How far below the chord should a bassline be?
I am writing a song and have just finished the bassline. If you look in the image below, in the 3rd bar the bass line gets quite close to the chord above it and the chord is already rather low in the bass register so I wanted to ask if this can be a problem since the G of the bass and the B of the chord are only a 3rd away. I have read that intervals of a 3rd below D on the bass clef should be avoided as they may not sound as nice so I just wanted to see if anyone else can tell me if i have been misinformed or not as the bassline doesn't sound so bad with the chords to my ears.
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You are the composer. You can write what you want. All rules for composers are made to be broken. Learn them, understand why they are good and useful in most cases and then break some of them. Your 4 bars sound nice, and that's all that counts.
I am singing in a choir, and it is not unusual to find the altos been written higher than the sopranos for single notes or even a few bars. Also having the bass higher than tenors or tenors higher than altos is quite usual for short sections. This can be found also in other instrument families (for example cello higher than viola). The name for this technique is voice crossing. And if the instruments you use don't belong to the same family (like piano and tuba), then there even isn't a rule that recommends to have the pitch ranges separated.
So, even if your lowest instrument moves higher that the middle one, this is no problem, as long as it its technically playable and sounds as wanted.
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