Is Jaco playing with a heavy touch in Jam in E???

[Music_for_life]

Jaco Pastorius - Jam in E - YouTube

Do I have to play aggresive to groove this tune??

[line6man]

Does it sound better when you do, or does it sound better when you don't?

[colcifer]

1) The audio quality on that is horrible so I hope you have the DVD.
2) There aren't many recordings of him playing fretted basses so it's hard to say.
3) What line6man said.

[groooooove]

hes playing lots of accented notes, and phrases. those notes he's certainly not being afraid to play loud.

at times he is playing in a pretty healthy forte. other phrases hes playing fairly quietly. it changes a lot, especially there. just listen to it closely- you can hear when hes smacking the strings or not.

[SLaPiNFuNK]

They have a DVD of this!
I used to watch this on VHS

He has a P-Bass neck on his Jazz bass when this was done... He does this between gigs for practice to stretch his hands out... I think the action is super low which is why you get the fret noise so easily.

Right hand is normal, just super low action on a fretted bass is the cause IMHO...

[cnltb]

Originally Posted by Music_for_life

Jaco Pastorius - Jam in E - YouTube

Do I have to play aggresive to groove this tune??

I think Jaco Pastorius generally played quite hard, so I'd just try what sounds best under your fingers and stick with that.

[India_Sierra]

You can hear when he is really digging in, something which is highlighted by the burpy tone and the buzz of the frets. If you try playing like Jaco, a firm touch with the right hand can be useful to get those sharp, stacatto sounds.

[JimmyM]

Jaco called it "cutting the strings." He didn't play with a heavy touch, but he could at times, and he believed in giving the string some pull and not just barely touching them like some folks these days say to do.

[Rixter]

They key to playing his stuff is clarity of notes. He didn't do anything muddied with ghost notes. And notice his right hand over the bridge pickup. He played closer to the bridge than most.

[Anonymatt]

Tonally, it seems Jaco would dig in pretty hard for accenting. He must have been compressed plenty by the mix engineers, because there doesn't seem to be too much dynamic swing--as there would tend to be with a primarily DI sound. This is just what I'm guessing.