Or drum machine or - better still - real and good drummer. Sloppy, inaccurate bass playing makes a band sound terrible. You can fix these timing issues by working on your groove and timing. A metronome can really help. Shuffle time is found a lot in blues and is sometimes called swing in jazz.
It occurs when there is an underlying triplet feel, and two eight notes are felt like two tied eighths and one eighth in a triplet. Learn to nail this feel. Meter refers to the subdivision of beats within a bar and is represented by time signatures. Loads of songs and styles feature different meters so the more you know the better.
There are only a few that you'll see over ad over again. This sounds very Mr. Myagi and it is. One of the biggest mistakes people make is to try and play fast before securing the foundations.
You will only reinforce errors if you continue that way. Instead, slow down to a manageable tempo and build up speed from that point. Crank up the speed gradually and make sure there are no slips or inaccuracies. Be humble and ask questions. Having an open mind and a thirst for knowledge will sustain your journey as a musician. If you're lucky, it will last a lifetime and you will never run out of things to learn. The best musicians are always learning even into old age. It keeps the mind young as well as you motivated and fascinated in the beauty of music.
There is such a thing as over-practising and getting burnt out in general with music. This happens to anyone in any field when they overdo it. This is pretty rare for most people but if you feel like you're in this state then take a break. Go on holiday and don't practice, do something different and non-musical. Sometimes a little press of the reset button does wonders for creativity and reinvigoration. Cooking, sports, debate, language learning, psychology. These are just some areas whose top practitioners give us musicians huge inspiration.
Whether it's coming up with unusual ingredients for a recipe or formulating training sessions, if you look around you will find so many things that can help you as a musician. Composing, practising, organisation, planning, goal setting are just some of the areas you can find ideas from the world around you. This is a fantastic discipline to improve your inner clock. Set a metronome to 45 BPM and choose a line you know.
It's hard. To increase the challenge, feel the click on different beats. Do this a lot and then prepare to groove HARD. There are levels to every game and playing in time is a basic but vital foundation. The beat isn't a fixed point and musicians can place notes slightly in front or ahead of the beat, behind it or right on it.
There are degrees between these points. Being aware of this will allow you to create different feels by thinking about where you are playing in relation to the beat. This is a fascinating topic and one every bass player should be aware of. As a very simple example, playing ahead adds excitement, playing behind gives you a relaxed feel and playing on the beat sounds tight and metronomic.
Many people regard music theory as something that is too difficult or that it will stifle their creativity and soul. Complete nonsense. It will if you play without feel, groove, and great timing. Scales make up the building blocks of music. All they are are collections of notes with different patterns between the notes. This simple formula creates different sounds, colours and - most importantly - emotions and moods. Pop and rock friendly keys due primarily to the open strings that guitarists and bass players enjoy using are E, A, and a few others.
In jazz and many other styles, you will need to know how to play songs in all keys. Triads come from scales - the first, third, and fifth notes create them. Loads of basslines are just triads played with some rhythm. Arpeggios - or chord tones - add notes to simple triads.
Between scales, triads, and arpeggios, bass players have the ingredients they need to create a bassline. Of course, you need tone, rhythm, melody, and other devices to bring it to life but they're so important and relatively easy to grasp. Arpeggios are used a lot in blues and jazz. Played together at the same time, triads and arpeggios create chords.
They're not played much on bass in band settings but they sound really cool and can help you to come up with songs and basslines. Related lesson: Fingerstyle chords, fills, bass lines. A scale gives you a set of triads, arpeggios, and chords, all of them closely related. This gives you a set of related musical material. This is what musicians use to make songs. This hugely important so make sure you learn this.
Related lesson: Guide To Chord Progressions. People improve when they are accountable to others. If you stand to look stupid in front of others then you'll do the work. Joining a band will put all your skills to the test and quickly make you realise things that you need to get better at what you didn't know you needed.
Don't think that you're not ready now. You are. You'll be slightly rubbish then you'll get better. Go for it. This can feel uncomfortable but, ultimately, playing with superior musicians is a joy and a way to get better much quicker than you normally would. The great motivational speaker Jim Rohn said, 'you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with'. It's harsh but if those people in your band aren't great then you won't improve that much. Drummers and bass players form the heart of the rhythm section.
A good drummer will help your timing, groove, and feel and if they get asked to be in bands, you can tag along as part of the section. Study the great rhythm sections to know the importance of our union with drummers. Then find some good ones! In a band setting, the bass is part of the rhythm section and its role is to provide a solid foundation for the rest of the band. Think of it as providing the other musicians with a comfy armchair. It's a selfless role that requires you to be the heartbeat and pulse of the music.
