You sound great, man. The Ray Brown influence comes through nicely! I wouldn't normally step forward to critique anyone's playing here - not least because folks like Paul Warburton do the rounds - but from what I hear, you and I probably aspire to similar things in our playing, so here's what I thought:
Nice tone and note choices, and a good sense of direction in your walking lines. One thing that struck me was that, despite clearly being a cool player - I liked *what* he was playing - the drummer's time felt a tiny bit lazy. For the most part it's pretty subtle, but subtle is the point. Sometimes, particularly when you're playing your Ray Brown-y drops and syncopation etc. the backbeat behind you isn't as authoratative as it could be. In that kind of situation, I think you could have been even more Ray Brown-y and kind of layed it down. Sometimes with RB I kind of think, 'If he was playing the time any bigger, it'd be too big.' Of course you don't want to overstate the time, or the dotted-ness of ghost notes or whatever, but it's worth being certain you've stated it, even when a drummer isn't quite. I think the key is that the relationship of everything except quarter or half notes to everything else (ie. the shufflyness or the dottedness) ought to stay pretty consistent. I may have even invented the term, but round here we talk about 'putting it where it lives'.
I've just listened to 'Softly', which comes together a lot more in the way I'm talking about, particularly during the trumpet solo.
Swinging at mid tempos, especially behind singers, is one of the things I most enjoy about being a bassist. Something I personally find hip is to think/hear/play a line as though the syllables of the notes are different, by which I mean (watch me make an idiot of myself now) 'Dwee doo doo d'bee baah doo doo' rather than 'Duhm duhm duhm duhm'. Then 'Duhm duhm duhm' becomes a nice effect when you want/mean it, not just when you don't. You seem to be doing this too, which is great, and maybe that's what you meant by 'articulation'? As an extension of this, you can kind of draw attention to the time with your sound, or the direction of your line. I hear you doing this too, again in a RB fashion, with open E's and A's for example.
The group sounds great though. To use two horrible words, it's very 'competent' and 'authentic' sounding! What's lacking, perhaps, is the sense of the time just *existing*. Fortunately, you sound like you've already got it in your head and in your ears. I think you could just stand to stick your neck out a bit more!
Bravo, man! I hope none of that was patronising, and also I hope it doesn't sound like I'm ragging on your drummer. I love his sound, and the content of his playing. Shades of Jeff Hamilton at times even.
. Thanks!
