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99% of metal bass will either be: A) the most boring, barely audile, basic root note just follow the guitars bullshit or B) the most technically proficient, face-melting, physically- and theoretically-demanding bass work you've ever heard
Some times it’s the secret C option. C) The most technical, impressive bass lines that mix so well with everything else, but it’s barely audible. I’m talking about …And Justice For All.
not really. in fact i'd argue it's the complete opposite. ridiculously low tunings, bass that has more strings than the guitars, and sludge fests are all the things that turned metal into a contrived genre, and that's why scene is dead.
At first I was like “oh, another video complaining about bass in metal” but no this is actually what the problem is. It’s a great sounding instrument but it gets simplified, minimized, and buried every time because that’s what everyone insists it should be.
Part of the problem is that for the longest time bass was turned way the fuck down. There's actually some cool shit going on in a lot of metal songs but you can't hear it. It's honestly a damn shame. I feel like modern production has finally let the bass shine a little more. The other thing is that guitarist keep getting more low strings and now the bass has to be eq'd to be a shreeky monstrosity to even cut through the mix. Idk just turn the bass up people lol
Obscura, First Fragment, Beyond Creation, Archspire, Death, Atheist, Cynic and Coroner really push it with basslines in metal, and if you go looking deep enough you cam find bands that were doing some crazy shit with theur basslines in the post Burton era.
Was going to comment some of those. Even though it's true that bass is boring in most metal, saying that no one innovated after cliff is a huge exaggeration
@@traskirataYou earn extra points for mentioning Audie. Acid Bath remains underrated. Check out Acid Bath Archives on here, Sammy has full guitar playthroughs of both AB’s albums.
ryan martinie from mudvayne and fieldy from korn did make their basses stand out in different terrifying ways post burton era in metal. ryan makes his sound like a demonic seinfield intro and fieldy makes creepy clanky noises with his
it is metal adjacent, and is sometimes heavy, but idk about metal... also you can have great basslines that aren't extra. watch a bass cover of obstacle 1 by interpol just up to the first minute mark. the basslines in that album are way better than Primus
I’ll explain it from a bass player perspective… my jam mates tell me to keep it the fuck down and just hold roots. The problem isn’t that is as bassists we don’t wanna make cool unique shit… it’s the guitarists tell us to basically fuck off and no one really cares
Yes...and why do you listen to your(should be ex) guitar player in the first place, on how to play your instrument he DOESNT play...i dont tell a keyboard player what to play...come on people...find a new band...START a new band
@@marijanbarac1216 this is actually a lot harder said than done. Not a lot of guitarists actually see the value in bass because tbh a lot of them are driven by ego. The guitarist is usually the one that STARTS the band but he really has no intention of working with others. I've seen so many bands where the bass is turned way too low and can't even be felt. And even some bands just omit the bass altogether, which is wild cuz it just ends up making shit sound flat. I agree bass should have free reign to make shit interesting in their end of the spectrum.
My friend is a bassist and one of his first bands, the other band mates told him to turn it way the fuck down to the point it wasn't audible. And it was a disaster... Imagine a drummer trying to keep time with a guitarist that is soloing.
@@teddy3k3 i know...then again i worked with many guitar players who were actual musicians, and very engaged and interested in bass(as well as other instruments) as am i...point is...i would never work with someone who wants to be 'solo with a backing staff' i once had such a guy in band, great playing skills, horrible musical attitude, he was out in no time...guy was able to keep on playing even if the rest of us(along with second guitarist) left the room...so go figure...anyone with no respect towards other instruments is not a true musician in my view
The fretless tone is farty as shit. If you want actually creative basslines and not noodling, listen to Scott clendininn's bass on the sound of preserverance.
Good guitars only get you so far. Good drums take you to new heights. Good bass glues everything together and defines the sound. Good vocalists help the rest of the band load their gear in and out.
A bad vocalist ruins a band for me. Maybe because I am a singer myself. But even tho the band might be very prolific, I can dig the instrumental part and all, but they won’t be on my earphones, because the vocal part is the most human part of a band and if it doesn’t connect with me emotionally I just can’t listening in a more intimate level and connect with it.
Eyyyy awesome to see Opeth. But we can't forget TOOL. That is some just classically, widely accepted great metal bass. Also, people give it shit, but J-Metal has some genuinely phenomenal bass pretty consistently. They put some absolute savants on the instrument. I think there's a lot of snobbery against Japanese Rock and Metal, but even on a technical level it's genuinely got some phenomenal music.
@@ChristianIce thats true but with a guitarist like dimebag I think supporting his playing is the best move. And then his playing during solos is just so cool not to mention his tone is impeccable. As for songs where he isn't following the guitars, think floods, hollow, good friends and a bottle of pills
@@ashyvlogs1132 I mean, the video is suopposed to be provocative but in a funny way, I guess. Even Cliff Burton, for 95% of the time, was dubbing the rhythm guitars. Let's also say that unless they play harmoniztions, also the two guitars in metal play the same thing. It's functional, but yeah, the formula is kinda old and after 30+ years it has become kinda boring.
There’s definitely great Metal bass parts out there - First Fragment, Tool, Defeated Sanity, Death, you just gotta look for it. In my opinion, a great bassist is really what pulls the entire ensemble together. I mean, even Meshuggah where the guitars and basses are tuned in Unison most of the time, on Koloss the bass tone and performance is so sick it just amplifies the grooves to a new level
03:00 Kublai khan tx - self destruct is a song with a devastating bass breakdown at the end, and if im not mistaken the new knocked loose album has one too \m/
TOOL's Justin Chancellor toes the line of cool bassists. Although, a lot of TOOL's songs don't really feature a bassline as much as they feature a bassist.
