Short answer: Yes (see video below.)<\/p>\n
Long answer:<\/p>\n
It is possible for a bass player to play most guitar parts on his own without any guitarist present, however there are a few drawbacks to this.<\/p>\n
1. You need the right pedals to do it<\/strong><\/p>\n This can get expensive real quick, and in addition you need the right pedals that suit your bass guitar’s pickup tone when distorted. For some basses, a fuzz pedal (like a Metal Muff) works just fine. For others, a bass overdrive is the only thing that works.<\/p>\n What’s required to get the right distorted tone is to test pedals first. And you may have to go through several before you find the right one.<\/p>\n For “power chord” 5ths, a pitch shifter or harmonizer gets the job done. Some pedals of this type are good, but many are awful.<\/p>\n An octave pedal to +12 semitone the sound helps out a lot for certain song parts.<\/p>\n 2. You need to “dance” properly with your pedal board<\/strong><\/p>\n Since there is no do-it-all pedal for playing like this, you have to do a dance, so to speak, as you will be going back and forth between pedals often.<\/p>\n 3. You must “reengineer” your bass to sound mostly like a guitar<\/strong><\/p>\n As you’ll see and hear from the video below, you can get a bass to sound mostly<\/em> like a guitar would. It won’t be perfect, but to anyone you play in front of, they probably wouldn’t hear the difference.<\/p>\n And yes, playing with a pick here is pretty much required.<\/p>\n 4. You must pick songs that are purposely simple<\/strong><\/p>\n Again, in the video below, you’ll see the song choices are of the simpler type, and only for certain parts of the songs selected.<\/p>\n In the end…<\/strong><\/p>\n Yes, you can get away with no guitar player. You just have to be creative about it, adjust your playing style to suit and have the right effects set up to get the sound correct. Or at least mostly correct. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n