Jazz and the Bass Guitar

[HaVIC5]

I know this is the one debate that TB is more tired of than pick v. finger, but I thought the community might like to read my thoughts on bass guitar in straight ahead jazz. I got really into some points which I've never really heard discussed here on TB, like the technical reasons why the sound of an electric isn't appealing to a lot of jazz musicians and what situations BG might fit best in and why. I'm interested what everybody's thoughts are here.

http://adamneely.com/2010/11/05/the-...-jazz-oh-snap/

Enjoy!

-Adam

[BassChuck]

Excellent article Adam. I think it was Ed Fuqua in this forum that said Electric and Upright bass are different instruments joined by a common job. Of course that's true, but as you point out they approach that job from very different directions and they attract different kinds of musicians.

Here's a question. If an EB player is on a 'straight ahead' gig playing say, "Autumn Leaves' or 'Body and Soul', do we try to imitate the UB tradition with our line, or do we take advantage of the different technology our EB offers?

If we try to imitate, we will fall short of the expectation, if we make the best use of our instrument, we risk a level of disconnect. While your YouTube examples were great fun and a wonderful look at what can be done on EB, we are still lacking that person who can show us how to put 'old wine in new bottles'.

Perhaps looking a little closer at Leland Sklar and Joe Osborn might be fruitful.

[plangentmusic]

Good article. This is a debate I've engaged a few times myself.

Right up front, I'll say something that perturbs a lot of people. I feel the electric bass is simply a better instrument. That's right. I said it. I believe Beethoven would have been all over the electric bass. It does what the upright does, clearer and stronger.

But here's the thing -- since the upright requires so much more dedication to play, even at a respectable level, it is considered a more serious instrument. And there's some truth to that. (Which is why I learned to play it).

AND...I must admit, walking bass seems to flow better when played in the "upright position."

AND...sonically, it "fits" with acoustic instruments.


But I truly believe the negatives outweigh the pluses in most cases.

For the most part, there's a snobishness to the instrument among jazz players. It shows you're "one of them." And audiences want to "see" the upright. It connotes a different vibe than a guitar.

But there are guys who swing their asses off on electric and in many cases, on recordings, you wouldn't know the difference.

No disrespect to upright players. I admire their dedication. But in the end, it's a choice. Even among guys who double, there's a clear distinction which instrument is really "their voice." (Stanley Clarke being the exception).

It all comes down to a time when I remember being in a club watching a jazz band and some bimbo at the next table said to her boyfriend ; 'What's the big thing you can't hear?"

Out of the mouths of babes.

[shwashwa]

good article. one thing ive noticed is that you can swing harder on electric while walking if your volume is low. that way you hear more of the front of the note and less of the guitar like sustain. same is true for flatwound strings versus roundwounds. remember, the bass guitar is a guitar and the upright bass is from the viol family. if you go into jazz with your normal guitar setup you'll sound like a guitar, but there are things that can be done setup wise to compensate for that. i think one thing that kills an electric groove is high volume. its easy for electric players to get tons of volume, usually upright players just cant get that loud, so trying to match the sound of an upright bass in the mix might help. also, even when the upright bass is too loud i think the groove suffers. jazz just doesnt sound good with loud bass. it kind of makes the groove bottom heavy, bogs it down, and in my opinion, the groove should be bouyant. dont confuse having a nice full sound with volume. you need a full sound, and an appropriate volume. in my opinion of course.

[HaVIC5]

Here's a question. If an EB player is on a 'straight ahead' gig playing say, "Autumn Leaves' or 'Body and Soul', do we try to imitate the UB tradition with our line, or do we take advantage of the different technology our EB offers?

I show up to straight ahead gigs 95 percent of the time with an upright bass. Why? 1) It looks better for the style of music and 2) it creates less possible friction with old school jazz guys. If I'm working, I give the client what they want, and that's really the bottom line. Like I said in the article, if I need to be supportive, upright bass is the way to go, and there's no real question in that.

On the rare occasion that I do bring an electric to a straight ahead hit, I do everything I possibly can to take advantage of what the electric can do within that setting to lock in with the drummer, stay out of people's way and make the music feel good. This is extremely hard most of the time, because comping instruments are never used to playing with electric, and can't really account for the added spectrographical range that an electric brings to the table. Playing electric bass with electric guitarists in straight-ahead is pretty much going to sound like poo, so don't even bother (IMO).

What's important beyond everything else is that I don't simply play the electric I might in backbeat grooves (funk, R&B, rock, etc). This will always sound less than professional. There has to be a very specific and cultivated approach to the instrument that can take a long time to develop based upon the principles I outlined in the essay.