Highly suggest you check out Chris Richards/Derek Boyer of Suffocation, Roger Patterson of Atheist, Eric Langois of Cryptopsy, and Steve Cloutier of Gorguts, theres much more than playing the root note.
What kind of metal are you listening to?... In my experience bass is essential and is definitely contributing a lot to the overall sound of most of the bands I'm listening to...
@@fredcavalcante1887 Oh let's see. Karnivool, Trioscapes, The Contortionist, Korn, Twelve Foot Ninja (even though I think they were, ironically, left without a bassist for their final album)...
@@shanedisner6586 Havok with David, Reece and Pete are very solid, but throw in Nick and they're absolutely ridiculous. Also he was wearing a kirkland hotdog shirt when i saw Havok which was just *chefs kiss*
I dunno, Chris Wolstenhome of Muse did some cool stuff during Muse's more metal-esque early material. Plus Billy Sheehan did crazy shit during the '80s hair metal days.
I get the point of the video is to be humorous/sarcastic. I agree that we need more out of bassists, especially with 8 string guitars. My advice would be to listen to Death and Obscura for interesting bass parts. Iron Maiden has also always had interesting bass parts and, earlier in their career, great tone. More recent Kevin Shirley albums (1995-now) have been more clank bass. Other observations: 1) You can definitely hear and feel a lack of bass live, especially if a kick drum is heavily sampled and clicky, as most metal bass drums are these days. Bass is the gel that holds the low end of the guitar to the kick in a mix. Since metal is usually about scooping out the low mids (around 400 hz), in order to get a good metal bass sound you usually have to scoop out the bass's mids to make room for the guitars upper mids (around 2 khz). Alternately, you can push the bass's mids and try to scoop the guitars even more, but then you end up with a weaker than usual sound that goes against conventions of the genre. You also have to worry about drum sets and sometimes synths that's sound can run the entire frequency range. Usually the first thing to get reduced is bass. 2) Writing effective basslines in the neoclassical tradition requires some counterpoint knowledge that most musicians lack. They will noodle around until they find something that sounds good. I consider writing for bass in rock and metal to be a melody instrument like a lead guitar but an octave lower. In jazz bass is more about determining the identity of the guitar chord by emphasizing specific root notes which may or may not be the lowest note (voice leading, inversions, alternate voicings, any note in a fully diminished 7th chord since all can be roots, changing from dominant 7ths to fully diminished 7ths, tritone substitutions/secondary dominants, extended dominants in a V7 to I situation). Bass leads more in jazz while the guitar vamps on a chord (or often just pieces of the chord that omit the root). 3) The bass is usually reduced in a metal mix to make a "wall of guitar" sound supported by a kick. Especially in 200+ bpm double bass drums doing 16ths pattern, uncontrolled bass can get blurry and sloppy. A lot of bassists will do 8ths against fast 16th notes. Tom Araya in Slayer comes to mind. Not doubling the guitar weakens the impact of the wall of sound by making the ear shift to the bass's melody and numerous fills. For this reason I think Cliff Burton's basslines in Metallica (when you can hear them) aren't as effective as Jason Newsted's doubling James (when you can hear Jason) because Cliff is all over the place and has less consistent dynamics due to fingerstyle bass playing. 4) Playing fast picked bass doubled against guitars is difficult because of thicker, longer bass strings creating more tension on the upstroke and the bass's tending to require compression to even out dynamics. So even if bass is just doubling fast guitars there is skill there. 5) Types of bass pickups don't really matter in modern recording considering we have unlimited amounts of gain and distortion available. Coil geometry can be reconfigured in numerous ways, especially in a soapbar pickup housing, which is by far the most popular bass pickup shape for 5+ string basses. I like a clean, warm bass sound, so I use vintage spec Fender 62 reissue pickups (P and J) boosted by the amp in a DAW. Overwound pickups for rock and metal can get very dark and muddy and weirdly sound better for hip hop and funk than metal. Active pickups also have their place but I don't like their sound as much. In short, it's easier to boost an underwound pickup than to clean up an overwound one. 6) Good call on splitting the highs and lows. Other people split a DI and amp sound and mix to taste.
I think Nu Metal brought a lot of innovation to metal bass playing. Ryan Martinie, Fieldy, Paul Gray, Shavo Odadjian, Chi Cheng. They're all pretty influential artists and you can hear their influence in a lot of modern metal.
I love playing the pure basics of bass even if I can play fairly complicated lines. Judas Priest, Grave Digger, Accept and Running Wild are bands that doesnt need to have anything special on the bass most of the time. Not all bands needs to have spectacular bass playing.
IMO this is where tech and prog death metal shine for bass since you get a wide spectrum of playing styles. You even get bassists who incorporate fretless work in there as well which always adds a different sound. The problem seems to be those who think metal should just be chug and breakdown heavy and have no outside influence, when in reality those influences are tools that can help songs stand out and showcase why certain musicians are idolized. Bass in metal is awesome, but not all subgenres utilize its potential fullyl
dude you gotta check out the funeral doom metal band called bell witch, i saw them live and got to talk to the bassist, he runs his bass into a bass amp and two guitar amps, sounds nasty
This is exactly what I was thinking too! The bass is such a mighty instrument. I'm actually trying to record some kind of tape in which the bass takes the central role but I'm still experimenting.
