The bass is the base. Hence the name. The bass is the binding force between the rhythm and the harmony. The bass is the instrument that plays the harmony in a rhythmic pattern. Of course, I say that as a bassist, and there are so many jokes out there about bassists that undermine my claim. For example, how many bassists are required to change a light bulb? None, a keyboardist could do that with his left hand. Ha, ha, very funny! Nevertheless, many appreciate us, bassists. You know bassists, those guitarists with four fat strings instead of six regular? OK, joking aside, the bass started practically as a metronome instrument that ticks the basic tones and the fifths, but early in the history of modern music great players developed it into a serious instrument that’s hard to master. The virtuosity of bassists was common in jazz music as early as the genre was born. But when Leo Fender invented the first widely accepted bass guitar, the craft of playing bass became the art of playing bass.
For those who don’t know anything about harmony, the bass note determines the chord. The importance of bass notes is best explained by one of the most creative musicians of all times, the bassist and singer Gordon Sumner, commonly known as Sting: “You know, the piano player can play a C chord on the piano, but it's only a C chord if I play C on the bass. If I play something else, it's a totally different chord. For instance, an A minor. So you (the bassist) control the harmony.” The low-end range is also important in the creation and movement of melody. Robert Challoner, music theoretician, wrote in his 1880 “History of the Science and Art of Music”: "The bass part ... is, in fact, the foundation upon which the melody rests and without which there could be no melody." One research from 2014, conducted by McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada, showed that participants were more efficient at recognizing errors if they occurred in the bass notes. The researchers also found that, if asked to tap their fingers to this unpredictable stream of notes, subjects were better at adjusting their tapping to the tempo changes when the lower tones began to arrive early than they were if the same thing happened with higher tones. Basically, this means that the low-end of the sonic spectrum defines the general mood and flow of the song. The studies found that music with boosted low range frequencies incites feelings of power and self-confidence, so keep that in mind the next time you adjust your sound system’s EQ.
The mastery of playing the bass was developed by many legendary bassists, from the early history of jazz up until contemporary times. Charles Mingus, Paul Chambers, Ron Carter, Dave Holland, Marcus Miller, Stanley Clarke, John Paul Jones, Mark King, Glenn Hughes, Anthony Jackson, and of course, Jaco Pastorius, are only few of the names that helped define and advance the bass as an instrument, either on upright or electric, or both. Next time in these series we’ll peek into the careers of these great musicians and try to establish their contribution to the development of the instrument. Until then, you can enjoy some of the finest low-end performances in history of popular music.
