Crafting a bassline

This month, Dave Clews takes you through bassline programming bassics, from both ‘real’ and synth-based approaches

- Dave Clews

1 If you already have a chord progression, work out what the root note of each chord is, then lock those with the bass on each chord change. This example progression uses four bars of Em chord stabs, two of Cm and two of Am, but watch for inverted chords – these are 1st inversion minor chords, so the root note is the top note in each chord.

Bass is not only the foundation of a piece of music pitch-wise but also incredibly important from a rhythmic perspective. A solid bassline locked to an infectious drum groove is the holy grail of dance music, so this month I’ll be looking at some of the ingredients that can help transform a basic bassline into a stone-cold killer groove.

There are, of course, many different styles of bass depending on the genre. Also, the type of instrument you’re using will have an effect on things – a great synth bassline will have similar elements to an equivalent line played on a bass guitar in terms of rhythm and syncopation, but as it’s played on a keyboard rather than a fretboard, the approach to the way it’s played and phrased will be slightly different.

This all means that when programming a bass part in your DAW, you’ll need to adopt different approaches when working with synth bass or bass guitar samples. There are plenty of aspects that many great basslines have in common though, so this month I’m going to demonstrate how to construct both synth-based and more real-sounding bass parts.

I’ll be using DopeVST’s Bass Engine CM plugin, available to download from the Plugins Suite, then moving on to some more advanced techniques using Waves’ Bass Fingers virtual bass instrument.