The bass in Hole In the Earth by Deftones is what you’re looking for. Listen to the bass (or the isolated track) during the bridge section, it’s so beautiful. Makes the song even more out of this world
There's a noisecore band called Sete Star Sept who uses bass and drums only, really really chaotic music but it shows how much mangling the tone of a bass can cause absolute audio destruction. There's a lot of other underground metal bands that base their sound entirely around bass (specifically grindcore and powerviolence), Thetan comes to mind. I was previously in a band that had TWO bass players, mine was fuzzed out and overdriven to shit and the other was clean. Made some KILLER tones there.
Yes, or... Let's use the same samples everybody is using to trigger the kicks and the snare, let's load that kemper profile called "every metal band ever" and let's put a kick every time the guitar plays the lowest open string. That would also do... :)
Everyone here needs to listen to the album "Conference of the Birds" by OM. There is no guitar in on the album, only bass and drums, and it is WICKED. Nobody has bass that sounds like OM.
To your point, there is a huge lack of resources for even common metal bass guitar techniques online. It’s almost always guitar instead. So we just kinda follow the guitar a lot because it’s sorta expected I guess. I think it’s good to pull from our roots with the classics and expand on it, I’m always pulling from outside the genre I’m playing in for inspiration. I try to play like Lemmy when I’m not playing metal and I try to play like Peter Hook when I’m playing black metal!
Even brewer has some amazing bass lines for the band entheos. He really does a great job at bringing bass lines that compliment both the guitar and drums while being mostly slap style.
I'm on this. I play Open C on a 5-string (GCGCG). I'm gonna look into this. I was a lead songwriter for a 3-piece death metal band in the mid-90s, inspired by the holy trinity of Lee, Butler and Burton. I still remember in the middle of the first two Black Sabbath albums Geezer ripping a solo at the same time Toni Iommi did and it ROCKED. Let me look into this.
There's a time and place for doubling guitar parts but I would like to see more creative means of filling the space akin to Cliff Burton, Geddy Lee, John Myung, etc. They do things like counter melodies, solos, and bass harmonics.
The line 6 helix for me completely changed the bass. I'm running guitar amps with some beefy boi amps and delays for days and I make some of the best stoner metal noise ever. I'm to lazy to record it, but it's a shame there isn't more of it.
I love digital, i wanted my own B7K but love it and hate it because majority of bass distortion sounds like it but when it came out i already had only an ipad with Bias FX 2 and since them attempted to recreate that sound and loving my split chains between bass amps in one channel and high gain guitar amps and cabinets. Currently i’m trying to dial something like Alex Weber tone in Wormhole’s album Weakest Among Us that has this crazy distortion blended with a chorus on it that sounds amazing
Dude same. Ive got an HX Stomp, but I'm a pro at getting everything I need out of it (I get more of it than most do with a helix). Bass with that is awesome. I'll often do a mix of bass amp, distorted guitar amp, sansamp, and DI. It allows you to create a touring rig of the greats without spending thousands or having to kill low flying birds with a giant Ampeg stack. 😂
As soon as you whipped out the TMB 100 I thought "This is gonna be good". That exact model was the very first instrument I got a few years ago, and ever since I've been trying to figure out ways to make the most of such a kickass tool. As I grew out of the beginner stage and was still hungry for more, I remember being kinda disappointed with the general lack of utilization bass got once I really started paying attention to mixes of tunes that inspired me to start playing in the first place. Either the bass was so fucking quiet that you had to look up a channel that made remixes/remasters on UA-cam to actually hear the damn thing, or the composition was such a snoozefest that I'd learn the song and no time and think "That's it? But everything else in the song was so much more interesting-". Since then I've started writing my own stuff with the goal of making the song fit the bass rather than making the bass fit the song. It's been kinda difficult since there's not much that I've found that deliberately teaches this approach, but honestly it's made the learning process that much more fun and interesting. I've had to learn quite a bit about EQ, how mixes work, and a bunch of other technical stuff to make it all work out in the end, but we're getting there little by little (: TLDR: Kickass stoppie at the beginning, I like your funny words magic man, and you're the second person on YT that I've seen use the same bass I have which is pretty cool shit brah 👊 RELEASE THE BASS
Noise Rock has all the best bass for heavy music. KEN Mode from Canada are a particularly good example, their bass parts are a huge part of their songs - the guitar generally is forced into the higher register for texturing and the bass actually drives the rhythmic riffing. If you want to find good heavy bass in contemporary music, it's all happening in Noise Rock and bands influenced by Noise Rock.
I myself am a bass player and I write music. It's all about space, you cannot do cool stuff when the guitars or drums are doing cool stuff. Something has to calm down in order for others to shine. Of course when I have the spot I do my best but solos,... aren't the primary role of the bass.
