I’m a saxophone player, or at least was in high school and part of college, so keep that in mind as I’m whining and bitching.
I’ve been tapped to play in a friend’s band this Sunday. Now when I say ‘band’, I mean a group of 4 untrained people, two of whom happen to be able to sing, one happens to be able to play guitar, and my friend/roommate loves playing toy instruments of various types, IOW, I don’t have any misconception about being the next hot thing, it’s just something these guys do for fun.
ANYWAY, there’s a surprise party for a friend, and a show. I vaguely know the songs they’ve written, vaguely know what chords are involved, and there’s not a rehearsal before Sunday.
THEY DON’T WRITE ANYTHING DOWN! As a saxophone player, I rely on music in front of me. I have vague keyboard knowledge, so I’m just going to bring my keyboard and try to emulate a bass-y something for them. However, without having anything written down, I have no idea of how to do this.
I’ve never been in a band that wrote anything down. If you need to take notes, take them, practice the song at home as needed. But beyond that, I’m not sure I understand what the question is. Are there rehearsals? Are there tapes of the songs you can listen to? What exactly is going on? Is it a question of coming up with a sax part? Are they expecting you to improvise, and you can’t? Is that it?
Well, they write lyrics down, but the music is memorized and figured out by ear. There are occasionally rehearsals, I went to one on Monday, but we didn’t get any useful work done. It’s a very informal situation, and they bring people in to play the egg shaker or tambourine or whatever all the time just for the fun of it.
The problem boils down to: chaoticbear doesn’t function without music, and knows nothing of the world of bass line improvisation, and just doesn’t want to look like a damn fool on Sunday.
OK. So you’re doing bass? Or bass on the keyboard, am I understanding right? If all you want is a bass part, if you know the chords, you can’t go wrong with playing just the root or alternating the root and the fifth. But when to play those notes? That’s a matter of the music. Follow the pulse. If there’s a drummer in the band, the bassist usually locks in with the kick (bass) drum.
The above isn’t the most exciting way to approach a bass part, but it’s worked plenty well for many rock bassists.
Right - just trying to emulate something that sounds like a bass on my keyboard. (To give you an example of how funny this whole thing is, I’m going to be playing my $300 keyboard, plugged into my laptop through USB, then playing it in Garageband to get the software instrument that I want, then running that through a set of $10 PC speakers)
I suppose I’ll just get on up there and hit some buttons and have fun with it. We have another girl that is just coming on for this one show, and she’s hitting toy bells at seemingly random parts of the song and not in any useful manner with the notes being sung or played. Just to have something to do lol.