In the 1970s and '80s, the bass world proceeded down two parallel tracks. While the electric bass continued to grow in popularity, as men like Bootsy Collins dominated the funk world, and Chris Squire and Geddy Lee rock; in dance music, the synth bass began to become a popular element. Once MIDI and sampling became integral parts of pop music in the 1980s, synthesized bass would begin to play an even more crucial role in music.

Today, between soft synths, hardware synths, the electric bass, and even the traditional acoustic "dog house" bass, there are all sorts of ways to put some bottom into a tune. So let's look at getting the best bass sounds, starting with Leo Fender's world changing invention.

Forty Years At The Bottom

There have been so many changes in the sound of the bass over the past forty years that to document them all would fill a book--and indeed, has. But painted in the broadest brushstrokes, here are some of the highlights.

In the 1960s, John Entwistle of The Who worked directly with Rotosound Manufacturing Ltd. to develop their roundwound Swing Bass line of strings for the bass guitar. At the same time that Jamerson, McCartney and Entwistle himself were transforming the bass from a purely rhythmic instrument to one that could combine rhythm and melody, these strings helped to bring a new piano-like bright tone very different from the thump of the flatwound strings they supplanted. Entwistle, and later Chris Squire of Yes combined these strings with distorted amplification to produce the definitive rock lead bass sounds.

While there had been other fretless electric bass players before him, the emergence of Jaco Pastorious gave the fretless its first true virtuoso. Other players followed Jaco's lead, such as British session musician Pino Palidino. As Jim Roberts says, "He did some phenomenal sessions with an R&B singer named Paul Young. If you listen to Pino's work in that setting, his ability to be in sync with the vocalist is amazing."

Around the same time in the mid-1980s that Palidino was recording with Paul Young, the five string bass began to become increasingly popular, which extends the low-end of the bass from E down to B. Roberts says, "It was originally created essentially because in the early days of synthesizers, particularly when the DX-7 synthesizer came around, keyboard players were playing notes that bassists couldn't play. Bass players didn't like that!"

Recording Electric Bass

There are several ways that the electric bass can be recorded, and each of these can be valuable for both variety and experimentation sake.