Custom Bass Tracks Online – How to Make the Right Choices

This article is designed to help you make a good choice when considering an online session bass player to record custom bass tracks for your music.

Let’s assume that you’re a songwriter, producer, composer, or engineer with a project studio, and you need to get custom bass tracks for your current musical project. You may not know of any professional session bass players in your area, or maybe your favorite studio bass players are out of town. Maybe you’re a multi-instrumentalist, but the song you’re currently working on requires someone whose skills surpass your own, i.e. a professional session bass player. In these situations, a good option would be to turn to the web to find a professional session bass player, and have him record on your song and deliver your custom bass tracks online. This is an easy way to go about getting custom bass tracks, and gives you access to session bass players, online, all over the world.

There are several characteristics, qualities, and skills to look for in an online studio bass player:

Number 1: Time. The online session bass player you choose needs to have a great sense of time, and must be able to play with a click. If the online studio bass player you hire can lock in with a click, it helps in several ways. First of all, it makes editing in your DAW so much easier. No one wants to sit around all day time-correcting someone’s recorded track. Also, if you just have a scratch drum track or program recorded, and the online session bass player records his part locked in with the click, then it’s easy to change the drum part or record live drums along with the custom bass track.

Number 2: Feel. You want to hire a online session bass player who plays with feel in addition to rock-solid time. You want your tracks to feel good and sound human, which is one reason you hire a pro studio bass player instead of just recording a quantized keyboard bass track using bass samples.

Number 3: Sound. When you hire an online bass player, you want to make sure that he’s capable of producing the bass sound that you’re looking for. If your music has an old 60′s soul vibe, you’re going to want your session bassist to use some sort of vintage bass, like an old Fender Precision, or some type of hollowbody. If your music is hard rock, make sure you hire an online session bass player who can rock out with a pick. In most cases and for most musical styles, Fender basses, or basses similar to Fenders, work quite well. Experienced professional studio bass players are rarely heard playing high-end, exotic hardwood or graphite basses with more than 5 strings. It’s usually the more simple, “tried-and-true” basses that are going to give you the fattest, most consistent tones on your bass tracks. When you hire a session bass player online, check to see if his website provides a list of his instruments and MP3 examples of each. A player with a wide variety of different basses can provide you with many choices of bass sounds.

Number 4: Musicality. You always want to hire a studio bass player who plays for the song, and not for himself. Many less-experienced bass players can have a tendency to overplay, meaning they play more notes than they need to, and their playing does not support the song. In many cases, the simplest bass line is the best choice to make the song groove without getting in the way of the vocal. But if you’re a fan of tasty fills and McCartney-esque melodic bass lines, make sure that you hire an online session bass player who can handle this as well. When selecting someone to record your custom bass tracks online, check out the MP3 examples on the online session bassist’s website. The best way to judge which online studio bass player is right for your music is to hear how they sound on other songs they have provide custom bass tracks for.

Number 5: Experience. The whole point of hiring a professional online studio bass player to record and deliver your custom bass tracks online is to hire a pro; someone who is better and more experienced than the bass players you currently have access to. You should only seriously consider online session bass players whose custom bass tracks sites contain plenty of MP3 examples for you to check out. There should also be a discography on his custom bass tracks website. This will give you an idea of what he’s done, and what he can bring to your project.

Now, how do you actually find a bass player online? Easy. Just go to any search engine such as Google or Yahoo, type in some key phrases, and see what comes up. Some key phrases you could try are: Online Bass Tracks, Custom Bass Tracks, Online Studio Bass Player, Online Session Bass Player, etc. Many sites will come up, and you can check them out to see who is the right bassist for your project. Make sure you look at the “sponsored links” in addition to the regular links.

Hopefully this article will help you choose an online session bass player who will provide you with custom bass tracks that take your music to that next level. Good luck!