Jay Dee's licks / Bassline Technique - NOT his mixdown / keyboard used or whatever

[coyotekells]

TOP SECRETS TO DILLA-TYPE BASSLINES:

Make sure the rest of your instrumentation is open, sparse, and leaves lots of room to "noodle" over it. Sustained rhodes chords, etc. work great because you baseline doesn't need to follow an intricate composition... as long as you stay in key, and in time, you can "jam" all over the place.

Use the right bass sound.

Syncopated drum programing is conducive to playing the baselines you're after. Just like the base, to get heavily swinging drums, your instruments must leave room for that (ie, not an intricate composition that leaves no room for you to just do as you please with the drum pattern).

When a note ENDS is nearly as important as where it starts!! On a related note (hah), play with your release settings. It's most typical to use a very short release for this style of bassline.

Grab your keyboard (or MP) and find the key of the song (or the keys that sound good with your song, if that's more your level). Trial and error is just fine. The more you jam around, you'll get in the groove, and pretty soon have that 8 or 16 varying pattern you were looking for.

Do not quantize your bass.. a little swing/natural touch is important. Furthermore, it's actually become popular to be straight up off beat!!!! Wtf is that?? Oh well, if you can pull it off, more power to you -- it is a distinct style that's developed, and it can be made to work..