Wednesday, July 17, 2013

Songwriting on Bass

Working on some new songs with a friend who writes great poetry that I think will make great songs has me thinking back to something my brother used to tell me back in our "power trio" days. He always argued, when I came up with song riffs without his valuable assistance, that you could not write music on bass. I say you can. Perhaps I will show you all just how that works for me in the coming weeks.

In the meantime, some feedback from my fellow bassists and musicians, please? Do any of you write your music on your bass, or do you switch to guitar to do so, as my brother says is so necessary? Personally, I always thought my brother said that simply because he wanted to be the one to write all the music, as I usually had the lyrics covered.

2 comments:

  1. I don't think it's necessary to use a guitar or keyboard to write. If you have a groove, lyrics and a melody, chords and harmonization can be figured out later. IMHO.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Exactly my point with my brother! I always thought we we're giving it the same input either way! Either he came up with a melody, and I added bass, or I came up with a melody, and he'd still add the guitar! Either way, I always felt we really both wrote it!

    ReplyDelete