This might be a long-shot question.

Has anyone thought about the classification of bass lines in music?

I recently recorded a bass overlay of Games People Play by The Alan Parsons Project. I’ve enjoyed this song and its bass line for years and realized that unlike many popular songs, this one has a melodic bass line. That got me thinking on how bass lines might be classified.

I put my engineer hat on and asked myself what are the 2 most salient features of a bass line and concluded the degree to which it’s melodic and the degree to which it aligns with the kick drum; hence the attached plot.

The total number of dimensions that define any given bass line is no doubt more than 2; it may 4, 6, 8 or more. But as a 1st-order approximation does anyone have better thinking or comments on this plot?

I’m guessing that musicologists and other experts must have thought about this question.

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Bass Line Classifier.jpg (24.06 KB, 9 downloads)

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For me there’s no better place in the band than to have one leg in the harmony world and the other in the percussive. Thank you Paul Tutmarc and Leo Fender.