Bass Guitar or a Bottom Feeder approach to Songwriting

Picture of John "The Ox" Entwistle of The Who--One of Music's Virtuoso Bottom Feeder's


By Mark Grove



To this Canadian Guitar Player writer; writing strictly with the lead guitar doesn’t help the musical end of the spectrum for the whole band. Meaning, very few musicians write with a percussive theme or bent to it. Nor do they write strictly from the bass or drums.




Think about it,the bass holds down the rhythm; and writing from that foundation will let you build the other percussive theme—the drums, then build the lead guitar or dual guitars and track around that. A lot of you out there especially musicians, think I’m nuts and that just takes my writing further.




By writing songs on the bass is a great way to challenge your thinking and your ability as musicians. I personally think most lead guitarists’s hold too much power and want to run the whole show when it comes to holding the lion’s share of Music Publishing anyway.



Music fans always focus on the lead guitar because it’s front and center and in your face for long solos and virtuoso like leads. But writing on bass can bring a whole new dynamic building a sound around a song. It can be trickier to build lyrics, texture and sound around the bass, but if all you ever do is write songs on lead guitar—your band will never dig deep inside their creativity and come up with new and exciting songs and sounds.



Writing from a Bottom-Feeder perspective also leaves a lot of space for the drums and lead guitar to come up with wild chord and note variations, and be more creative and selective in coming up with progressive licks built around the Bass. This actually makes the lead guitar player apply actual Bass like chords as well.




But I find most bands are still dependent on Cookie-Cutter like Songwriting methods. There is no rule that says you have to play your riffs exactly like the music was written. That’s why Musicians should write from different instruments and apply the techniques from the bass on their given instrument.


Evolving the way you write your music can be very frustrating, I know. But try this tip to show your band they can create something great by going at it from a different angle.


Not the lead Guitar!


I’m going to be interviewing our resident expert on Song Writing, Mike Wilkinson on this subject, and I’ll go into depth on writing from a Bottom Feeder like way. As well I’m going to interview a Blues Bass player who can give you the player some insight from an actual bass player on writing.

Mark Grove www.canadianguitarplayer.com