Entertainment For Lively Minds
The Bass Player..New Issue
Really enjoyed the article on bass players in this months issue particularly the stuff on JJ Burnel and his influence on others, Hooky etc. He`s one of my faves as I`ve mentioned countless times before, I just love his (early) sound and aggressive playing.
Interested to read about Tina Weymouth too, not someone i`d particularly been aware of from a bass playing view though she`s responsible for a great quote about bass lines (certainly from my point of view as a root note plodder)...She said "I guess eveybody has the same problem - you have blank tape, or empty space, and you fill it up to the best of your ability. Nobody tells you how to do it. You just do it."
I can work out bass lines pretty well but i`m hopeless at coming up with my own inventive lines myself. So, any tips for a root note plodder?
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Glad you enjoyed it
Next week's podcast is a Basscast.
Superb
From another root note (and occassional chord) plodder. Through my time with our little covers band, I've always worked to the mantra "if Nicky Wire can do this, so can I!".
Long since gave up any hope whatsoever of nailing anything The Ox played on. Foolishly once spent a lost week trying to learn "The Real Me". Never again. My hands simply won't go that fast!
Bass Guitar Solo!
Surely the three words any audience dreads hearing most are ’Bass Guitar Solo’ - closely followed by ‘Some new material’
It seems a feature of local pub bands, certainly in my youth, that each member of the band chose to champion a musical style which best demonstrated their unique skills. The drummer was usually into heavy metal as this meant he could bash things much harder than usual without looking too much out of place. The bass players were (always and perhaps inevitably) heavily into funk.
So we regularly had the sight of a standard middle-aged pub blues band stopping halfway through a Muddy Waters song so that their long-haired teenage bass impresario could play a chin-strapped slap bass solo.
The rest of the band looked on in much the same way a mother might whilst unwittingly catching her son entertaining himself with a glossy magazine. Once he’d finished everyone carried on with the song and we all tried to forget it had ever happened.
I had a 'lively disussion' on a similar topic over Christmas
with my ne'er-do-well brother in law, who insisted that bass players are universally the dullest member of any group and that nobody ever remembers the bassist. I disagreed, citing Macca, Sting, Lemmy, Phil Lynott, Mark King and Roger Waters before being told to cease and desist by Mrs P. I haven't read the article yet but shall do so with interest. Probably best not to reopen the discussion, though.
You want bassist? We got bassist...
Warning: contains a euphonium.
Where..
was Mick Karn in all this - thought his name might have least got a mention as an innovative and very distinctive bass player?
Tips
On bass it's as much about the space you leave between notes...it's not what you play...it's what you don't play.
As for being a root note plodder, nowt wrong with that as long as you're getting a good rhythm going. I'm not one for bass noodling but I do love a good counterpoint bass part which can send a song of somewhere else. A lot of these things just come by accident or hitting a bum note that somehow fits.
I love what Tina Weymouth plays on once in a lifetime...especially the way it doesn't change for the chorus and it seems like the part shouldn't fit, but it does.
I love the bass parts Carol Kaye plays on Pet Sounds which always add a little twist to the main melody. Andy Rourkes parts are amazing too, they're almost like stand alone melodies in their own right. Have a listen to those, and next time you're playing along with something try and shift the odd note, or take a note or two out and see what happens.
only read the OP, and...
just had to post this -
ye might want tae try this if ye'r no bevvied -
I should also point you at John Wetton's work in Family and King Crimson, so go Spotify!
Where's The Ox?
To paraphrase Bill Hicks...How can God exist when a 7 page article on Bass Players fails to mention John Entwistle but gives plenty of space to PINO FUCKEN PALLADINO??????????