The crucial role of the bass

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The crucial role of the bass

How much attention do you pay to the bass part? You’d certainly miss it if it wasn’t there

WHEN YOU listen to a piece of music, whether it’s a pop song or a classical symphony, how much attention do you pay to the bass part? Probably not much.

But you’d certainly miss it if it wasn’t there, the music would sound thinner and flimsier – as if it had no ‘bottom end’.

I remember shouting to him across the room 'Jason, this song is in seven!'

Larry Bartley

But usually, what the bassist plays is clearly related to everything else that’s going on. The bassist will stay close to the pulse of the drummer in a pop song for instance. And the notes played by the bass will mark out crucial notes in each chord – like signposts on a journey, so everyone knows exactly where they are.

Not in Where Will It Take You?, however. As with much else that Jason Yarde has done in this piece, the bassline has a powerful role of its own, and not always related in an obvious way to the other elements in the music, either.

Bass, bars 3-6

Here's the opening bass part in Jason’s composition:

Wind, bars 1-2

The first notes from the double-bass pattern have a very different feeling to the smooth flow of the wind instruments that played the intro just before.

Double Bass and Drums, bars 3-6

Here's the bass riff again, but this time with Seb Rochford’s drums coming into the frame.

Does it sound as if there’s one rhythm here, or two? Does the bass melody sound as if it’s tied to the main drumbeat, or playing a different rhythm of its own?

There are two rhythms. Seb is playing a regular, evenly-spaced rhythm built around groups of four beats – what’s sometimes called ‘common time’, with the stronger accents on the first and third beats. But Larry Bartley, on bass, isn’t doing that.

When you hear the two instruments – together but at the same time apart – you hear the effect of what’s called ‘syncopation’.

Syncopation is used in all kinds of music to create interest and prevent a piece from becoming predictable – but it’s particularly common in jazz, since it’s the basis of the ‘swing’ feel that so much jazz rhythm has.

Here’s how Larry Bartley felt about syncopation and mixing different times and rhythms, as it struck him in Where Will It Take You?

Seed rhythm

The crucial role of the bass

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