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).
Although I’ve started several bands, apparently I’ve never done it right. But now, thanks to the great correspondent’s course from the University of Andy, I know how to start one:
The University of Andy is the best place to learn this and other valuable life skills such as surviving a bear attack and holding your liquor. Andy Botwin is a brilliant educator.
Black Sabbath’s bassist, Geezer Butler, was another one of my big early influences. He played real low (Sabbath tuned all of their instruments down one and a half steps, so the E string was actually a C#, giving them that extra low sound and requiring really heavy strings), bluesy and slightly distorted. He uses flatwound strings which gives his tone more warmth and depth. Most of his basslines went along with Tony Iommi’s iconic guitar riffs with a little added flourish which makes those songs incredibly fun to play. The thing with Black Sabbath, at least the classic original incarnation before Ozzy got too fucked up on drugs, is that it’s all built on these riffs that have since become part of the rock and roll lexicon. Anyone even with some casual listening can hum most of them in their sleep. And that’s also what makes them so fun to play. And then there’s the intro to N.I.B. Tune down, throw on a slight flange or chorus and a little bit of fuzz and give this one a try. It’s fast and dark and like all of their early stuff just sounds a little bit evil.
I haven’t had the opportunity yet to do a full post on Geddy Lee who is one of my major influences from very early on. Rush is another one of those bands that people either really love or really hate, and while I may not love them like I did in high school and college, I still have a great appreciation for a lot of their stuff and their amazing musicianship while recognizing that some of their stuff was just really cheesy. There’s a great debate over when they jumped the shark, and it seems that people see Moving Pictures as the line where all things previous were great and all things post were meh. I would go a few albums after that. I actually really liked Signals, and my favorite song from that album is Digital Man. It’s somewhat epic, with a reggae infused chorus and just insane basslines throughout. I don’t get how Geddy could play lines like that while singing. It boggles my mind when I can’t even play those lines yet. Want to learn them? Here’s the tab. Here’s video of a guy playing along. And here’s Rush doing it in 83. And while owning a scalpel does not make you a brain surgeon, here’s Fender’s Geddy Lee signature Jazz Bass .
I came across something really cool today. It’s advice that Thelonious Monk gave to sax player Steve Lacy. Lacy took notes, and these notes have been making their way across the intarwebs. While there’s nothing specifically about bass, this advice is great for any instrument. Monk is one of my favorite jazz musicians ever. His songs were great (my personal favorites are Well You Needn’t and In Walked Bud), he played some really interesting scales (particularly the spooky whole tone scale, most prominent in Misterioso), and while his piano playing was top notch, he also really understood the need to sometimes hold back.
“Don’t play everything (or every time); let some things go by. Some music just imagined. What you don’t play can be more important that what you do.”
That’s particularly good advice for bass. Silence is a powerful musical tool. You put a little air into your music, make them wait for it, and then hit ‘em with it. Here are some other bits of great advice, and you can see the whole thing here.
“Just because you’re not a drummer, doesn’t mean you don’t have to keep time.”
“Pat your foot and sing the melody in your head, when you play.”
“Stop playing all those weird notes (that bullshit), play the melody!”
“Make the drummer sound good.”
“You’ve got to dig it to dig it, you dig?”
“Don’t play the piano part, I’m playing that. Don’t listen to me. I’m supposed to be accompanying you!”
“The inside of the tune (the bridge) is the part that makes the outside sound good.”
”A note can be small as a pin or as big as the world, it depends on your imagination.”
Trevor Dunn is an incredibly versatile and talented bassist from Northern California. The first time a lot of people probably heard him was playing for Mr. Bungle. For those unfamiliar with Mr. Bungle, they’re one of those bands that really defies description. They’re all over the map musically. They can go from blistering metal to trippy lounge to dub to covering snippets of Elton John and Motley Crue back to Elton John all in the same song. The musicianship of these guys is insane, but since this blog is about bass, we’re not really going to discuss the rest of them. Trevor has a really cool website that includes his impressive discography and a whole page for bass geeks with a tiny bit of tab and detailed info on all his gear.
And of course, you want to see him in action, right? First is Mr. Bungle playing Quote Unquote (Travolta). More after the jump.
Ron Asheton, founding member of The Stooges, was found dead yesterday in his Michigan home. The Stooges were incredibly influential to me. They were playing punk rock before there was such a thing as punk rock. While Iggy Pop went on to have a successful solo career, his old bandmates never reached the same level of fame. Ron played some ripping sludgy grungy dirty guitar and his brother Scott pounded the skins. Thier original bassist, Dave Alexander, died in 1975 and was replaced by Mike Watt in their reunited incarnation.
Here’s a really old video from some TV broadcast with a very unhip announcer guy trying to understand this crazy new music. While their most known and covered song is I Wanna Be Your Dog, my favorite has always been TV Eye which is the first song in this video, followed by 1970.
Mike Watt is another favorite of mine. Many people refer to him as a pioneering punk rock bassist. While the Minutemen were part of the Southern California punk rock scene and they were on SST records, I think their music went far beyond punk. While they had the aggression and angst of punk rock, they were probably closer musically to jazz. After their guitarist died, Mike and their drummer started fIREHOSE, which also really pushed the musical boundaries of punk rock. He has since put out a couple of great solo albums and tours all the time.
I’ve had the opportunity to see Mike play at the same small club twice within a 2 week period in the fall of 2000. First it was his own show, and then two weeks later he was playing bass for J. Mascis.
There are plenty of videos of him on YouTube, many better looking than these, but this is an improvisational jam with Mike and Money Mark (Beastie Boys’ keyboardist). Rest of the parts after the jump.
Sometime in the early 90s, a band called Primus came out of the San Francisco bay area into an overly crowded scene of emerging “alternative” rock. It was an easy scene for lesser bands to get lost in, but there was something about Primus that set them far apart. That something is Les Claypool’s ridiculous bass playing. His style is something of a hybrid between Tony Levin and Stanley Clarke which is not something you’d expect to hear in alt rock, and it’s his bass that is the front and center of their songs, another thing you don’t expect from alt rock. Sure, Red Hot Chili Peppers have Flea, but Les took it to an even higher level. Rumor has it that when Metallica were looking for a new bassist after Cliff Burton died, Les auditioned and they turned him down because he was too good. Here’s a very early video of Primus playing To Defy The Laws of Tradition in a college radio station.
How could there possibly be a blog about the bass without mentioning the man himself, Jaco Pastorius? He’s pretty much regarded as the greatest electric bass guitarist who has ever lived. After switching from drums due to a sports injury, he picked up and upright bass which completely fell apart due to Florida’s humidity. Sop he picked up a ‘62 Fender Jazz Bass, pried out the frets with a butter knife, filled the grooves with putty and put a coating on the neck. This was his “Bass of Doom,” pictured at the right and also on the header image of this very blog.
What set Jaco apart from the rest was his approach to playing bass. While holding down a driving rhythm is important, he also focused on melody. Many of his bass lines were inspired by bebop horn runs.The very first track on his first solo album is a Charlie Parker song with him just blazing the leads.
He had an amazing solo career, played with fusion supergroup Weather Report, did lots of studio work with a wide variety of artists and even recorded an instructional video. And then his all too brief life was cut short when he drunkenly got thrown out of a Santana concert after trying to get up on stage and a fight with a bouncer led to brain damage that killed him at the age of 35.
Check out his wikipedia entry here for more details on his life, his technique, his gear and more. Below is a video of Jaco with Weather Report doing Teen Town. More videos after the jump.