Also, if you're getting up there in your local jazz scene, you'll eventually run into guys who will vibe the crap out of you if you bring the electric on a straight ahead gig, and might even refuse to play with you (happened to me once). Think of it as a learning experience.

If we try to imitate, we will fall short of the expectation, if we make the best use of our instrument, we risk a level of disconnect. While your YouTube examples were great fun and a wonderful look at what can be done on EB, we are still lacking that person who can show us how to put 'old wine in new bottles'.

I personally think that every one of the videos I posted show jazz bass guitarists who had thought about these things extensively, learned their instrument up and down, and applied all the positive aspects of bass guitar playing to straight-ahead jazz "of the tradition" as it exists today. The result of all this soul searching, you notice, never sounds like Blue Note-era swing, and it never will. Upright bass is necessary for that sound. No way to put that old wine into the new bottle that is electric. If you're going for that sound, anyway, why not just play upright?

Right up front, I'll say something that perturbs a lot of people. I feel the electric bass is simply a better instrument. That's right. I said it. I believe Beethoven would have been all over the electric bass. It does what the upright does, clearer and stronger.

That really wasn't the point of the article, just so people know. I was simply stating the often-overlooked advantages of electric bass, and the not-that-often-overlooked disadvantages.

For the most part, there's a snobishness to the instrument among jazz players. It shows you're "one of them." And audiences want to "see" the upright. It connotes a different vibe than a guitar.

The snobbishness is somewhat of a problem, yes, but remember that performing music is an act of entertainment. The visual aspect is just as big a part of the whole thing as the actual sound. If it adds to the audience's experience, then that should be a very important part of it.

I worked a bunch of gigs for this guy this past year who was very much of this mindset. He was a talented musician who recognized that I indeed could hold my own on electric in an ensemble, and it sounded and felt good. That didn't really matter, though. He got more gigs when the bassist was playing an upright, so I played upright for him, and got more work.

But there are guys who swing their asses off on electric and in many cases, on recordings, you wouldn't know the difference.

Why would this be a good thing, I wonder? If we're trying to make electric bass come into it's own as an instrument, why do we need to always make it sound "like an upright?" There are other ways to achieve the sonic mark of the upright bass (wide envelope, heavy initial attack) on electric that make the electric sound unmistakably electric rather than a pale imitation of upright.

i think one thing that kills an electric groove is high volume. its easy for electric players to get tons of volume, usually upright players just cant get that loud, so trying to match the sound of an upright bass in the mix might help. also, even when the upright bass is too loud i think the groove suffers. jazz just doesnt sound good with loud bass. it kind of makes the groove bottom heavy, bogs it down, and in my opinion, the groove should be bouyant. dont confuse having a nice full sound with volume. you need a full sound, and an appropriate volume. in my opinion of course.

This is actually a really great thing to do, and I feel like it adds to the "felt and not heard" aspect of locking in with the drummer to create a physical sensation of groove. Part of the great part of electric bass is that when it comes time to solo or be heard, it's just a knob's turn away! Electric guitarists do this all the time when they turn down to comp and up to solo and nobody fusses about it. Electric bass at low volume actually adds a lot in the right context.

[Robotsatemygma]

I may not be able to post something to relate to this debate... but wow. I mean no offense when I say this but I see a lot of snobbish attitude towards the electric. I really do not understand why?

Now I'm going to pose this question. If the early Creole and swing bands riffing on classical melodies used electric equipment, would this debate even exist? Could the swing still get hot if it was first played on a Fender P by Arvell Shaw?

I think so. But then again I think a lot of things would be drastically different.

I understand keeping an image that reminisces to days of old, where booze was illegal and jazz was dangerous. But to shun a musician, no matter his skill, because of his choice of instrument seems way to pretentious to be related to jazz. Look at Miles Davis, he embraced change and if he didn't, well, a lot of us wouldn't be playing the bass the way we do.

[Shakin-Slim]

While I understand what you mean, and it is important to embrace things such as the advances of electric instruments, it's the sound that is important. Nothing sounds like an upright but an upright.

[shwashwa]

i agree its all about tone and the upright has a tone that just cant be beat, and i was an electric player first, until i heard an upright. i guess its kind of like, would you rather have a real sax, or a synth sax on the gig? even though they're both being played by master musicians, one will sound more appropriate for the gig if its a straight ahead gig. it all comes down to what the leader is paying for.

[dogofgod]

electric bass is the tits for jazz. if jaco played electric with weather report, I can try to play my electric in any jazz situation too. also please keep in mind, most high school jazz bands use electric basses so it is kind of difficult to get in the position to play upright if your going through school these days. plus a quality upright can be very costly. just my .02.

