How do YOU study your favourite players?
 

I have been playing bass on and off for the past 8 years and have never really "studied" any of my favourite players. How do you go about taking a pursuit to study the style, note choices, phrasing, etc of your favourite players and incorporate it into your playing?

Do you listen to their music all the time and hope that by osmosis it reflects in your own note choices and phrasing? Do you transcribe a CD, every song, note for note, and play along? Do you transcribe only your favourite licks?

Do you take interesting passages and play them over 12 keys, or do you analyse them and milk their harmonic and rhythmic structure for making your own licks?

There is no right or wrong answer, but seeing as I found one player I really want to hone into and learn from, wondering what others have useful for committing to memory and practising.

I can only speak for myself, but I simply try to learn their songs and copy what they're playing. After a while what I've learned gets incorporated into my own particular style of playing. ;)

Agreed! Everything I learn seems to find it's way in to my playing at some point, and sometimes I realize just how much I am being influenced by a certain style or player without even trying.

Example: I have been studying "Who Did You Think I Was" w/ Pino on bass, and "The Lemon Song" w/ JPJ on bass of course.

When I have been doing blues jams to warm up at practice, some of the lines I have learned have worked their way in to what I play.

So, I would say that just study the songs you want to learn, listen away from the bass, and it will just evolve naturally.

I spent a whole lot of time in my formative years transcribing and playing along with recordings. Writing everything out helped with my reading and also my understanding of what they were doing. I also immersed myself from time to time with various players, listening to a lot of their work at once.

I just listen to them until I can memorize what I'm hearing. I split songs into sections and once I learn them I put it together and master the same groove, attitude, technique and sound that was applied to the original. You almost have to get into the original player's headspace.

by listening to them and watching them when I can.