Bass players (and low brass/woodwind players) are often the butt of jokes from their “lead” counterparts. The importance of low frequency instruments should not be overlooked or forgotten.

People — both listeners and musicians — are often blissfully unaware of how crucial bass instruments are to any band or ensemble.

The sound of the bass is often obscured by treble and percussion. It’s not usually the first thing you hear in a piece of music, but once it is missing, the gap it leaves is glaringly obvious.

There are three elements of music: melody, rhythm, and harmony. In a band, the melody is typically the vocalist; the rhythmic instruments are the drums; and the harmonic instruments are the piano and guitar. What makes bass a unique instrument is it falls into both rhythm and harmony simultaneously. The bass bridges the gap between rhythm and harmony.

The bass drives the rhythm, like the drums, while also harmonizing with other pitched instruments in the ensemble. The bass is what sets the foundation of the harmony and is, therefore, fundamental to creating the overall chord. It provides a sort of reference point for every other pitched instrument in the ensemble.

The bass carries the emotion of the overall chord, and changing the bass note will completely alter the overall tone and the emotion it conveys.

If a bass player plays an incorrect note, everyone would notice the dissonance it creates, because the bass provides the musical context.

While you may not always explicitly hear bass, you do feel it. The bass creates low-range frequencies that cause resonance and vibrations that can’t be replicated with treble and percussion instruments. It’s this resonance and vibration that replicate our own heartbeats and move us.

For example, I know as a former worship tech for many years that it is the bass frequencies that cause churchgoers to feel as though their hearts are being moved during a worship set. If you want to get the spirit moving, pump more bass into the sound mix.

If you remove bass from the mix, you remove the emotion the music provides.