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#181385 by Big Z
Sat Aug 11, 2012 8:10 am
I would say that they can play with out using a pick

#181652 by Planetguy
Mon Aug 13, 2012 1:11 pm
re. playing w a pick, i've got two words for you...

Paul McCartney

#181672 by PaperDog
Mon Aug 13, 2012 2:41 pm
Planetguy wrote:re. playing w a pick, i've got two words for you...

Paul McCartney


I thought you were gonna say Stanley Clark (Whom I saw live with Keith Richards and Ron Wood in a project called t"The New Barbarians" back in the 80's in Houston. OMG! they raised the roof off the house ;)

Clark was/is probably the only guy I know of who can play a bass like Zappa played leads... I suspect he pioneered 'some' of the slap methods we see more of today. If I recall, he used bare hands AND a pick, depending on the piece.

And therein lies my point. Picking bare, is technically a method of attack on notes, with distinct features of note textures and meters. Using a pick is yet another distinct method. Each one has its place equally (I believe)
SO I agree with Penguin...it really shouldnt matter... if were sticking with the needs of the song..

#181676 by Lynard Dylan
Mon Aug 13, 2012 2:50 pm
The New Barbarians, I bet that was a great concert.

Keith Richards, Ronnie Wood, and Stanley Clarke,
didn't Waddy play with them also?

#181682 by Planetguy
Mon Aug 13, 2012 3:05 pm
PaperDog wrote:
Planetguy wrote:re. playing w a pick, i've got two words for you...

Paul McCartney


I thought you were gonna say Stanley Clark (Whom I saw live with Keith Richards and Ron Wood in a project called t"The New Barbarians" back in the 80's in Houston. OMG! they raised the roof off the house ;)

Clark was/is probably the only guy I know of who can play a bass like Zappa played leads... I suspect he pioneered 'some' of the slap methods we see more of today. If I recall, he used bare hands AND a pick, depending on the piece.

And therein lies my point. Picking bare, is technically a method of attack on notes, with distinct features of note textures and meters. Using a pick is yet another distinct method. Each one has its place equally (I believe)
SO I agree with Penguin...it really shouldnt matter... if were sticking with the needs of the song..


i dunno dawg. i've never known stanley to use a pick...not that that means he never has. though he's not credited w "inventing" slapping (most people agree that credit goes to larry graham) he sure did a lot to advance it and expose a lot of folks to that style.

his right hand is quite amazing including slapping, strumming, classical gtr rasaguedos (sp??), and humming bird wings quick pizzicato...and then the f-er will pick up his bow and play beeee-yootiful arco stuff that would make most cellists hang it up.

we saw stanley a few wks ago at Jazz At The Bistro a small "supper club" in St. Louis that seats maybe 150. he only played acoustic bass and that was fine. he's is so ridiculously good! i swear the action on his upright must be even lower than i keep my old P Bass (which is damn low!)

#181685 by PaperDog
Mon Aug 13, 2012 3:24 pm
Lynard Dylan wrote:The New Barbarians, I bet that was a great concert.

Keith Richards, Ronnie Wood, and Stanley Clarke,
didn't Waddy play with them also?


That show was brilliant awsome... I don't remember Waddy unless you are referring to the Keyboard player. I was mostly enamored with Richards and Clarke.

#181693 by Lynard Dylan
Mon Aug 13, 2012 3:50 pm
Waddy was Linda Rondstant's guitar
player, he played with Keith in the
Expensive Winos, I thought he might
have been with Keith.

I would love to see Keith in concert even today,
he was a bad influence on my life, but I loved his
music, and I got better.

#181701 by Planetguy
Mon Aug 13, 2012 4:06 pm
Waddy Wachtel....must be who you mean. i can't think of ANY other musician who goes by waddy!

great session player who's been around for awhile. he plays the call and answer thing at the end of Jackson Browne's live version of Running On Empty where he's trading phrases w david lindley who's on lap steel. waddy's got some stuff but damn, going head to head w lindley when that guy is on lap steel???? i pity anyone finds himself in THAT situation!

