ported 1x15. The Lunchbox sounds very good through one of those. Forget modern cross over thingies, they don’t sound that good to begin with.

Have you thought about Rhodes bass keys? Keeps your left hand busy and doesn’t sound synthy.

MM

[WaveForm3]

Detune

[1,2,3, Pull Out!]

Why don't you play through 2 amps, try to find a cheap bassman or something, then make your trebly tones REALLY trebly and crank the bass on your bassman.

[destroyerjazz]

do what i do in my two piece band. i split my pedalboard signal right after the tuner with my ehx micropog. dry output goes to the rest of my guitar effects and then to my 2 guitar amps, wet output goes to a boost and then into my bass amp. the micropog rules for this because it's fully polyphonic and doesn't have tons of unnecessary stuff like the big pog (when are you going to go 3 octaves up?!)

[Roseweave]

Detune

Having the other guitarist play in C maybe might be interesting. He could play lower chords and I'd play higher ones.

[01010111]

I'm in a similar situation, and I too want to play guitar more, I've been playing bass because that's the easiest spot to slip in that extra sound and the current guitarist gets very lost very fast if he tries to play anything else. I've decided just to differentiate my guitar tone from his enough that I can justify throwing my guitar tone on top of his.

I would suggest the amp splitting thing because you can cover a lot of sound territory that way. I'm suspicious about using different effects on the spliced signal as opposed to the main signal, I'd just divide the amplifiers into treble and bass. I use a peavey tko and a peavey renown and it goes a long way.

[Roseweave]

Maybe I could get that Bass amplug and send it to the mixer? That'd be a nice cheap option(and bette than a lot of other cheap bass amps too).

[devnulljp]

Are bass pedals -- like the old Moog Taurus -- not an option? Taurus are $$$$ and hard to find now though (although there's a reissue in the works -- still $$$$), but you could go with a Roland PK-5a and a sound module or something like the BASYN Analog Bass Synth?

[MannequinRaces]

Get a bass player or like others have mentioned split your signal. Nothing beats the sound waves that low frequencies produce.