I was thinking about it this morning (well, actually, two mornings ago, by the time you read this), and there are very few worship songs with really good (or even decent) bass lines. I play bass on my church’s worship team, and this has bugged me endlessly.
For bassists to be so harshly discriminated against in the worship music industry simply because of their lower-end frequency nature is simply injust.
It’s with this in mind that I’m starting a T-shirt company which will raise money to help fund underprivileged bassists on worship teams throughout America, Europe, and other bass-discriminatory nations.
Seriously, I thought it’d be fun to create an ever-expanding list of worship songs that have at least decent (and possibly awesome) bass lines.
Here’s what I have so far, and leave any comments with your own thoughts and additions:
All Slow Down (Chris Tomlin)
Be Lifted or Hope Rising (David Crowder Band)
Deeper (Delirious?)
Found (Hillsong United)
Jesus Garden of My Rest (Robbie Seay Band)
Make a Joyful Noise / I Will Not Be Silent (David Crowder Band)
Oh Jah! (MorningStar Worship / Leonard Smith)
Rain Down (Delirious?)
Rend the Heavens (Isa Courvertier)
The River is Here (Vineyard Worship)
Sing Like the Saved (David Crowder Band)
Tell the World (Hillsong United)
We are Free (Robbie Seay Band)
You (Waterdeep)
Alright, that’s what I’ve got for now of the worship songs I can think of with good to great bass lines. Help me out and add some to the mix.
7 comments
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December 17, 2008 at 11:39 pm
Joshua
Salvation is Here has that really cool bass solo in the bridge.
Misty Edwards’ “You Won’t Relent” has that awesome tapping bass part at the beginning.
December 18, 2008 at 10:20 am
Joe Dorsey
Wes Stephenson is a wonderful bass player and brings a soulfulness. I am wanting to get more into this style of worship music. I need to pick up his soulful worship bass style DVD. Check out the two vids. You can learn alot from the preview alone!
Revive Us Again (Instrumental)
Preview of Soulful Bass Styles
December 18, 2008 at 10:39 am
Steve
The original “Trading my Sorrows” with the the bass chording is fun at first, but gets old as the song goes on. “All Slow (Bow?) Down” is sort of the same – cool at the beginning, but three minutes of the same. Try speeding it up and you get the Beatles “Taxman”
The Kent Henry version of “The River is Here” has a cool fretless line. It made me buy a fretless bass.
I’m partial to “Listening” by Christafari and anything where I can play 2nds or 9ths, “How Great is our God”
December 18, 2008 at 11:13 am
Steve
We made an attempt at Darlene McCoy’s “Fallen in Love”. Its still a good song with a cool bass line despite how my group butchered it.
December 18, 2008 at 5:36 pm
jakestimp
Man, thanks for the feedback. I’ve never heard some of these songs. I’ll have to look into our church band playing them. Keep the suggestions coming in.
December 19, 2008 at 10:15 am
will
here’s a few i like:
delirious – jesus blood
something like silas – infinite
robbie seay band – many songs, ryan is a nice tasteful bassist
December 19, 2008 at 6:56 pm
Richard
I share your pain as a fellow church bass player. When you have some money for poor bass players can you send me some new strings please?
Here a couple of songs I like to play
The Time Has Come – Hillsong (interesting bass line and cool solo – that the worship leaders sometimes forget to do)
Happy Day – Tim Hughes (or someone like him – pretty straight forward bass put a fun song to play)
All Day – Hillsong
Dancing Generation – by ?
One of our worship leaders has written a couple of songs recently that are kind of bluesy and gospelly and really loads of fun to play on bass especially if the drummer is on top form
Also Break Free by Hillsong has a really great bass & drum interplay thing which I’d love to play in church