#184107 by JohnCroft
Sat Sep 01, 2012 5:02 am
To me a bass player needs to be able to play first off.
2nd he/she needs to be able to take a lead role once in awhile.

#184110 by Tyler Riddim Murphy
Sat Sep 01, 2012 5:07 am
They must know/learn at least one Aston Barrett riffs and they have to be open minded and at least decent in their technique and time keeping. Oh yeah and they shouldn't mind playing several genres . But thats all IMO

#185966 by holdsg
Thu Sep 13, 2012 3:25 am
I'm thinking I would get along in any band that wants the bass player to:

show up on time, with all his/her equipment
learn/know the songs, when and how to use his bass/amp's EQ to suit the song
lock in with the drummer
don't overplay
help with load-in, load-out
look at and smile at the lead singer at least once during each song (shows that someone is listening, even if the crowd isn't into it)

what else is there?

#186662 by Kurosawa
Tue Sep 18, 2012 5:18 am
Good topic. As a 45-year electric bassist, I think bass is purely functional. It communicates pitch, pulse and place to the rest of the band. If a bassist is functional, he's worth his pay. If he's fancy, but doesn't have his functions covered 100%, he's a liability.

Sound: The bass sound is NOT whatever the bass player likes.

If the mix is dense, a horn rock band or a big band, the P bass reigns supreme because of the focus of the single pickup and the low mid hump of the P. It cuts. Gotta get that information out there.

There are many pleasant attributes of the P sound. It is the bass voice that is most like the human voice, because that quality grabs a listener emotionally, and music should be conversational in nature. I believe the wide aperture of the P pickup as opposed to the narrow aperture of the J neck pickup makes all the difference in the world in this regard. I've gone through many basses and kinds of strings and hundreds of preamp tubes to unmask the essential P sound, which is GRUNT.

Let me describe GRUNT. I once blindfold taste-tested a CD vs a Fraunhofer-encoded MP3 with a couple dozen musicians through some really cheap computer speakers. Every last one loved the CD and hated the MP3. In one particular tuba passage on the CD, you could fairly well hear each individual juicy flapping of the tubist's lips (analagous to bass grunt). On the MP3, all there was was the fundamental.

This vibrancy or juice can easily be destroyed. Turning up the bass too much will do it. Some people mistakenly think the tube sound is bass bloom. It's not. It's the clean tube sound that's magic, not the colored one. The main thing is to preserve delicate sonic events. You can't put them back with EQ any more than you can restore the events the MP3 algorithm file 13s. You can only work with what's there.

If the mix is thin, then the P sound overwhelms. The J (or PJ) is better in this setting because the blended pickups defocus the sound due to phase cancellation. I have a dark bass that blends into the woodwork, a korina-bodied, wenge-necked PJ Warmoth with an Alembic circuit and TI JR344 strings that sits so far back in the mix it's almost not there. If the instrumentation is me and a guitar and a Real Book, that's what I'll bring. But the blended J sound is fatal to solidly planting the pitch under my soloists and vocalists in a thick mix. Turning up a blurred bass won't help. It just washes out even more vital information.

Another thing, unless the composition demands it, I'm not too big on going lower than a dropped D. It's just because our ears find it harder to pick out the fundamental below that. And a lot of bass players don't have equipment that can reproduce the fundamental too well, even the low E string, so what you get is overtones, from which the brain must extrapolate the fundamental. However, even if you don't play any tunes requiring a 5-string or a Hipshot Extender, you might want to ask him if he owns one. If he wises off with "a bass has four strings," you might want to look more closely at his team ethic.