That's why Prog-Metal bands like "The Omnific" exist. 2 Bassist, 1 Drummer, no one else. Their music is like Animals as Leaders (which ironically is the polar opposite of The Omnific instrument wise) but a bit less odd time signatures
@@bynosaurus4024 sounds like you don't get the reference of their comment then, because it's completely on topic and related to the comment most of the basslines in and justice for all just follow the root, and like the original comment said, "lars turns down the bass when it gets 'good'." ("good" obviously meaning loud since the bass is practically inaudible, and the fact that a good bassline to a lot of people just means bass that is so loud in the mix, it catches their ear without them dissecting the composition)
basses can be so cool live, I've only been to small gigs but I've seen bassists go into the crowd and shred, seen basses just start tapping a riff with both hands, just being cool and shit you know... I can't hear it most the time in recordings except for when they're given a small section to shine in the beginning. Like something like with 'cobra speed venom' or peace sells... or a lot of rage against the machine stuff has good bass.
lots of hardcore music def has some bass emphasis. the parts may still be simplified but audibly it’s a completely different world than most metalcore. varials in particular has sick bass work
My sonic experimentation with bass has yielded some gnarly stuff. My favorite pedal combos at the moment; Digitech Bass Synth Wah -> Distortion -> Phaser -> TC electronic flashback 2 on the crystal setting. I didn't realize there was a demand, because everytime I tried to get experimental in any music setting, my band mates always tell me to play along with the song :P I think this video helped me realize that I've never found my musical fulfillment because I've always been playing along to someone elses song. That, or I just havnt been playing enough Drum/Bass powerviolence.
Little does this guy know that his main thesis is a perfect example of bass done justice. “Bass is whole other TOOL!” But overall facts in general. Bass is a blessed instrument with raw untamed power. Glad this vid was made.
99% of metal bass will either be:
A) the most boring, barely audile, basic root note just follow the guitars bullshit
or
B) the most technically proficient, face-melting, physically- and theoretically-demanding bass work you've ever heard
And if B there is a 50/50 chance of it being mixed too low to even appreciate
Either was it is a super important instrument😊
Some times it’s the secret C option.
C) The most technical, impressive bass lines that mix so well with everything else, but it’s barely audible.
I’m talking about …And Justice For All.
Agreed
@@CM4wslerMudvayne, anyone?!
“You might be asking, how do you do this live?…Who gives a fuck.”
This is a quote by which I will live.
Split the signal, 2 EQ pedals, stereo setup with two amps?
It's not even hard.
This is why stoner doom metal/ doom metal in general is so unique
Especially Bell Witch. Dylan Desmond is an absolute unit on his 7 string bass
not really. in fact i'd argue it's the complete opposite.
ridiculously low tunings, bass that has more strings than the guitars, and sludge fests are all the things that turned metal into a contrived genre, and that's why scene is dead.
objectively correct
@@blunderless that's just, like, your opinion man
@@blunderlessyou don't need super low tunings or ridiculous numbers of strings to play doom
At first I was like “oh, another video complaining about bass in metal” but no this is actually what the problem is. It’s a great sounding instrument but it gets simplified, minimized, and buried every time because that’s what everyone insists it should be.
Steve Harris wrote most of Maiden's good songs
Indeed!
Part of the problem is that for the longest time bass was turned way the fuck down. There's actually some cool shit going on in a lot of metal songs but you can't hear it. It's honestly a damn shame. I feel like modern production has finally let the bass shine a little more. The other thing is that guitarist keep getting more low strings and now the bass has to be eq'd to be a shreeky monstrosity to even cut through the mix. Idk just turn the bass up people lol
i dont like watching uncle judy because he makes my balls feel funny
That's called love❤
Wtf
Try some pelvic floor exercises
That's called arousal.
Obscura, First Fragment, Beyond Creation, Archspire, Death, Atheist, Cynic and Coroner really push it with basslines in metal, and if you go looking deep enough you cam find bands that were doing some crazy shit with theur basslines in the post Burton era.
Was going to comment some of those. Even though it's true that bass is boring in most metal, saying that no one innovated after cliff is a huge exaggeration
Mudvayne, primus, faith no more, and tool as well
Let's not forget Cannibal Corpse, Gorguts, Suffocation, and Intronaut.
ArchSpire's bass is so fucking good
Jared is inhuman. I can't wait to see Archspire next month.
Is it good, or just hyper technical?
tech death is an exception. no one ever said beyond creation had bad bass
@@ileutur6863 depends on the band to be frank lol
Saw them last year and it was sick this time though the tickets sold out in pre-sale and we didn't get any@@bolillo5013
thats why peter steele is great. he does some really cool stuff
same with audie pietre and steve digiorgio, great players who do so much more than 90% of bassists
@@traskirataYou earn extra points for mentioning Audie. Acid Bath remains underrated. Check out Acid Bath Archives on here, Sammy has full guitar playthroughs of both AB’s albums.
🚨❗ ACID BATH AND TYPE O MENTIONED❗🚨WTF IS A BAD SONG?!🗣️🔥🔥💯I LOVE SLUDGY RIFFS🗣️🥵
he LITERALLY uses the bass as a guitar lol
@@traskirata Audie is so fucking underrated. His work in Shrüm is fantastic!
ryan martinie from mudvayne and fieldy from korn did make their basses stand out in different terrifying ways post burton era in metal. ryan makes his sound like a demonic seinfield intro and fieldy makes creepy clanky noises with his
Ryan Martinie is one of my favorites. man slaps out chords with his fingertips and its just as painful as it sounds
Ryan also innovated and invented the finger slap / butterfly technique or whatever it's called
dont forget steve di giorgio
I like fieldy cos his style was entirely his own
my two favorite bassists along with justin from tool
Primus is the way 🙏
it is metal adjacent, and is sometimes heavy, but idk about metal...
also you can have great basslines that aren't extra. watch a bass cover of obstacle 1 by interpol just up to the first minute mark. the basslines in that album are way better than Primus
Unfortunately, if I'm not mistaken, Primus is more of a heavy funk band.😊
And Tool
@@GreenCircut Funk is like, the metal to rock's soul.
