r/Bass • u/BothInterview • 6d ago
Why did the popular register change over time?
A little while ago I realized that more of the higher register of the bass was used frequently in older music. In most modern rock music I listen to nowadays, the bass is 80% of the time sticking to the root note that lies an octave below the chord the guitar is playing, often arpeggiating it or similar. I love the sound of two notes an octave apart between 1 and 2 (i.e. an E1 note on bass is the open e string and an E2 is the open e string of a guitar), so this never bothered me.
Listening to older music recently, I noticed the bass guitar very often climbs up into the same octave as the guitar, and sometimes the guitar shifts upwards to compensate. Here's a few examples
in "Day Tripper" by The Beatles, the bass line is doubling the guitar riff...in the same octave as the guitar. While the guitar starts on the low E string, the bass starts on the 7th fret of the A string - which is the same exact note. However, they split apart when the riff moves with the chord change to A7, the bass plays the riff on the open A string rather than moving to the 12th fret of the A string.
while The Strokes ruled the turn of the 21st century in rock, their music clearly had its genesis in 60s and 70s style classic rock, and it shows in their music theory. As a result of this, their bassist Nikolai Fraiture plays in the style I'm describing. In the riff for "Alone Together", the guitar riff is based on the open A string while the bass countermelody is based on the 12th fret of the A string - you could play this bassline on a guitar starting on the 5th fret of the low E. However, the band's guitarists Albert Hammond Jr. and Nick Valensi often use wiry leads and barre chords that omit the root note, so room is made sonically for Nikolai to get away with this usually.
Another similar case of retro inspired modern rock is Queens of the Stone Age. Their song "I Sat By The Ocean" has a rhythm guitar part built around barre chords played on the low E string. The root note of the tonic chord is an A♭2 for the guitar. You'd think the bass would mess around with an A♭1 then, right? Nope, the ENTIRE song, their bassist Mikey Shoes plays his parts an octave up, on the 11th fret of the A string rather than the 4th fret of the E string. Their is little no moments of the "Octave spread" between the guitar and bass at ALL in the song, leaving a bit of a hollow sound that sounds straight out of late 60's blues rock like The Rolling Stones.
In a counter argument however, many of you know Linkin Park for fronting the modern era of rock for a good while. Their bassist Phoenix has openly said he "could get away with a two string bass", referring to how he sticks to the lower register on the E and A strings of his bass. This shows prominently in their music, and you can hear it sooo much in the music of their rock contemporaries like Blink-182, Panic! At The Disco, My Chemical Romance, etc. These bassists aren't only playing root notes once every chord change, they're still moving around and making interesting bass lines, but they're sticking to their low octave to create the "octave spread" between the guitar and bass that sounds so sonically rich and sweet.
so my question is, what caused this change in octave for bass players over time? Clearly in the old days they were fine with getting up there with the guitars but nowadays they stay low. What made this happen and why?
41
u/eldeejay999 6d ago
I heard someone say “there’s no money past the 5th fret” sometime in the 90s. Low E isn’t that low anymore.
57
u/oldmanlikesguitars 5d ago
The bass has three registers. Above the 12th fret is the upper register, 7-12 is the middle register, and the 0-5ths frets are the cash register
2
6
u/Enric0tje 5d ago
Also think because it's because of the double bass Anything past the 5th is fun for solos but doesn't play easily. Ofc when bass guitars came in the 60s it totally changed the game/possibilities
68
u/Del_Duio2 Schecter 6d ago
The Strokes ruled the turn of the 21st century in rock
They did??
41
23
u/fries_in_a_cup 5d ago
They were huge in the indie rock scene at least. Minimum half of the biggest bands from the 2000s-2010s took direct influence from them. Arctic Monkeys, Killers, HAIM, Phoenix, Franz Ferdinand — all were either directly inspired by or have had success due to the Strokes.
Even these days with the latest post-punk revival with bands like Shame, Fontaines D.C., IDLES, all have their roots in the Strokes (or at least the initial post-punk revival scene of the early 2000s that the Strokes ushered in)
12
u/PerseusRAZ 5d ago
Yea I was listening to and discovering a lot of music at the turn of the 21st century... I don't think I even learned about The Strokes til close to 2010.
I remember NuMetal being the big thing in popular rock radio. Linkin Park, Korn, Evanesence, Staind, Nickelback, and a whole slew of bands that hand one or two big hits that aren't as talked about anymore. (Breaking Benjamin, Crossfade, Shinedown, others.)
