Playing live, without bass guitar.

[LBTM]

Hello, next week I'm playing a gig, but the bassist for personal reasons can't play. So It's me and the drummer. I'm afraid that there will be a big gap in the low end. What suggestions do you make to get a more bass-y sound from the guitar without being boomy? We're playing punk rock.

 

[xFkx]

I'd forfeit the gig honestly

And welcome to the board !

 

[LBTM]

I'd forfeit the gig honestly

And welcome to the board !

Thanks man.

Well, you can't get gigs easily around here so....

 

[TheWinterSnow]

My band has done it, twice. It works, but you do end up loosing the power and conviction, the "WOW" factor if you will.

 

[TheDriller]

It really depends on the music.

A band like I'll Eat Your Face play live with just Drums and one Guitar and manage to blow the doors off the venue, but their music really suits that style of presentation.

However, the average four-chord-riff band would probably sound lame without the full lineup.

 

[Jrich4967]

record the bass track and play perfectly on time to a click with it playing through the house speakers?

 

[AllanD]

I'd cancel the gig, most in the audience will immediately have a negative view of you all if you are missing a member.

 

[Skinny Viking]

I saw Hypocrisy attempt to do this once. Yeah like a lot of people walked out

If you or the other dude can't fill in on the bass and just go with one guitar for the gig, personally, I'd cancel

 

[dr.distortion]

check this video, Mnemic is performing without basist. Sounds pretty cool

 

[Charlie E.]

record the bass track and play perfectly on time to a click with it playing through the house speakers?

This works.

 

[LBTM]

record the bass track and play perfectly on time to a click with it playing through the house speakers?

We're improvising in some songs and that's not going to work.

But I can plug the guitar into my audio interface and directly to the mixing board. Do you have any ideas what I could use to get a fat sound?

 

[dr.distortion]

We're improvising in some songs and that's not going to work.

But I can plug the guitar into my audio interface and directly to the mixing board. Do you have any ideas what I could use to get a fat sound?

octaver/pitch shifter/digitech whammy

 

[HCL]

Done this before, in G#. That was probably not as easy to tell.

 

[Line666]

To be honest most people probably won't give a shit, I don't really rate audience credibility for actually being able to decipher shit when they are as drunk as everything is loud.

 

[Tommy Evans]

Seen countless bands play with no bass player. Didn't care. TBH I quite enjoyed it cuz I didn't go home with a headache haha

 

[pikachu69]

done sound for a few bands that did this.
I dont recommend it if you are on a bill with lots of bands that use bass players and you are the only ones that dont. If you are the only act it COULD work. People do get used to it after a small amount of time but it does flatten the sound somewhat.

 

[Mutant]

My idea: Split the guitar signal to 2 paths - one normally to the guitar amp and the second first to an EQ or a filter set to pass only the lowest note frequencies and then to octaver and a bass amp.

The EQ will negate some of the ugliness that would normally result from down shifting chords and make it more like the shifted bass is playing single notes.

You can first do an experiment in a virtual world of VST effects.

 

[Metal Overload]

Done it a few times, sometimes people will appreciate your effort if you put the right energy on your performance. My band earned the public once cause we had no bassist and second guitarrist, but we tried to put a kickass song anyway and it worked(we sold all the fucking cd´s! haha). i splitted the guitar signal so i got two amps working, makes it sound a little fatter, but yeah i would do it, of course depending on the gig,

 

[if6was9]

Not ideal and personally I'd avoid it. Where are you from that gigs are so rare? In my experience there's always plenty of gigs out there it's just about contacting the right people to get them and when you start out you just don't know who those people are.

My band did the no bass thing for a while when we couldn't find a replacement, regret it now because you really don't sound as full and powerful with the bass missing. I've seen a good few bands where they purposely lacked bass and what a few of them did was split the signal and use an octaver into the bass amp. These bands wrote like this though so the material suited it and it certainly doesn't work in every situation- your playing technique and style of riffage is going to affect how well it works big time.

 

[Trevoire520]

Get a stand in bass player for the gig? I find it hilarious that everyone's suggesting eq's/octavers etc and NO-ONE has suggested this yet!