@@blunderless How's that gate? Keeping well?
I’ll explain it from a bass player perspective… my jam mates tell me to keep it the fuck down and just hold roots. The problem isn’t that is as bassists we don’t wanna make cool unique shit… it’s the guitarists tell us to basically fuck off and no one really cares
Yes...and why do you listen to your(should be ex) guitar player in the first place, on how to play your instrument he DOESNT play...i dont tell a keyboard player what to play...come on people...find a new band...START a new band
@@marijanbarac1216 this is actually a lot harder said than done. Not a lot of guitarists actually see the value in bass because tbh a lot of them are driven by ego. The guitarist is usually the one that STARTS the band but he really has no intention of working with others.
I've seen so many bands where the bass is turned way too low and can't even be felt. And even some bands just omit the bass altogether, which is wild cuz it just ends up making shit sound flat.
I agree bass should have free reign to make shit interesting in their end of the spectrum.
My friend is a bassist and one of his first bands, the other band mates told him to turn it way the fuck down to the point it wasn't audible. And it was a disaster... Imagine a drummer trying to keep time with a guitarist that is soloing.
@@teddy3k3 i know...then again i worked with many guitar players who were actual musicians, and very engaged and interested in bass(as well as other instruments) as am i...point is...i would never work with someone who wants to be 'solo with a backing staff' i once had such a guy in band, great playing skills, horrible musical attitude, he was out in no time...guy was able to keep on playing even if the rest of us(along with second guitarist) left the room...so go figure...anyone with no respect towards other instruments is not a true musician in my view
Individual thought patterns has some pretty sick metal bass that doesnt just double the guitar.
I mean Death in general had some mean bass
The fretless tone is farty as shit. If you want actually creative basslines and not noodling, listen to Scott clendininn's bass on the sound of preserverance.
Steve, DiGiorgio and Alex Webster are really just sitting up there at the top of the heap waiting for more people to join them.
Good guitars only get you so far. Good drums take you to new heights. Good bass glues everything together and defines the sound. Good vocalists help the rest of the band load their gear in and out.
unless your eddie vedder or chris cornell
@@HaynesEllis agree
A bad vocalist ruins a band for me. Maybe because I am a singer myself. But even tho the band might be very prolific, I can dig the instrumental part and all, but they won’t be on my earphones, because the vocal part is the most human part of a band and if it doesn’t connect with me emotionally I just can’t listening in a more intimate level and connect with it.
@@Somewhatdamaged1989so you don’t like Megadeath
@@MatixMessick yep.
the bass work in The Sound of Perseverance is excellent
Yes exactly bro. RIP Scott clendininn
there are a lot of metal bands with great bass. Acid bath, Pantera, Opeth, Gojira
Eyyyy awesome to see Opeth. But we can't forget TOOL. That is some just classically, widely accepted great metal bass. Also, people give it shit, but J-Metal has some genuinely phenomenal bass pretty consistently. They put some absolute savants on the instrument. I think there's a lot of snobbery against Japanese Rock and Metal, but even on a technical level it's genuinely got some phenomenal music.
I love Rex and Pantera, but I can't remember a song where Rex is not dubbing the guitar, unless it's a solo and there's no rhythm guitar.
@@ChristianIce thats true but with a guitarist like dimebag I think supporting his playing is the best move. And then his playing during solos is just so cool not to mention his tone is impeccable. As for songs where he isn't following the guitars, think floods, hollow, good friends and a bottle of pills
@@ashyvlogs1132
I mean, the video is suopposed to be provocative but in a funny way, I guess.
Even Cliff Burton, for 95% of the time, was dubbing the rhythm guitars.
Let's also say that unless they play harmoniztions, also the two guitars in metal play the same thing.
It's functional, but yeah, the formula is kinda old and after 30+ years it has become kinda boring.
@@ChristianIce yeah but then mute Rex and hear what happens. Same goes for someone like Jo Bench from Bolt Thrower.
you watch a lot on NakeyJakey don't you Judy. Bass and 'Rain Judy' go BRRRRRRRRRR
Job for a cowboy, Obscura, Archspire
Unfortunately they're anomalies
@@bolillo5013Yes but that makes them better
Beyond Creation!
That one album Havok had with the bassist from Job for a cowboy!
The Faceless
"No one is doing anything special on bass in Metal"
Ryan Martinie?
Alex Webster?
Justin Chancellor?
Fieldy?
There’s definitely great Metal bass parts out there - First Fragment, Tool, Defeated Sanity, Death, you just gotta look for it. In my opinion, a great bassist is really what pulls the entire ensemble together. I mean, even Meshuggah where the guitars and basses are tuned in Unison most of the time, on Koloss the bass tone and performance is so sick it just amplifies the grooves to a new level
03:00 Kublai khan tx - self destruct is a song with a devastating bass breakdown at the end, and if im not mistaken the new knocked loose album has one too \m/
that was my first thought
TOOL's Justin Chancellor toes the line of cool bassists. Although, a lot of TOOL's songs don't really feature a bassline as much as they feature a bassist.
FUCK the bassline, part of why TOOL is amazing is because of the standalone parts of the song. Fuck being a root note low end instrument
Tool are kind of like prog Joy Division. The guitar is the rhythm and harmony instrument, the bass is the melody instrument.