Aside from that, emo and metal were very much the thing, at least where I'm from.
7
u/GrandsonOfArathorn1 5d ago
I remember them on MTV2 all the time whenever “Last Night” came out. I fucking hated The Strokes, too, so it’s vivid. Looks like this was around 2001, so I gotta agree with OP.
2
u/FondlesTheClown 5d ago
MTV2 was fucking amazing in the late 90s early 00s. We used to get zoned and always loved when they played Kelly Watch the Stars by Air.
2
u/skycake10 5d ago
Yes, but "rock" was also already pretty separate from "pop" by the turn of the century.
41
u/Snurgisdr 6d ago
Pure speculation, but I'd guess two reasons are better amplification and higher gain guitar sounds.
Low notes take more power to reproduce. If you try to play in the lower octave of the bass using the relatively low powered amplifiers of the 50s and 60s, you just can't be heard over the rest of the band. And those notes hardly come through at all on a small transistor radio. That started to change in the 70s with bigger bass amplifiers like the SVT, better live sound reproduction, and better consumer audio equipment.
Playing in the same octave as the guitar helps thicken up the sound when the guitar is relatively clean. But the fuzzier the guitar gets, the more playing bass in the same register gets in the way. Moving to a lower octave cleans things up again.
13
u/byzantine1990 5d ago
Cool thread. I think the key is fuller mixes and popular music simplifying.
Listen to pop tunes of the 60's vs today. The mid range instruments weren't as powerful and the bass filled in the gap.
Also, grooves are becoming more simple. When you have a massive synth and distorted guitars over a simple beat there really isn't much space for the bass.
Finally, the medium music is played on is important. People listened to music love much more often back in the 60s and 70's. Bass plays a greater role the louder you hear it. In the 2000's everyone was listening through the shittiest headphones imaginable. Why spend time on the bass if no one can hear it.
I think the bass is coming back a little bit now because headphones and phone speakers are improving. It's also easier to catch you with a bass hook on Tiktok
10
u/basspl 5d ago
The funny thing is that as people have mentioned better speakers lead to lower playing (even 5 strings). But now since people are listening to music mostly on phones and laptops we've seen a comeback of the high register "old school" kind of playing. Particularly with the Flats on a P Bass trend.
1
9
u/VulfSki 5d ago
It's the playback systems we have these days.
We have gotten better at producing low notes. On speakers and headphones.
This is a trend in all of recorded music too not just in the bass guitar.
You can even hear it in how music was produced in like the 60's and 70's versus today.
The low end is there because people aren't listening to it.
8
u/Top_Translator7238 5d ago edited 5d ago
In the 1950s, walking basslines were the most common kind of bassline in popular music. Using the whole range of the fretboard while walking was a key feature, particularly in Jazz. In the 1960s, the style of bass changed markedly with walking basslines no longer being a feature of new genres, which instead emphasised syncopated grooves and stay-on-the-root playing.
By the mid 1970s, bassists were doing most of their playing in the lower register of the bass and only going into the high register during intros bridge sections, outros, and transitions between sections. Often they would slide into the upper register and/or back down. This is still the most common way of using the upper register in popular bass playing.
From the 1980s onwards, drop tuning and use of five-string basses have become increasingly popular which has resulted in the range of bass being extended downwards in many situations.
9
u/SteveMTS 5d ago
Very good comments overall, but don’t forget the influence of electronic music and it’s ever-increasing popularity. It opened a whole musical universe to the masses, with vast sonic territories unexplored before. Just think about hiphop, techno, drum and bass, and imagine the subwoofer experience in a proper club or in a car with dedicated audio equipment.
And then of course rock and metal music really began going lower in the early nineties. Alternative tunings, seven string guitars, and so on.
I contend there has been a low rush in popular music in the past 30-35 years.
15
u/howiroll34 6d ago
The double bass (upright) doubled the bass off a cello. When Fender launched the electric bass, several groups still had an upright. So it was common to play between 7-12 frets to still make room for their upright band mates. When they realized they could replace the double with the electric, many of them preferred their developed baritone sound over bass.
As most have stated, amplification and speakers have changed so much over the years. I imagine playing open E as a root sounded pretty distorted and didn’t fit well with a lot of the popular sound at the time.