Know that you are the bridge between rhythm, harmony, and melody: It's an incredibly important and powerful position to be in. This could be tough and you'll need to develop a thick skin but positive criticism will provide you with a wealth of practice material.
Never take it personally. If it's true and weaknesses in our playing are identified then get to work and turn them into strengths. If you're not in a band yet, make up a setlist list and play through it as you would on a gig. Don't stop unless you want to simulate an interval. This will at least get you some stamina, teach you the tunes and it is the next best thing to playing a gig.
In fact, choose a cool setlist and you could be virtually playing your dream gig! The more different genres you know the more rounded a musician you will become.
If you want to make a living as a working bass player then you will come across pop, jazz, blues, funk, rock, hip hop, and blues. The more authentically you can play the better and the more employable you will be.
If you don't want to turn pro then these different styles will all contribute to your unique voice. Jazz is the musical equivalent of vegetables: very good for you even if you don't like it. Jazz is a mish-mash of blues, African and South American styles as well as bebop, modal, and more.
It is an art form that draws on improvisation and creativity. Learn jazz and you have to improve your application of theory, your technique, your ears and your all-round musicianship.
Latin music comes from South America and is based on the clave; an underling rhythmic ostinato. Bass players use syncopated rhythms that are quite alien to anyone exposed only to western music. It's a good discipline to practice syncopated rhythms. Rock can be looked down upon by some jazz players but those same players often can't play rock.
It teaches you how to play riffs with attitude and flair and how to make music often with very simple harmony. The minor pentatonic and blues scales feature a lot, especially in classic rock. Popular music is designed to appeal to the masses and not all of it is great. The best pop music delivers catchy hooks, groove, and melody in short format. There's a real beauty to pop basslines and it's not easy to create really memorable ones.
The prototype of modern styles of music including jazz. Every beginner bass player should know how to play a 12 bar blues. It's a springboard to improvisation and learning other more complex chord progressions. It's another style of music that sounds simpler than it is. Learning blues will set you up for assimilating other styles of music like soul and RnB.
For timing, groove and pure feel, funk can't be beaten. It's bass-lead music which requires good technique and deep pocket. The slap technique came from funk which lead to an era of music where the bass was king. These bell-like tones sound amazing on bass. You can use them in basslines or solos and they are especially effective on endings. You can play them as chords or as single lines. Listen to Portrait of Tracy by Jaco Pastorius.
It's the benchmark when it comes to harmonics. This technique is where you use the side of your hand in a karate chop motion placed at the bridge of the bass. Apply a tiny amount of pressure and you mute the strings slightly not too much or you'll completely choke the strings getting a ghost note. This changes the attack, decay, and release of the note.
The bass sounds a little more like a double bass and the notes can sit int he mix better. Great for jazz, reggae and hip hop. One of the most annoying sounds, when you're busy tearing it up on the bass, is the ringing of open strings and the clanking of notes you didn't intend to hit. A very unglamorous technique that all the pros do is to use different methods to control the strings.
The mysteries of the low-end are not for those lacking in self-esteem, or for preening peacocks who thrive on attention. Ours is not a world of histrionics or flashy solos. To be a bass player is to quietly, cooly do your job, sometimes without praise, safe in the knowledge that without you, there is no roll in the rock, no rhythm in the blues.
To play the bass is to believe that you and you alone can bring the funk should it be summoned. It is a heavy burden, and one that can only be borne by the very chillest of the chill. Real talk: nobody notices an average bass player. Barely anyone notices a bad bass player, unless they go out of their way to draw attention to themselves perhaps with a sign of some sort. This means, effectively, that people with barely a bone in their body can, in the right circumstances, have a long and fruitful career banging out one-note basslines in front of adoring crowds.
Good luck to them, we say. In the life of a musician, sensation is everything. And for bass players, there is no better feeling than plugging in, turning up, and hitting that first note. You are master of the low-end, and all shall bow before your all-conquering bass mastery.
What is a drummer without a bass player? Guitarists sound thin and widdly pretty damn quick without us. Singers are groove-less without the bass doing its thing behind them, and keyboard players might as well just pack up and go home. I see a TON of great bassists on the road with various bands with a lower percentage of bass players than that of social media. I think a good bassist is one who selflessly serves the music.
Generally, the bassist does that by being a solid bridge between the drummer and the rest of the band. They play at a lower volume than the vocalist and soloists at the appropriate places, and they bring energy to the big moments and understate the sensitive moments.
Many great technicians I know are also great bassists. The bass player or bass guitarist has achieved an above average technical ability on the instrument and feels like they need everybody to know it.