Highly suggest you check out Chris Richards/Derek Boyer of Suffocation, Roger Patterson of Atheist, Eric Langois of Cryptopsy, and Steve Cloutier of Gorguts, theres much more than playing the root note.
What kind of metal are you listening to?...
In my experience bass is essential and is definitely contributing a lot to the overall sound of most of the bands I'm listening to...
Just for curiosity, cite some of them, please.
@@fredcavalcante1887 Oh let's see. Karnivool, Trioscapes, The Contortionist, Korn, Twelve Foot Ninja (even though I think they were, ironically, left without a bassist for their final album)...
JOB FOR A COWBOY BRO, JOB FOR A COWBOY
AND HAVOK (same bass player)
I think he goes off to much and the the mix loses too much low end punch
DOES THAT COWBOY LIVE IN RAM RANCH
Seems like they make the bass actually audible and that's rare enough.
@@shanedisner6586 Havok with David, Reece and Pete are very solid, but throw in Nick and they're absolutely ridiculous. Also he was wearing a kirkland hotdog shirt when i saw Havok which was just *chefs kiss*
nice wallpaper bro
I feel lucky to have found Japanese Metal because that scene is the complete polar opposite when it comes to bass
I dunno, Chris Wolstenhome of Muse did some cool stuff during Muse's more metal-esque early material. Plus Billy Sheehan did crazy shit during the '80s hair metal days.
Uhhhh.... Steve DiGiorgio enters the chat....
I get the point of the video is to be humorous/sarcastic. I agree that we need more out of bassists, especially with 8 string guitars. My advice would be to listen to Death and Obscura for interesting bass parts. Iron Maiden has also always had interesting bass parts and, earlier in their career, great tone. More recent Kevin Shirley albums (1995-now) have been more clank bass.
Other observations:
1) You can definitely hear and feel a lack of bass live, especially if a kick drum is heavily sampled and clicky, as most metal bass drums are these days. Bass is the gel that holds the low end of the guitar to the kick in a mix. Since metal is usually about scooping out the low mids (around 400 hz), in order to get a good metal bass sound you usually have to scoop out the bass's mids to make room for the guitars upper mids (around 2 khz). Alternately, you can push the bass's mids and try to scoop the guitars even more, but then you end up with a weaker than usual sound that goes against conventions of the genre. You also have to worry about drum sets and sometimes synths that's sound can run the entire frequency range. Usually the first thing to get reduced is bass.
2) Writing effective basslines in the neoclassical tradition requires some counterpoint knowledge that most musicians lack. They will noodle around until they find something that sounds good.
I consider writing for bass in rock and metal to be a melody instrument like a lead guitar but an octave lower. In jazz bass is more about determining the identity of the guitar chord by emphasizing specific root notes which may or may not be the lowest note (voice leading, inversions, alternate voicings, any note in a fully diminished 7th chord since all can be roots, changing from dominant 7ths to fully diminished 7ths, tritone substitutions/secondary dominants, extended dominants in a V7 to I situation). Bass leads more in jazz while the guitar vamps on a chord (or often just pieces of the chord that omit the root).
3) The bass is usually reduced in a metal mix to make a "wall of guitar" sound supported by a kick. Especially in 200+ bpm double bass drums doing 16ths pattern, uncontrolled bass can get blurry and sloppy. A lot of bassists will do 8ths against fast 16th notes. Tom Araya in Slayer comes to mind. Not doubling the guitar weakens the impact of the wall of sound by making the ear shift to the bass's melody and numerous fills. For this reason I think Cliff Burton's basslines in Metallica (when you can hear them) aren't as effective as Jason Newsted's doubling James (when you can hear Jason) because Cliff is all over the place and has less consistent dynamics due to fingerstyle bass playing.
4) Playing fast picked bass doubled against guitars is difficult because of thicker, longer bass strings creating more tension on the upstroke and the bass's tending to require compression to even out dynamics. So even if bass is just doubling fast guitars there is skill there.
5) Types of bass pickups don't really matter in modern recording considering we have unlimited amounts of gain and distortion available. Coil geometry can be reconfigured in numerous ways, especially in a soapbar pickup housing, which is by far the most popular bass pickup shape for 5+ string basses. I like a clean, warm bass sound, so I use vintage spec Fender 62 reissue pickups (P and J) boosted by the amp in a DAW. Overwound pickups for rock and metal can get very dark and muddy and weirdly sound better for hip hop and funk than metal. Active pickups also have their place but I don't like their sound as much. In short, it's easier to boost an underwound pickup than to clean up an overwound one.
6) Good call on splitting the highs and lows. Other people split a DI and amp sound and mix to taste.
Quality content here reminded me of a skit on adult swim
I think Nu Metal brought a lot of innovation to metal bass playing. Ryan Martinie, Fieldy, Paul Gray, Shavo Odadjian, Chi Cheng. They're all pretty influential artists and you can hear their influence in a lot of modern metal.
RYAN Martinie of Mudvayne 😎
Billy Sheehan of Mr. big
Does the name Dominic lapointe mean nothing to you? Linus Klausenitzer? Steve Digorgio? Alex Weber? Alex Webster?
Bass? What’s that? Oh you mean that one setting on my guitar amp
You deserve more credit and more subs for the original and thought-provoking yet completely silly content you're consistently putting out. Love this!
I love playing the pure basics of bass even if I can play fairly complicated lines.