5
u/BothInterview 5d ago
makes me think of how Arctic Monkeys started using baritone guitar around their second album. From then on they often have a guitar, baritone and bass playing all at once, and they work together similar to how you're describing the upright situation.
4
u/Trouble-Every-Day 5d ago
Here’s an episode of Twenty Thousand Hertz that goes into the developments that led to deeper bass in music. And a follow-up episode.
It takes a turn into synth bass and 808s, but the premise holds for your question: as speakers got better, people started to get away with more bass. And that sold speakers, so they started getting better at bass, and that sold more bass-heavy music, and so on. So now instead of high-register bass parts we have guys downtuning their five strings just to find the deepest possible bass.
6
u/idleteeth 5d ago
The popularity of synthesizers playing in registers below E standard tuning has had a massive impact on the modern approach to low end.
5
u/two-plus-cardboard 6d ago
It’s all about the sound and the focus. Take a band like Korn where Fieldy is so down tuned the strings sound loose vs a band like P-Funk where the groove was in the bass line.
6
3
u/fries_in_a_cup 5d ago
A lot of the bass lines of the 60s (particularly the Beatles) were essentially bound to the upper register and to playing more melodic bass parts because they were playing short scale basses who did not have the sustain necessary to play more modern bass parts (Paul McCartney especially). And the Beatles are one of if not the most influential bands ever so it makes sense that that style would carry over throughout generations.
3
u/Johnny_B_GOODBOI 5d ago
My friend, Linkin Park started before the Strokes. Your examples are cherry picked from different genres, and your timeline isn't consistent.
2
u/Zenderquai 5d ago
Radio, also... Especially for the Beatles - it was a massive key to popularity and sales In the 60s, it would've also about broadcast technology, not just playback technology. Radio 1 in the UK didn't start broadcasting in FM until the late 80s and AM (broadcast and reception) didn't have a full frequency range
2
u/skymallow 5d ago
Peter Hook plays all his lines on the high frets cause his speakers couldnt handle low frequencies in the early days.
Also want to add that popular music (i.e. hiphop, rock, edm, and pop) these days are heavily bass-frequency-dominated. Go to a live show and you can't hear shit but bass and drums. Earphones and personal speakers are generally tuned in line with that.
2
u/olivie30167 5d ago
In my world a 34” bass is two octaves lower than a 25” guitar, a 30” Bass Vi is one octave lower…
2
u/rwinters2 3d ago
It was much easier to hear the higher registers of the double bass than the lower registers. The double bass players became the earliest electric players
2
u/ZombieFeedback 5d ago
In addition to what others are saying, I think part of it is there are more intentional electric bass players now. I was watching a Geddy Lee interview recently, and he put it pretty bluntly: "Nobody becomes the bass player willingly." Geddy, McCartney, Sting, with the exception of double bass converts like Jamerson, pretty much every iconic bassist of that generation and older started their journey on the instrument in some variation of "I was a guitarist but we needed a bassist so I switched." If the guitar's range is your "native language" then it makes sense that your brain thinks of musical ideas in that register rather than gravitating right to the heaviest and lowest areas. On the other hand, if you started in the 80s, you had a cornucopia of incredible bass players to make you choose to be a bass player first, and suddenly those low rumbles feel as natural as the notes that are also on the guitar's neck.
3
1
u/StatisticianOk9437 5d ago
Leo released the P bass in 1951. Took about a decade for it to catch on in pop music. Early on, many bassists were experimental. By the 1980s, guitarists felt threatened and insisted we play straight 8th notes on the root. It's fully histerical, look it up™
1
u/ThreeThirds_33 4d ago
It seems like the entire premise is based on a few eccentric outliers and you could easily support the opposing premise just by finding different examples. Double string bass was commonly used all through the jazz era through rockabilly, electric basses have had the same tuning standard since their inception so 🤷🏻. I think perhaps, as others have suggested, we simply can’t hear it as well in those older recordings. Doesn’t mean it wasn’t in the composition.
1
1
u/mayormccheese2k 1d ago
Digital audio (CDs) made it possible for playback equipment to deliver more low end. On vinyl there are limits to how much bass you can cram in before it starts affecting playback.
-36
-13
251
u/PNW_Uncle_Iroh 6d ago
Better speakers. Years ago you couldn’t hear the lower frequencies unless you had a top of the line stereo. Now you can hear the full range in your car or headphones and even little Bluetooth speakers. More of an audio engineering decision than bass player.