Habit of Writing 90% of All Music Composed on 4 String Bass in Either Key of E or A?

[Baloney Balderdash]

I've noticed that probably 90% or so of all the music I write on bass will be in the key of either the lowest or second lowest open string, on a regular E standard tuned 4 string bass that would be in either key of E or key of A, and with a small favor towards A.

 

I am curious as to whether anyone else have this habit of gravitating towards making riffs on your bass in either E or A (or whatever your two lowest strings are tuned to)?

 

I'll estimate that for me it probably looks something like this:

 

45% in key of A

35% in key of E

10% in key of D

10% other keys

 

This by the way seems to translate to when I am composing on computer using midi programming as well.

 

The key might modulate during the compositions but for the main parts this seems to be pretty consistently true.

 

 

Edited October 14, 2023 by Baloney Balderdash

[Beedster]

I write in F or Bb, occasionally G and C, but never A or E

[itu]

While playing lots of covers, the singers dictate the key. Therefore I just played a song in C sharp / D flat major on Friday. I have to say that my reading abilities could and should be far better. I played maybe 5 songs by heart (usually better feel), and some 30 from scores. Some I had transposed to the right key, but not all. That C# is always a chore...

[JapanAxe]

I estimate that 99.92% of slap bass demos are in E or Em.

[BigRedX]

Because we have no guitarist in the band I compose a lot of music so it sounds reasonably good with just the bass which means using a lot of 2-note chords and alternating drone string melody string plucking. In this case using the A string as my drone always sounds best - D is generally too light on bottom end and E can be too muddy once I've added synths. Because we're a post-punk/goth influenced band that tends to mean A minor rather than A major.

 

I've just gone through our current set and most are in A minor with a few in D minor, one in E major and one where the main riff and verse are in B minor and the rest in A minor.

[itu]

Sax, trumpet and trombone players hate A and E but Bb and Eb are something they favour.

[Baloney Balderdash]

23 minutes ago, itu said:

Sax, trumpet and trombone players hate A and E but Bb and Eb are something they favour.

Luckily I don't know any people who plays any of those, or ever played with any (well, except for when I was playing guitar in the local music school band years ago), and programing trumpets and horns on the computer doesn't have this issue.

 

Also I do have a bit of an aversion against saxophones (unless played by Peter Brötzmann), clarinet can sound quite nice though, and I do love and make quite a bit of use of French and English horn, and especially trumpet, in my compositions. 

 

Edited October 20, 2023 by Baloney Balderdash