Judas Priest, Grave Digger, Accept and Running Wild are bands that doesnt need to have anything special on the bass most of the time.
Not all bands needs to have spectacular bass playing.
Sabbath lines are some of my favourite
IMO this is where tech and prog death metal shine for bass since you get a wide spectrum of playing styles. You even get bassists who incorporate fretless work in there as well which always adds a different sound. The problem seems to be those who think metal should just be chug and breakdown heavy and have no outside influence, when in reality those influences are tools that can help songs stand out and showcase why certain musicians are idolized. Bass in metal is awesome, but not all subgenres utilize its potential fullyl
dude you gotta check out the funeral doom metal band called bell witch, i saw them live and got to talk to the bassist, he runs his bass into a bass amp and two guitar amps, sounds nasty
Dudes got the same wallpaper on his monitor as me .. synchronicity man.
thanks so much for the motivation brother! I am going to create more creative basslines!
This is so on point
Thank you
This is exactly what I was thinking too! The bass is such a mighty instrument. I'm actually trying to record some kind of tape in which the bass takes the central role but I'm still experimenting.
The bass in Hole In the Earth by Deftones is what you’re looking for. Listen to the bass (or the isolated track) during the bridge section, it’s so beautiful. Makes the song even more out of this world
This is why I love metal bands that use fretless bass.
The bass almost steals the show in all the songs with those bands.
Nice. Finally I understand how to play bass!
i learned how to do pinch harmonics on bass the other day and it sounds cool as fvck and i rlly wanna implement it into songs because its awesome
There's a noisecore band called Sete Star Sept who uses bass and drums only, really really chaotic music but it shows how much mangling the tone of a bass can cause absolute audio destruction. There's a lot of other underground metal bands that base their sound entirely around bass (specifically grindcore and powerviolence), Thetan comes to mind. I was previously in a band that had TWO bass players, mine was fuzzed out and overdriven to shit and the other was clean. Made some KILLER tones there.
This is exactly why I write interesting and badass bass for all my guitar driven metal compositions. A different tool, exactly.
When I write I try to at least have one section where the bass is the main feature (as primarily a bass player)
There are so many metal bass players now who use a combination of finger plucking, tapping, slapping and pick playing.
MH... CLEARLY you have never heard of Progressive metal, Djent or Thall -_- (Periphery, Vildhjarta, HUMANITY'S LAST BREATH, Dead Soma and so on...)
Yeah this guy seems like he doesn't listen to much metal lol. Bass not innovating since Cliff is objectively fucking wrong
Yes, or...
Let's use the same samples everybody is using to trigger the kicks and the snare, let's load that kemper profile called "every metal band ever" and let's put a kick every time the guitar plays the lowest open string.
That would also do... :)
I love bass, it's my main instrument.
Everyone here needs to listen to the album "Conference of the Birds" by OM. There is no guitar in on the album, only bass and drums, and it is WICKED. Nobody has bass that sounds like OM.
To your point, there is a huge lack of resources for even common metal bass guitar techniques online. It’s almost always guitar instead. So we just kinda follow the guitar a lot because it’s sorta expected I guess.
I think it’s good to pull from our roots with the classics and expand on it, I’m always pulling from outside the genre I’m playing in for inspiration. I try to play like Lemmy when I’m not playing metal and I try to play like Peter Hook when I’m playing black metal!
Even brewer has some amazing bass lines for the band entheos. He really does a great job at bringing bass lines that compliment both the guitar and drums while being mostly slap style.
I'm on this.
I play Open C on a 5-string (GCGCG).
I'm gonna look into this. I was a lead songwriter for a 3-piece death metal band in the mid-90s, inspired by the holy trinity of Lee, Butler and Burton.
I still remember in the middle of the first two Black Sabbath albums Geezer ripping a solo at the same time Toni Iommi did and it ROCKED.
Let me look into this.
bass just goes dum dum dum
On behalf of Bassists (not just bass players) this is whats going through all our minds. Thank you for this video.
So much wisdom
There's a time and place for doubling guitar parts but I would like to see more creative means of filling the space akin to Cliff Burton, Geddy Lee, John Myung, etc. They do things like counter melodies, solos, and bass harmonics.
as a bass player with the biggest pedalboard in his band, I felt this video in my bones, thank you.
I love that style of bass that Justin Chancellor plays where it's something quite different from guitar
just came across your channel i dont understand how i hand already heard of you gave you a sub my dudee
Cannibal Corpse's bassist is amazingly good
The line 6 helix for me completely changed the bass. I'm running guitar amps with some beefy boi amps and delays for days and I make some of the best stoner metal noise ever. I'm to lazy to record it, but it's a shame there isn't more of it.
