Welcome to the second part of my chatter about bass. Last time, I had written about how I stumbled into playing the bass, its importance and how its genius lies in its subtlety. The bass is commonly associated with western pop, rock, blues and jazz music. But this instrument has found a strong footing in Indian music for quite long too. I am referring to film and indie music circles, where composers and music producers have found brilliant ways to fuse the west and desi through lyrics and instrumentation.
The best bassline is the one you can’t hear Bhaskar, a good friend of mine
Life is such that we notice and pay attention to things we want to take in, consciously and subconsciously. Similarly, if one does keep their ears out to catch a bassline, one can certainly identify the bassline in the music they listen to. When listening to a song, many musicians tend to listen and pay attention to the instrument they play.
In this post, I am going to do the same thing – to sensitise you, my reader, to the bass. This post can be considered, more-or-less, bass propoganda.
Before I get started, here’s a warm up video to sharpen your ears to notice the bass before proceeding.
Grab your aux cable and plug it into the best stereo system you can find, or plug in your best headphones to truly appreciate the bass
What follows is my list of songs with notable basslines that truly stepped up the music, from various Indian producers, bands and composers. This is from MY music preferences that stemmed from the music that I had discovered and grew up listening to.
YouTube videos of the original songs are provided, along with a bass cover, to highlight the bass instrumentation. All copyrights belong to the respective content owners.
Illayaraja
Illayaraja is one of the greatest music composers in the Indian film industry. He is known for his style of blending traditional Indian music with Western classical influences. There is no doubt the bass plays a big role in his music. However, I am not able to do justice to his body of work as I did not listen to his music much. There is one song that struck well with me, for its jazz-like style with an equally compelling baseline – Idhu Oru Nila Kaalam.
AR Rahman
AR Rahman’s music provided me with many A-HA moments that they had a bassline. After I started playing the bass, I could notice the bass in his songs, that often left me in awe. I liked how his music tended to use the bass as a primary anchor to the song’s rhythm.
Katre En Vasal is the first one in the list, with a noticeable bassline from the beginning
On a similar note, Kadhal Rojave stands out with its straightforward rhythm
Mohini Dey absolutely rocks it in Zariya, especially towards the end
Another video shows the basslines that Rahman had used in his songs during the earlier phase of his career
Santosh Narayanan
Santosh Narayanan is a more recent addition to tamil film music and produces sick beats. His basslines are really good too. The first one here is Mogathirai.
Another slow and beautifully rendered song, Ennadi Maayavi Nee has a bassline that complements the soulful voice of Sid Sriram.
Harris Jeyaraj
Two songs of his Vaseegara (Zara Zara in Hindi) and Venmathiye composed for the film Minnale, had amazing basslines, in my opinion. I strongly feel the bass elevated these two songs to its cult status.
Yuvan Shankar Raja
Yuvan is Illayaraja’s son, with his unique sound signature in his music. The song Idhu Varai was one of my favourites for the vocals and the bassline.
Rock music is rarely taken seriously in film music, because its commercial viability has always been questionable. But in one rare occasion where a decent rock song with a respectable bassline comes up in a film album must be cherished. Unakulle Mirugam does just that.
Other film songs
This section showcases songs from ones other than the above mentioned composers
Kadhal Ennulle by Rajesh Murugesan was my favourite song for almost two years because I really liked the bass technique. It took quite long for me to listen and find out the bass notes, and it was worth the discovery.
Ullala by Anirudh Ravichander has amazing flamenco-inspired music, modified well to suit Tamil audience’s tastes. The bassline is funky and creates a festive vibe in the song.
Indie Music
The bass has greater presence in the Indie music scene, as there are many bands and musicians who experiment with instruments from other styles of music. I have concentrated on only a few which I felt had to be shared, for their exceptional bass instrumentation.
About a month ago, I had discovered Ambarsariya (Cover) by The Jonita Gandhi Band. The bassline was improvised from the original version, which barely had any. The slaps and pops make it sound really funky. Wish I had found this song earlier.
Agam is a Carnatic and rock fusion band with incredibly talented vocalists and musicians. Their ability to reinterpret classical songs with western instruments is unparalleled and the basslines blew my mind. The two music videos embedded are of the band performing and there are shots of the bass player performing. This will help identify the bassline as you watch it.
Chekele by Avial is another example for subtle bass that glues the other instruments, thereby holding the song together.
The list draws to an end, for now. The bass is slowly gaining reputation as a must-have instrument in songs, as there are more mainstream and film music artists that are making use of this versatile instrument.
Skandha
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