9 Killer Tips for Writing Better Bass Lines

Today, Connor goes through his 9 killer tips for writing better bass lines. These tips work in any genre and can help you turn boring basslines into catchy, infectious, and awesome ones.

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0:00 Introduction
0:47 Demo Preview
1:07 Play with the Rhythm
2:26 Add Syncopation
4:14 Play Notes other than the Root
6:14 Add Octave Jumps
7:00 Rhythm and Timing
9:12 Amp + Filter Envelopes
10:41 Note Length
12:33 Introduce Melodic Fills
13:47 Subtle Development + Variation

[HoodNightuh]

As a self taught producer, I am happy to say that i discovered these tips by myself. It took me 5 years, you should listen to this man to save your time!

[SARDARru]

Short resume.
Tip 1. Add some rhythm to your bass notes.
Tip 2. Add Syncopation (means, set your some of your note offbeat)
Tip 3. Play notes other than the root.
Tip 4. Add octave jump to you bass line
Tip 5. Rhythm and Timing (Move your notes a little to add some movements)
Tip 6. Amp + Filter envelope. ( Change Amp and filter envelope knobs to get some interesting effects)
Tip 7. Play with note lengths. (combine short and long notes. Don't do them all same length)
Tip 8. Introduce melodic Fills (Like drum fills, but bass fills. Add some fill at the end of your melodic phrase)
Tip 9. Variation (instead of just repeat you 2 or 4 bar loop, add some variation on your second half part )

[riiriluvz]

this taught me more than my music teacher taught me in 4 years

[EDMProd]

Update: Connor finished this track and it's out now on Spotify! Link in description.

[ayyleeway]

and this beat is so simple yet so fire swangg ayy

[davidlucky]

this is reaaaallly helps for me as a bass player in my band... Some tips here are very useful to arrange my bassline for more expressive

[TheSachinMusic]

The most appropriate it Keep up the good work!!!!

[bharathirajae]

EXCELLENT TUTORIAL....Answered my long time questions on bassline writing.... Thanks a lot Connor!

[masonlink]

This was extremely helpful and well made. This literally explained years worth of bass knowlege in 16 minutes.

[deepanshuverma]

Love the simplicity and the easy way the ideas are explained. Great job

[ruthlessadmin]

These are all great tips. Next level is learning to write your drums & bass first and structure your track around them. Works for any genre that features those instruments. Before I started doing that, all of my tracks were extremely boring even with solid bass lines.

[GB_RECORDZ_zZ]

you helped me alot to understand how the bass works i definitely check your newest videos. thumbs up!

[fdnl]

a great and simple tutorial
as a complete noob it looks quite simple. i will have to see how things will develop with me...
I am sure this will help

[raggadubdubgaming]

Whoa, thanks a lot man, this helps not only with bass lines, but with everything

[yophosy]

totally by coincidence I was using this bass line yesterday (the original) and decided I needed to spice it up and came here on accident (sic) eg looking for sample manipulation and then just picking titles that interested me - so thanks - oh, and the instrument you have is a million times better than mine !

[donpresent]

Excellent tutorial. Showing the before and after is very effective!

[bleedszn]

thank u for including the late note swag

[marvin]

This was a great video; real straight forward. There are a few vids on this topic but I preferred yours. You covered pretty much all the basses for that genre of music too.
The only thing I want to know is how can you use a "synth bass roll up/down" .
Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis used it in 99% of their slow songs back in the days.

[tsukkikei]

My bass techniques improved drastically. Thank you so much!

[poppacostello]

After watching 5 useless / filler videos... I found this one! Thanks man.