I love digital, i wanted my own B7K but love it and hate it because majority of bass distortion sounds like it but when it came out i already had only an ipad with Bias FX 2 and since them attempted to recreate that sound and loving my split chains between bass amps in one channel and high gain guitar amps and cabinets. Currently i’m trying to dial something like Alex Weber tone in Wormhole’s album Weakest Among Us that has this crazy distortion blended with a chorus on it that sounds amazing
Dude same. Ive got an HX Stomp, but I'm a pro at getting everything I need out of it (I get more of it than most do with a helix). Bass with that is awesome. I'll often do a mix of bass amp, distorted guitar amp, sansamp, and DI. It allows you to create a touring rig of the greats without spending thousands or having to kill low flying birds with a giant Ampeg stack. 😂
Reminds me of Peter Steele's tone. He was like a rhythym guitarist on top of being a bassist
As soon as you whipped out the TMB 100 I thought "This is gonna be good". That exact model was the very first instrument I got a few years ago, and ever since I've been trying to figure out ways to make the most of such a kickass tool. As I grew out of the beginner stage and was still hungry for more, I remember being kinda disappointed with the general lack of utilization bass got once I really started paying attention to mixes of tunes that inspired me to start playing in the first place. Either the bass was so fucking quiet that you had to look up a channel that made remixes/remasters on UA-cam to actually hear the damn thing, or the composition was such a snoozefest that I'd learn the song and no time and think "That's it? But everything else in the song was so much more interesting-". Since then I've started writing my own stuff with the goal of making the song fit the bass rather than making the bass fit the song. It's been kinda difficult since there's not much that I've found that deliberately teaches this approach, but honestly it's made the learning process that much more fun and interesting. I've had to learn quite a bit about EQ, how mixes work, and a bunch of other technical stuff to make it all work out in the end, but we're getting there little by little (:
TLDR: Kickass stoppie at the beginning, I like your funny words magic man, and you're the second person on YT that I've seen use the same bass I have which is pretty cool shit brah 👊
RELEASE THE BASS
Saw your wallpaper, died of laugh, subscribed.
Beautiful desktop wallpaper
Noise Rock has all the best bass for heavy music. KEN Mode from Canada are a particularly good example, their bass parts are a huge part of their songs - the guitar generally is forced into the higher register for texturing and the bass actually drives the rhythmic riffing. If you want to find good heavy bass in contemporary music, it's all happening in Noise Rock and bands influenced by Noise Rock.
Kublai khan tx has been doing gods work by cutting out guitar at certain parts and just letting the bass and drums take over.
SOAD, Tool, korn, Gojira, Dream Theater and Angra have realy creative bass lines
3:47 bass player here and can attest that this is literally all ive been doing in the four years since i started playing bass
I myself am a bass player and I write music. It's all about space, you cannot do cool stuff when the guitars or drums are doing cool stuff. Something has to calm down in order for others to shine. Of course when I have the spot I do my best but solos,... aren't the primary role of the bass.
Justin from Tool
thank you for this very necessary message
That's why Prog-Metal bands like "The Omnific" exist. 2 Bassist, 1 Drummer, no one else. Their music is like Animals as Leaders (which ironically is the polar opposite of The Omnific instrument wise) but a bit less odd time signatures
100% agree with this. There's so many textures to explore in the low end.
We all heard what Lars did when the bass got too good 🔇
loud ≠ good
the amount of times i've heard someone rave over a bassline just because they could hear it, is seriously annoying
@@blunderless you're completely missing the point lol
@@RafaelCDet what point? the point that lars turned down the bass to hear his drums, and forgot to turn it up before releasing the record?
@@blunderlesswhere did your point of loud ≠ good come from? that has nothing to do with the original comment
@@bynosaurus4024 sounds like you don't get the reference of their comment then, because it's completely on topic and related to the comment
most of the basslines in and justice for all just follow the root, and like the original comment said, "lars turns down the bass when it gets 'good'." ("good" obviously meaning loud since the bass is practically inaudible, and the fact that a good bassline to a lot of people just means bass that is so loud in the mix, it catches their ear without them dissecting the composition)
Love the videos that feature the GTI
Ryan Martinie,Jared Smith,Justin Chancellor,Jay McGuire from Otep... There are still extraordinary in Metal
Steve Harris uses a lot of implied harmony in his songs. I think that’s pretty cool.
basses can be so cool live, I've only been to small gigs but I've seen bassists go into the crowd and shred, seen basses just start tapping a riff with both hands, just being cool and shit you know... I can't hear it most the time in recordings except for when they're given a small section to shine in the beginning. Like something like with 'cobra speed venom' or peace sells... or a lot of rage against the machine stuff has good bass.
I love the use of fretless in obscura.
great video I do agree with the take (ps super cute guy on your background screen)
lots of hardcore music def has some bass emphasis. the parts may still be simplified but audibly it’s a completely different world than most metalcore. varials in particular has sick bass work
Two words: beyond creation
Two people: Steve digorgio and Alex Webster
Not exactly the "different tool" realm, but Archspire has some pretty sick bass parts.
"Evil Jacob Collier doesn't exist, he can't hurt you."
Evil Jacob Collier:
People need to not be afraid to go all Primus with the breakdowns.
My sonic experimentation with bass has yielded some gnarly stuff. My favorite pedal combos at the moment; Digitech Bass Synth Wah -> Distortion -> Phaser -> TC electronic flashback 2 on the crystal setting. I didn't realize there was a demand, because everytime I tried to get experimental in any music setting, my band mates always tell me to play along with the song :P
I think this video helped me realize that I've never found my musical fulfillment because I've always been playing along to someone elses song. That, or I just havnt been playing enough Drum/Bass powerviolence.
Crazy that we have the same computer background.
Little does this guy know that his main thesis is a perfect example of bass done justice. “Bass is whole other TOOL!” But overall facts in general. Bass is a blessed instrument with raw untamed power. Glad this vid was made.
There are so many great non-typical metal bassists, but yeah as a whole it just follows rythem.
God, this is so spot on. Probably the reason I don't really gravitate toward metal (other than Kyuss).
The trick is blendable bass distortions/fuzzes and fresh strings
free your inner Doug Keyser
As a bassist I agree, that's why my band has no guitarist