I was this player for many years when I first got my chops together, but before I learned how to be a better team player. I could play chords, play fast licks that ran my fretboard from top to bottom, I could play any line as 16th notes, etc… the list goes on. I was having so much fun entertaining everything that came to mind that I was no longer listening to the music and only listening to myself.
When I listen back to recordings, it is painfully obvious that the music was suffering because of my need to show what I could do or just try and do neat things on the instrument because it was fun.
I would argue that if you listen back to much of the gold standard fusion in the early days, there was a better balance struck between technicality and musicality. I find that balance harder and harder to find in newer technical fusion. I love all of the hyper-technical solo bass stuff out there in the world.
I love seeing what people can do with the instrument. I also love hyper-chop technical fusion generally in small doses. Generally, when I am listening to technical music, it is because I am focused on the technical aspect of it, and I get immense joy out of exploring much of that stuff. However, when I feel inspired to listen to something because I love good music, that is almost never what I lean towards.
I think that this is why most technical music is widely only listened to by musicians. The true legends of an instrument are generally those who capture a balance of both things on any instrument. Chick Corea will never over play. Nothing but great, tasty bass playing , Etienne Mbappe, Dave Holland, Geddy Lee, John Paul Jones… any genre you pick, if you think of the cream of the crop, they generally play to the music.
Victor Wooten is another one. We all think of his other-worldly chops and rhythmic abilities on the instrument but when he plays bass, it is all rock solid bass lines all of the time. He is all abut supporting the groove when he plays bass. Much of his music is like that for me. There is so much beautiful playing in that concert and Joni Mitchell rocks. But when listening to it for the music contained, I think Jaco overplays, is too loud in the mix, and it bugs me at times.
I said it. I can only pray for the safety for me and my family from here on. Even when Jaco does lay things on a bit thick, he had so much feel and vibe that it still comes across in a musical way. He played jazz and made it feel like soul music. He was a master and an innovator. I will say this as well: I started working a lot more once I really started focusing on my feel and playing to the song.
I found that there is an art to playing different genres with related to time feel and that is when I really started getting enough work as a sideman to make a living playing music. Basically I started making a living playing music once I realized that the music, as a whole, was the most important thing I was doing when I had my bass in my hands.
Remember, this was a column where somebody asked my opinion on what a great bassist was. I hold love and acceptance for every one and every style.
No style, technique, approach is any better than another in my mind, but I do have preferences and I do think some things are inappropriate in particular settings.
How do you feel about it? Please share in the comments. Have a question for Damian Erskine? Send it to [email protected]. Your donations will be used to cover No Treble's ongoing expenses, and all donations come with a reward. Learn more. Very well written column. I guess I would fall under the total of bassist and not bass player. In my mind, the most important gig I could ever have When I play, I mostly just hit the root notes and make the rhythm groove with the song being played.
Fantastic column. As a bass player I feel that I need to let the song tell the story, while I keep the bottom grounded. I try not to over play unless I really have something to add. I have found when improvising with other I have the ability to change direction more that the other, with just one note. Victor Wooten are you kidding me?? He wishes he could play like Stanley. You shd lose your music card for this article. Thought provoking, to be sure. I went the other way regarding your definitions; bass players play the bass, while bassists attempt to take the bass and themselves to new and unknown places.
Each makes the other better, in my opinion. I like being able to live on both sides of it all. Like I mentioned in the column, so genres dictate that you play a lot. Actually, I agree on your definitions as well. I felt the need to make some kind of distinction but was never entirely happy with defining both of those terms as opposites. All agreed and well argued. And this is why they get caught up in adding chops. For some, it becomes a goal in itself.
He is at once invisible, and a giant towering over the performance. Physically, figuratively, and musically. His chops are beyond doubt as we all know here. That's it! A good bass player should take a decent amount of pride in his or her tone, so take a listen to how the bass sounds next time you see a band, and you might just be surprised.
The final frontier. Space can be an amazing tool, and it's all too often grossly underutilized. The presence of space in music, and especially in a bassline, creates a great sense of impact for the figures being played. It's also a great way to create tension.
The use of space will likely go along with a bass player with the right attitude. A good bassist will know how to let the songs breathe and when to lay out instead of cramming as many notes as possible into a song.
Space isn't just for one genre either; any genre can benefit from a nice, tight, spacious bassline. Max Monahan is a bassist and a writer living in Los Angeles. He spends his time working for an audio licensing website and shredding sweet bass riffs.
Topics: Performing , Honing Your Craft , bass. Image by Bart de Ruiter via Wikimedia Commons ; used under Creative Commons Good bassists aren't exactly a dime a dozen, and they can make a huge difference in your band.
Consistency Any successful entity is built on consistency — the ability to get the job done rain or shine. Time Ah, time.
0コメント