5 Reasons Why Playing Bass Will Make You a Better Guitar Player

A great bass player brings the rhythm section to life, locking in with the drums, and creating an unshakable foundation that leaves the guitar space to play with fluid phrasing, walls of sound, flashy solos, and ambient textures. It’s therefore easy to find your own rhythmic skills as a guitarist somewhat neglected when the time comes to focus on your accuracy with timing.

Of course, poor timing on guitar will never sound great but it’s a degree more forgiving than the bass which needs to be as tight as possible to avoid sounding intolerably sloppy. Getting some bass lines down will get your ear into that rhythmic pocket and have you focussed on hitting beats with forensic accuracy.

You can also improve your rhythmic creativity through learning bass parts. So often buildings guitar parts is centred on finding interesting chord voicings and colourful notes whereas bass playing frequently begins with a rhythmic decision that is then shaped tonally. Bass lines might lock in with a particular rhythm happening on the kit in a way that the guitars aren’t, adding texture through accentuating rhythmic detail. Spending some time learning to think like a bassist and discovering new ways to play off a drum beat will reinvigorate your approach to building riffs and rhythm guitar parts.

Dealing with the thick strings and larger frets of a bass will give any guitar-attuned hands a pretty serious workout. It’s typically easier to lighten up on your touch than it is to apply more pressure so the main benefit to having to hold down heavy bass strings is that the guitar will feel that bit easier in comparison - some bass playing might finally have your barre chords sounding clear as a bell! Just as the initial transition from an acoustic guitar to an electric guitar can feel a bit like getting in a Ferrari after driving a bus for months, you’re likely going to feel a lot stronger when picking up your electric guitar after a bit of time spent on the bass.

Similarly, if you’ve been struggling to reach wider stretches on the guitar, you can see the bass as a bit of an exercise tool that’s going to help develop your dexterity and flexibility further. Guitar based exercises that target flexibility aren’t always the most exciting things to play so learning some songs you love on the bass can be a more motivating and organic way to include some time working on wider hand stretches in your practice routine. As always, you want to make sure that you are preventing injury where ever possible so a good warm up is key!

You’d be surprised how many bass parts you might never have really listened to in your favourite songs. We all have a tendency to hone in on the guitar performance so we might fail to notice what’s going on underneath and an old favourite can even feel like a completely new song if you decide to follow the bass line for the first time.

You’ll begin to notice which spaces are being occupied by the bass and which are left for the guitar. Next time you listen to a song you want to learn try to notice how the guitar works with what the bass is doing, are they locking in together to create a heavy wall of sound or are they occupying only their own spaces? Are they following the same rhythm or accenting different ones? Is the bass hitting the root notes to allow the guitar to outline more complex chord extensions, or is the bass adding some interesting higher harmonies?

Making sure that you can understand what function any particular bass line has in a song and that you can pay sufficient attention to which spaces the bass is leaving for the guitar will help you make smarter musical decisions on both instruments. Sometimes doubling up on the bass line with the guitar is exactly what a riff needs to sound great, but in other instances that could also be the reason why your guitar part feels lack lustre and isn’t cutting through in the right way. Learn to hear which musical ground the bass has already covered and you’ll become the kind of guitarist that can really add what a song needs to come to life.

Whilst it may seem counterintuitive, limitation is one of the best ways to inspire creativity. If you find you’re always going to the same chord shapes on six strings, try figuring out how best to outline chords with only four. The bass has it’s own way of encouraging you to find ‘shell voicing’ of chords, particularly extended harmonies such as ninths and elevenths. When it becomes less convenient to include as many notes as you can, you have to make informed musical decisions about which notes are essential in order to achieve any given harmonic effect.

In devising bass lines you can test how much can be achieved with just single notes or with highlighting just a couple of choice intervals in a chord. By distilling chord progressions to their core components you can better interrogate the strength of the progressions you’re writing and focus on creating strong musical lines in their simplest form.

From a practical standpoint, a great guitar player that can also hold down a solid bass part will rarely be out of work. Rhythm section players are notoriously hard to find and bass players are always in high demand whether for covers bands, pit bands, tribute acts, session work or original groups. Many great guitar players have done a touring stint on the bass and it can even be your way in to connections that lead to more guitar based work if that is your ultimate goal.

The bass is relatively low hanging fruit for the guitarist looking to pick up a second instrument as you have already done a lot of the hard work of building dexterity and fretboard knowledge. Double the number of instruments you play and you’ll double your chances of landing great gigs!