Building a song

MakiSupaStar · #1 11-14-2008, 05:02 PM

Hey man, big fan of your music. First time I saw you play was with Beck on the Odelay Tour at the Santa Monica Civic. They don't really have shows there anymore. Kind of a shame too. Saw many a great band come through there (Sonic Youth, Phish, just to name a few). Anyway, I know that you mentioned that you're a ProTools guy. This got me wondering how you approach composing a song as a bass player. Do you write the bassline first, and then create the song around that, or do you create beats first, and then build from there? Or is it some totally different approach? I'd be curious as to what your approach might be.

jmjbassplayer · #2 11-15-2008, 12:11 AM

That was a great gig in Santa Monica, glad you were there. Did you see Ween doing their country tour? So sick. I don't have an approach. I just go. Everything in my studio is always plugged in and armed and ready with one click of a track. I'm not interested in following any sort of rote procedure for starting a song, so I avoid it like the plague. I purposefully mix it up a lot.

JMJ

MakiSupaStar · #3 11-15-2008, 12:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jmjbassplayer

That was a great gig in Santa Monica, glad you were there. Did you see Ween doing their country tour? So sick. I don't have an approach. I just go. Everything in my studio is always plugged in and armed and ready with one click of a track. I'm not interested in following any sort of rote procedure for starting a song, so I avoid it like the plague. I purposefully mix it up a lot.

JMJ

Yeah that show was amazing. Ween tripped me out. They had those ripping country players playing with them, who were kind of detached from the whole gig. I remember tripping on them, because the fiddle player was just up there ho hum while yucking it up with the other two dudes, all the while completely ripping a flawless groove.

while the rest of Ween was seriously performing and rocking out. Ween and Beck was a good idea for a bill.

You guys weren't too shabby either.

That was the third time I saw Beck. I seem to remember he was chugging a bottle of wine. He seemed glad to be home. Not sure if you were playing the other shows. I saw a show somewhere around Loser, and then I saw a show at the Galaxy Theater in Costa Mesa. I can't remember if that was a Odelay show. Were you there? LOL, most of the early nineties were a blur for me.

About 6 years ago I saw Beck with the Flaming Lips in Long Beach. That show was really really cool. It really opened my eyes to how good Beck's voice really is. He opened the show with a few songs with just him playing his acoustic. Nobodies Fault really blew my mind. Then kind of like Talking Heads style, he brought out the ghetto blaster and played a song or two to some recorded beats. Then he introduced the Flaming Lips. As much as I'm a fan of them, I was a little little disappointed with the bass. Don't get me wrong, he's a great player, but he didn't have your approach to the groove like you do. It didn't make the songs bad necessarily, but just different. If you know what I mean.

Yeah, as far as tinkering with ideas go, I'm totally scatter-brained. Sometimes I start with a bassline, other times I start with a beat, lately I've been building songs around loops sampled from old dub reggae 45's. (I play in a dub reggae rhythm section - drums, bass, dj/mixer). Every now and then I like to check myself and see what the real players are doing. Good to see you don't have a method, and since I'm a big fan of your end results, then it makes me feel a little more secure with my complete lack on an approach.

jmjbassplayer · #4 11-16-2008, 12:02 AM

Yeah dude, Ween were so brilliant for hiring the sickest Nashville sidemen who looked totally bemused by the whole thing. What an amazing event. And yes, we were all chugging wine from bottles that night, I think it was the end of a tour.

And yes, I was at the Galaxy in Costa Mesa, that was very early days.

I hear you on the Lips thing; it was cool, but it wasn't really Beck with his best tailored-to-fit band....it was more of a mash-up. But cool nonetheless.

Sounds like you're into some cool procedures as far as songwriting yourself. Keeping it loose, that's good.

See ya,
JMJ

MakiSupaStar · #5 11-16-2008, 01:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jmjbassplayer

Yeah dude, Ween were so brilliant for hiring the sickest Nashville sidemen who looked totally bemused by the whole thing. What an amazing event. And yes, we were all chugging wine from bottles that night, I think it was the end of a tour.

And yes, I was at the Galaxy in Costa Mesa, that was very early days.

I hear you on the Lips thing; it was cool, but it wasn't really Beck with his best tailored-to-fit band....it was more of a mash-up. But cool nonetheless.

Sounds like you're into some cool procedures as far as songwriting yourself. Keeping it loose, that's good.

See ya,
JMJ

LOL. That Galaxy show was a little bit of a blur for me. I seem to remember Beck wearing this kind of sailor outfit, kind of like Thurston Howell III from Giligan's Island. But it was then that I realized that Beck was not your average performer. He puts a 110% into it.

Yeah, I'm a fan of the Flaming Lips. Especially the Yoshimi stuff. They did that album as an opener for Beck, and I still get chills thinking about how good that was. But yeah "mash-up" is a good description when they played with Beck.

Just curious, besides bass, do you play any other instruments? I'm completely lame at guitar, but I'm discovering that it would be nice to know how to play for sketching out placeholders in songs. Just signed up at Orange Coast College (I know you're local so you might know of the place) for a basic guitar class, just so I can get some of the basics down, or at least get to the point where I can string a few chords together. Right now I play the friggin' thing like a piccolo bass.

jmjbassplayer · #6 11-17-2008, 12:14 AM

I play guitar, crappy keyboards, and strangely enough: most of the clarinets and some sax. :-) Guitar is all I really need for chordal work though.

JimmyM · #7 11-17-2008, 07:10 AM

Dude, I would love to see you work some clarinet or sax into NIN! Maybe throw a Big Muff or a flanger on it to fit the aesthetic

MakiSupaStar · #8 11-17-2008, 10:57 AM

Recently Trent did a little stint with Peter Murphy and TV for Radio and they performed Bela Lugosi's Dead, the old Bauhaus song. Here's a link to it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xD7Cz6uwan8

I saw NIN years ago. I have a lot of their material, but for some reason haven't caught them live since Pretty Hate Machine, and they opened up for Janes Addiction (You weren't playing with NIN then were you? I seriously don't know). NIN put on an amazing performance with Trent hanging upside down in a straight jacket inside some kind of cage. Anyway, Bela Lugosi's Dead is a great song, very dubby. Is this a song NIN plays in their set now? Just curious.

If we're listing instruments that we're crappy at other than guitar, I can add that I'm crappy at playing xylophones, theramin, and drums.

jmjbassplayer · #9 11-18-2008, 12:08 AM

I'm new to NIN, since May. Bela Lugosi isn't in the current set, no. As much as I love that track and Bauhaus, I do believe Trent would want to steer away from something so overtly goth at this stage of his career. It's rad, though.

JMJ

MakiSupaStar · #10 11-18-2008, 02:16 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jmjbassplayer

I'm new to NIN, since May. Bela Lugosi isn't in the current set, no. As much as I love that track and Bauhaus, I do believe Trent would want to steer away from something so overtly goth at this stage of his career. It's rad, though.

JMJ

That makes sense. Even Peter Murphy, and Love and Rockets for that matter seem to be trying to move away from it. (although that last Bauhaus reunion album is pretty dark) Now that your playing for them I'll have to check out NIN again.

.