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Playing keyboard bass- any tips?


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I will be playing key bass on some upcoming gigs. I've only worked like that on a few band gigs so far, although I have woodshedded at home a fair bit with a click. I'll just be doing generic rock/pop covers. Anybody here done alot of key bass gigs?

 

I would also like to hear from the perspective of you drummers who have worked with key bass before- when it sucked, when it didn't etc. Thanks!

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I'm a piano player, bass player, and drummer so I can offer an interesting perspective.

 

Hand independence takes a long time to develop. That left hand on the bass has to lock with the drummer and stay on autopilot while the right hand is playing other parts. If you can pat your head and roll your belly, that's a good sign of potential hand independence.

 

How do you develop hand independence? Play ragtime piano, stride, boogie woogie. Sorry, no shortcuts here it takes a huge investment in time and practice. Learning to play drums develops hand independence too.

 

If you're going to imitate a bass player, you need to listen intimately to their playing. Not just notes, but phrasing, articulation, etc.

 

It takes the right synth to get good bass tones. My tools of choice are Moog Source, Moog Voyager, Moog Micromoog. Minimoog doesn't work that well despite its reputation as a bass monster. Minimoog bass is a sound of itself that does not necessarily apply to standard genres - while its detuned oscillator phasing sounds cool, it just does not fit most styles. You do not want oscillator phasing on most bass sounds. The Source and Voyager have the edge on Minimoog because they offer hard sync. Hard sync locks the ocsillators together, and detuning the hard sync'd VCO gets clangorous timbres that sound like grand piano bass or slap-n-pop. I've used my Source for years and it has been a reliable machine. Micromoog is a simpler affair but worked for key bass in the past.

 

Being a bass player, I was already familiar with the prerequisites.

 

I played LH bass in at least three bands in the past, always worked out great. The R&B band I used to be in went through a round of bass players that didn't work out before I convinced our reluctant band leader to let me cover bass on left hand. By the end of the gig, they were total converts. That left hand was locked with the drummer and we boogied like never before. Bass players started coming out of the woodwork wanting to work with us, but the band leader pointed to me and told them they had to be as good as my left hand. None ever measured up.

 

Once you get there, it is a coveted skill not many musicians have.

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Ive been playing synth bass since the 80s, in conjunction with regular bass guitar

 

 

The biggest pointer I can give is have a good pair of straplocks that you are comfortable and confident with for your bass guitar. The idea is to transition the bass by sliding it underneath your fingerpicking-arm so that it hangs upside-down on your back to switch over to synth bass.

 

Although I am capable of playing left-hand bass/right hand keys, if you are just playing synth bass, use both hands as a lot of synth bass lines are sequenced and have a lot of fast 16th notes that can be achieved cleaner by playing with both hands.

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I did the keyboard bass thing for a couple of bands back in 2005 and 2006. I switched off between bass guitar and keys like DevilsRayFan and wade_keys.

 

Tips...I guess I would try to get as clean of a bass patch as possible. Not too harsh, not too boomy. Almost like a square wave, kind of dead-sounding. That worked for our country-rock band quite nicely.

 

I used to use a Korg Poly-61 for my bass sound (I think it was #70 :lol:) and an Ensoniq ESQ-1 for the piano and organ sounds. In my rig, I would put the Korg and my bass guitar through a rack tuner that had two inputs and two outputs, take the output and put that to the bass guitar amp, then put the keys through a direct box and just listen to it through the monitors. You probably have keyboard amps, so your situation may differ.

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