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