[joroched]

I find it interesting that the image of the instrument was brought up in this debate. To me a bass and an electric bass guitar are too different instruments. Although I understand this thread is about straight up jazz, a bass being "in the viol family" makes me think of the classical string ensembles I've enjoyed. Absolutely the most beautiful craftmanship ever known to mankind. Now I wonder if I do or don't understand "straight up jazz". Wasn't the P bass inventented to replicate, but be more convienient? Didn't Jaco play jazz?

[Paul Barsic]

I'm visiting from the dark side. I have to agree that Bob Cranshaw is good. I've heard Sonny Rollins live. Bob played a bass guitar the whole time, and it sounded good.

I disagree with the comment that "...any person who has ever heard an upright bass solo knows, it is at these times where the energy of the piece is immediately killed..." You are completely out of line with that comment. I have heard double bass solos that killed the energy of the piece, but also piano solos, guitar solos, sax solos, bass guitar solos, trumpet solos, and drum solos. It is not the instrument, it is the player. For some excellent examples, listen to some Scott LaFaro, Charles Mingus, or Ray Brown recordings. If you prefer modern examples, then go to hear George Mraz, Dave Holland, or Charlie Haden. Go live if you get the opportunity. You were doing a very good job of explaining how the bass guitar is a legitimate instrument in its own right, but then you started trashing the double bass, and you lost me.

[onlyclave]

Originally Posted by shwashwa

i agree its all about tone and the upright has a tone that just can be beat, and i was an electric player first, until i heard an upright. i guess its kind of like, would you rather have a real sax, or a synth sax on the gig? even though they're both being played by master musicians, one will sound more appropriate for the gig if its a straight ahead gig. it all comes down to what the leader is paying for.

Synth sax is always in tune.

[narud]

Originally Posted by dogofgod

electric bass is the tits for jazz. if jaco played electric with weather report, I can try to play my electric in any jazz situation too. also please keep in mind, most high school jazz bands use electric basses so it is kind of difficult to get in the position to play upright if your going through school these days. plus a quality upright can be very costly. just my .02.

of course, electric is the right sounding instrument for fusion so jaco's instrument was just fine. straight ahead jazz? forget about it. it sounds bad. i dont wanna hear upright on black market like i dont wanna hear electric on nefertiti.

[KJung]

Originally Posted by narud

of course, electric is the right sounding instrument for fusion so jaco's instrument was just fine. straight ahead jazz? forget about it. it sounds bad. i dont wanna hear upright on black market like i dont wanna hear electric on nefertiti.

I never limit a whole class of music to a specific instrument. If you can swing, you can swing There are MANY bassists who have success playing relatively straight ahead gigs on electric (that describes many of my gigs in the 80's).

IMO there. It seems the ones that have the most problem with it are DB players, and I guess I can understand that.

You will either get hired as an EB player for jazz gigs or not, and that will define if EB is 'OK for jazz or not'!

Of course, at this late stage of 'relatively straight ahead jazz', it is a little tedious to discuss the issue when the 'payoff' is a $75 gig in a dump. It was much more of a serious question 25-45 years ago. For example, in the 80's, at least where I gigged in St. Louis, if you were an EB player who could read and swing a bit, the gigs were coming out of the walls. At that time, the 'straight ahead' band leaders (sax, vocals, keys, whatever, who were already mostly playing tunes that were 40+ years old back then!) where looking to freshen the sound, freshen the look, and have the ability to cover some of the pop jazz stuff that was happening then (pretty good stuff... Metheny, Spyra Gyra, whatever). So, pure straight ahead DB players were really out of luck.

Now, I guess, with straight ahead jazz being a niche of a niche of a niche, there has been a resurgence of 'going back to the tradition', both in tone and look. I can respect that, but I rarely bother to go see it!

Kind of like discussion 'how many angels can dance on the head of a pin'.... complex but not very relevant question (at least where having a career and making a living comes into play).

IMO.... based on my experiences through the years.

[KJung]

Originally Posted by Paul Barsic

I'm visiting from the dark side. I have to agree that Bob Cranshaw is good. I've heard Sonny Rollins live. Bob played a bass guitar the whole time, and it sounded good.

I disagree with the comment that "...any person who has ever heard an upright bass solo knows, it is at these times where the energy of the piece is immediately killed..." You are completely out of line with that comment. I have heard double bass solos that killed the energy of the piece, but also piano solos, guitar solos, sax solos, bass guitar solos, trumpet solos, and drum solos. It is not the instrument, it is the player. For some excellent examples, listen to some Scott LaFaro, Charles Mingus, or Ray Brown recordings. If you prefer modern examples, then go to hear George Mraz, Dave Holland, or Charlie Haden. Go live if you get the opportunity. You were doing a very good job of explaining how the bass guitar is a legitimate instrument in its own right, but then you started trashing the double bass, and you lost me.