Pitch: Yeah, well that was it just now. Um, let's talk about

Pulse: The old Motown formula is just as good now as it was when it was invented. The bass and bass drum should be balanced 50/50 in the mix. After the audition, you want to ask the drummer's opinion of the bassist's time. Your drummer and bassist had better be joined at the hip or the groove ain't gonna happen.

Rainey told GP that he got the gigs where other guys didn't because of his nails. He had the nails to clearly define the leading edge of each note, and he had the meat of his fingers behind it to prevent the notes from being tinny. My nails were weak for years, and I tried everything. In the past few years, they've gotten strong enough to do that, but I learned to compensate before that (my fingertips are like little rocks), and I learned to make a meaty sound with a pick, too.

This leading edge of the note is essential to providing precise pulse. The more defined it is, the tighter the band can play.

Place: The bass is the band's GPS. It tells the band where it is in the form, whether we're going to do another verse or we're going to the chorus. It tells them we're going to the bridge, we're going, right...NOW. It tells the band it's going to modulate, and where, and precisely when. What the next chord is. Not that the band doesn't know this, but the bass gives the players the confidence to strut their stuff with AUTHORITY. And when the vocalist charges straight into the chorus instead of the second verse, or worse, suddenly remembers and changes back, it's the bass that makes the save.

However, even the best direction from the bass can't save a band from a fool up front waving a stick. Beware of those guys. They can make the band crash and burn.

Performance: Forget gnat gnotes, tappin', slappin', chords, chimes, because none of that makes their butts twitch in their chairs. If your bass player isn't groovin', if he takes a narcissistic moment to dweezil high in the stratosphere, then who's layin' down the groove? Audience goes on potty break, right? C'mon, tell me you've never seen it.

But that doesn't mean he shouldn't be an absolute Nazi about nailing the things that do matter, and there are lots of them. Articulation must be clean. Notes should be percussive or liquid as the music demands. The bassist should be capable of explosive attacks, as if the notes are being spit off the string like little crossbow bolts. Releases should be as carefully attended to as attacks, just as with a wind instrument. The bass should be as dynamic as any instrument, and they should all be dynamic. A bassist who keeps a compressor inline and working all the time isn't contributing to your musicality.

And of course, if he has to track the guitarist an octave down, if he has to slap, whatever the material demands, well he just has to do it. He may not be able to nail a truly nasty passage while sight reading it, but sight reading's just a trick. You're not gonna do that on a gig. Reading, however...shouldn't everyone be able to read?

Every note counts. A bassist should pay attention to the note he's forming. It's the only thing he's doing, shaping that one note. The descending glissando is a good test. It should not die off as it goes. It should maintain tension until resolution. You should be able to feel this. If he has never cared enough about his craft to take time to work on it, you will know. If you don't, what the hell good would you have gotten out of a decent bassist, anyway?

Universal stuff: Being on time. Practicing. Memorizing. Having equipment in proper repair, owning and maintaining the proper clothing, having the right attitude.

#186817 by MikeTalbot
Wed Sep 19, 2012 2:58 am
I would suggest that any beginning bass player could benefit from reading your post. Experienced ones too for that matter. Well thought out and well stated.

However - as you outline it, it is a beginning. Not 'how it must be.'

Jack Bruce, Felix Pappalardi, Cliff Burton, Dave Ellison et al - are guys who approached bass guitar / muisic from several different directions and didn't just adapt their playing to the music - they helped defined the music!

With my altime favorite drummer (Chris Sherlock) I could play literally anything that came into my head - drunk or sober - and he'd play it with me. Same deal in reverse. That was a form of magic that happens - can't learned.

Why I liked your post was because you laid out a lot of fundamentals which are what talent , creativety and improvisation are built upon. I didn't agree in every particular but all were worth considering.

Chris and I were able to play together and reach that sweet spot because we were both playing a lot, and knew our fundamentals. The rest is gravy.

Talbot

#187195 by 1so-static
Sat Sep 22, 2012 6:27 am
Four thick strings and attitude :wink:

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