Bass Nation

This past Monday was my birthday and the icing on the cake was our Monday night band practice. I had a really great birthday celebration with my wife and daughter and then it was off to play some rock and roll! We had to take last week off because our drummer hurt his arm, so I had a whole extra week to practice on my own and I think it paid off. I don’t really get to practice the upright much at home, so most of my practicing is done unplugged on my Fender.

Something that’s really helped my playing is a book by Victor Wooten called The Music Lesson: A Spiritual Search for Growth Through Music. It’s written as a novel about a mystical music teacher who shows up and teaches him a new way to approach the music, and some of that stuff is slightly painful, but what he actually teaches is incredibly helpful.

The most important thing is that the groove is more important than the actual notes. Since your typical scale is made up of 7 notes and there are 12 whole tones per octave, you’ve got more than a 50/50 shot at hitting the right note, and if you hit the wrong one it’s easy to use that to get to the right note and still make it sound right as long as you’re playing in the groove.

There’s other stuff about how to practice more effectively and a whole lot more which I haven’t even gotten to yet, but just the bit I have read has helped me greatly and I would recommend this book to anyone who plays any instrument.

Anyway, here’s an MP3 of us covering King Crimson’s Easy Money. I’m on the upright and there’s a brief bowed part during the jam. To the casual listener it might sound like just another rock song, but those who know music will be able to tell right away that the time on this one is a little bit crazy. During the verse, the vocals are in a different time signature as everything else. I don’t know how John Wetton managed to sing that one and play bass at the same time when I can barely sing harmonies during the intro (I didn’t even attempt that this time).

Easy Money

Now that I’m actually playing music, I find myself not feeling a whole lot of need to blog about it. But for both of you people who actually read this thing (and to get enough unique impressions to maybe make more than $.50/month), I really ought to post more often. So in that half assed spirit, I’d like to share a clip from our last practice. I had just gotten a bow for my birthday (thanks, Dad!) and last monday night was the first time I really tried using it with the electric upright. While it took a bit to get comfortable playing with a bow and it’s going to take a lot more practice getting proficient with it, It was a lot of fun to play and I managed to get some cool sounds with it.

Here’s our attempt at playing Red by King Crimson. We’ve been working on this one since the first jam session a month ago. It’s still a little bit rough. We’ve got 2 basses on this. Our singer was playing bass guitar while I was playing the upright, and I play the drumless interlude with the bow (which is particularly rough sounding here).

Listen Here

During the couple years I took between college and getting a real job, I was one of those 90’s slacker guys. I stumbled through my early 20’s watching TV, writing zines, smoking pot and not getting laid. And I also had a band. Inspired by the writing of the late great Robert Anton Wilson, we were called Fnord and we played eerie, dark, sludgy music and put on a scary live show involving dangling kielbasa sausages and flaming brass instruments. I played a lot of really crazy tapping, slides and chords and had a lot to do with our dark direction. We mostly played at people’s houses, though we had a few really great sets at the local youth center, a punk coffeehouse and a few other makeshift venues. Then I moved to DC and our drummer moved to New Orleans and we were no more. Later, our drummer and guitarist both wound up in Las Vegas and they play some blistering death metal. Here are two MP3’s from back in the day, and the video is a reunion of sorts when our old guitarist was out visiting last spring and we played one of the old tunes acoustically.

Flaming Sam Büca

The Song that Dare Not Speak its Name

While I should probably be posting another scale to practice, I’m feeling a bit on the self indulgent tip, so I thought I’d post a couple of MP3’s of another old band of mine.

Back in the 20th century, 1999 to be exact, I met a keyboardist named Russ on a newsgroup for fans of the band Ween. I posted that I played bass and wouldn’t mind playing with some other fans and Russ lived nearby and played keys. So I hopped the Metro out to PG County and we jammed a bit. Russ’ friend John played guitar and he came on board a few weeks later. We used the drum tracks from Russ’ keyboard for a while before having a couple of drummers. Russ and John wrote the songs and shared singing duties. We called ourselves Dirtpatch and we had a regular monthly gig in the basement of a house in College Park where a bunch of UMD kids would have shows. It was a lot of fun. We eventually broke up. Russ started playing accordion and doing a solo project called Milk Machine . John started A Cricket in Times Square . And I joined Captain Paradox who Russ had met at an open mic in DC.

Here are two MP3s from one of those basement parties. I think it was our first show with Travis, our first drummer.

Fighting Rambo Action Man

Evil Elf