I agree here 100%, and this goes to my feeling that DB is just another 'choice of instrument', as is EB.

I have the pleasure to hear and hang out a little bit with Ralphe Armstrong in Detroit. I tell you what, when he solo's on DB, the energy of the band about doubles... bowing, slapping, all kinds of stuff, and the time, intonation and notes are perfect. Simply stunning tone and feel, and a varied approach to the instrument... from full on traditional straight ahead support to VERY creative soloing with bow, etc.

It ain't the instrument either way... DB or EB IMO. I recently heard Pat Martino at a local club, and he had an organist kicking pedals (and left hand). There is NOTHING I hate more than that muddy, undefined low end tone, but my god, it was SWINGING and it totally worked. It ain't the instrument, and a great player can overcome what some might see as negatives with any instrument in a 'non traditional' context for that particular instrument.

[KJung]

PS To the OP.. nice article... well done and interesting. I enjoyed it very much.

[plangentmusic]

Originally Posted by HaVIC5

Why would this be a good thing, I wonder? If we're trying to make electric bass come into it's own as an instrument, why do we need to always make it sound "like an upright?" There are other ways to achieve the sonic mark of the upright bass (wide envelope, heavy initial attack) on electric that make the electric sound unmistakably electric rather than a pale imitation of upright.

.

My point is that if there's a sonic advantage to playing the upright in jazz (maybe for no other reason other than that's "the sound") then the electric can get so close, what's the difference? But of course, the electric can do many other sounds in which the DB is not capable.

[narud]

Originally Posted by KJung

I never limit a whole class of music to a specific instrument. If you can swing, you can swing There are MANY bassists who have success playing relatively straight ahead gigs on electric (that describes many of my gigs in the 80's).

IMO there. It seems the ones that have the most problem with it are DB players, and I guess I can understand that.

You will either get hired as an EB player for jazz gigs or not, and that will define if EB is 'OK for jazz or not'!

Of course, at this late stage of 'relatively straight ahead jazz', it is a little tedious to discuss the issue when the 'payoff' is a $75 gig in a dump. It was much more of a serious question 25-45 years ago. For example, in the 80's, at least where I gigged in St. Louis, if you were an EB player who could read and swing a bit, the gigs were coming out of the walls. At that time, the 'straight ahead' band leaders (sax, vocals, keys, whatever, who were already mostly playing tunes that were 40+ years old back then!) where looking to freshen the sound, freshen the look, and have the ability to cover some of the pop jazz stuff that was happening then (pretty good stuff... Metheny, Spyra Gyra, whatever). So, pure straight ahead DB players were really out of luck.

Now, I guess, with straight ahead jazz being a niche of a niche of a niche, there has been a resurgence of 'going back to the tradition', both in tone and look. I can respect that, but I rarely bother to go see it!

Kind of like discussion 'how many angels can dance on the head of a pin'.... complex but not very relevant question (at least where having a career and making a living comes into play).

IMO.... based on my experiences through the years.

MANY have success on electric doing straight ahead gigs? at what level? out of all that stuff that adam posted, i only thought the clip of ronan guilfoyle sounded any good.

[KJung]

Originally Posted by narud

MANY have success on electric doing straight ahead gigs? at what level? out of all that stuff that adam posted, i only thought the clip of ronan guilfoyle sounded any good.

Of course, liking what one likes is totally cool. The level I'm talking about is at the 'full time, making a living playing bass level'. Of course, there are very few EB or DB players doing that now playing jazz in general, period (hence, my comment that basically this is like a discussion of various buggy whip designs).

However, in the somewhat recent past (70's and 80's) there was a TON of work for EB players who could swing, playing jazz gigs 6 night a week. I, and a lot of players in my freelance circle, did that very successfully.

[Bernie Connors]

Great article and thread.

Guys like Mike Pope, Anthony Jackson and Tom Kennedy come to mind right away when I think of electric players that can swing like all get out.

I don't feel that anything is lost in translation. DB and electric have a different feel, as Adam so astutely wrote, and they both bring positives to the tune.

Michel Camilo had Anthony Jackson as a part of his bands for a long time and he now uses DB pretty much exclusively in Charles Flores. Not sure why he changed on that but I don't feel his music now has any more feeling or swings any harder than it did with AJ. In fact, I liked the music being made when AJ was around more than I do now.

DB and electric both have a place in Jazz and to dismiss either of them is being very narrow-minded, IMO.