Is being a good bass player a dying art?

[powderfinger]

Originally Posted by ForSix

Hell, being a musician is a dying art.

Hardly anyone today can come close to how good the average musician was in the 50s.

Well, today's apiring "musicians" have a lot less time on their hands to practice their craft than the guys in the 50s. You see, guys in the 50s didn't have to worry about the important stuff like... Facebooking, Tweeting, Angry Birds, Guitar Hero, Iphones, Ipads, et al.

[Kenzy]

Originally Posted by powderfinger

Well, today's apiring "musicians" have a lot less time on their hands to practice their craft than the guys in the 50s. You see, guys in the 50s didn't have to worry about the important stuff like... Facebooking, Tweeting, Angry Birds, Guitar Hero, Iphones, Ipads, et al.

+1000

[bass12]

Originally Posted by Clef_de_fa

I've been really serious about music, I even went to college just to learn a lot more stuff about music.

I play bass and DB, I know in an ensemble you will more likely be at the end of the spectrum but still, bass is like any instrument and it isn't tied to a role ... people give it a role ... You could play a bass line with a trompet and it will fulfill the same need within the music.

You could play the theme of Autumn Leaves on drum, the bass will do the chords and the trumpet will do the walking ... you know ... it is the people who limit themselves and put the bass in a small box and never let it go outside.

Well, you could say the same thing about any aspect of music, and you'll always have people "thwarting the rules" and pushing boundaries. The thing is, most people don't want to listen to such exploits. You're free to play your bass like a bagpipe (figuratively speaking, of course) if that's what makes you happy, but don't expect to get hired for it.

[bass12]

Originally Posted by powderfinger

Well, today's apiring "musicians" have a lot less time on their hands to practice their craft than the guys in the 50s. You see, guys in the 50s didn't have to worry about the important stuff like... Facebooking, Tweeting, Angry Birds, Guitar Hero, Iphones, Ipads, et al.

Ha!

[powderfinger]

You know what the problem really is?

Lack of musicianship in mainstream music. We all know there's plenty of great music still being made, but its harder to find.

When I was young, I would turn on the radio or MTV, and I was inspired to be like "those guys". "Those guys", of course being Nirvana, Pearl Jam, REM, Soundgarden, Dinosaur, Jr.m etc.

My parents generation were inspired by bands on the AM radio and Ed Sullivan, Smothers Bros, et al. Beatles, Stones, Who, Doors, et al.

There is no one for young people in the mainstream to really be "inspired" by anymore. IMO.

I mean its harder to be inspired by an indie band on MySpace. Just the facts. Sadly.

[lnichols]

Originally Posted by Musiclogic

Too many bass players want to be Vic Wooten or Stu Hamm. They want to be out front and play over everything. It's very limited, the amount of players that can sit in the pocket and hold down the bottom end without going off into thousand note world. You see it here on TB in "look at my band" clips constantly. Everyone wants to be a soloist and nobody knows how to be a sideman anymore. It's more poor technique mixed with excessive ego around here. I find it humorous, also part of the reason local music venues have become sparse over the past 20 years, crap musicians can't pull a crowd.

I don't think things have changed all that much since the late '60s & early '70s when I started playing bass. People then and now, wanted to play lead everything (guitar, bass, drums, keyboards, etc.). Bass players like Paul McCartney, James Jamerson, Jack Bruce and John Entwhistle could tastefully play a lot of notes that worked well in the song and didn't lose the groove. Too many aspiring bassists only heard a lot of notes, and not the song.

When the song is the most important thing and the players understand the groove, less can be more. A lot more.

Leni

[Salamenster]

Originally Posted by WokenDeer

As far as spotlight goes. The guitarist can have it. I do like the kind of playing that when someone does actually listen to what your doing they go "wow". Like what has been said. It's about balance. Being good and original but still holding it down for the band. And if you can play cool rhythms and fills and still be a foundation. That's the ticket. John Paul jones anyone?

Totally agreeing. I'm a 'switch hitter', because I couldn't stand the spotlight. Got me all depressed and stuff afterwards, sometimes.

Now, I'm at the side. I like it there. WHEN people are noticing what I do, they should feel like 'Wow!', but it's not my job to MAKE them notice me.

[Kenzy]

Originally Posted by powderfinger

There is no one for young people in the mainstream to really be "inspired" by anymore. IMO.

I mean its harder to be inspired by an indie band on MySpace. Just the facts. Sadly.

I didn't really think of it from this angle, but this is a great point. Today's music doesn't really facilitate the stimulation of an aspiring musician to go beyond a basic grasp of the writing process. Growing up today doesn't provide very many instrumentally technical players to look up to, while for previous generations there was no shortage of virtuoso players in the mainstream media. This generation is more fixated on the vocals while instrumental ability has taken a backseat.

[jungleheat]

Being a good musician in general is a dying art. There's no more filter between bedroom musicians hacking out a few chords and the general public. It's a vicious cycle, the talent pool becomes diluted, the public comes to accept this, and then the talent pool becomes even more diluted.

It used to be that small local bands would have to get club owners to hire them (live audition, demo tape, word of mouth, etc...). Then the better bands would move on to bigger and bigger venues around the region until eventually they'd get signed by a label. At this point they would go into a professional studio with hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of gear, with a professional engineer and an experienced producer, and make an album, playing their real instruments (ie not sequenced) to tape, where anything other than minimal editing was a time consuming (and thus expensive when you're spending $60-100 or more on JUST the room) and laborious task. SO if you couldn't play the part within a reasonable amount of takes, it just didn't happen.

That barrier to entry kept the quality generally much higher. Even sucky bands back in the 70s and 80s had dudes that could actually PLAY, they just usually had garbage material.

Now you can spend a couple hundred bucks and put out a whole album by yourself in your bedroom. And yeah, the sound quality will suck and the music will probably suck too, but you'll get "plays" because people will listen to it at least once just because it's "there". But in the end it just adds to the "noise". There's so much NOISE out there, it's damn near impossible to actually find great bands any more. Partly because there are less of them, and partly because they never make it out of the unwashed huddled masses that are all doing the same thing.

[powderfinger]

Originally Posted by Kenzy

. This generation is more fixated on the vocals while instrumental ability has taken a backseat.

And even singing your vocals without autotune and different computerized effects is become a dying art.

Can you imagine had Jeff Beck or Jaco had come up in 2012 instead of the 40s and 50s? Beck might have put autotune on his guitar, and made it sing Party in the USA by Miley Cyrus. Jaco may have just become a singer, and did duets with Ke$ha. Or Jaco Gangam Style.

[jive1]

Originally Posted by jungleheat

Being a good musician in general is a dying art. There's no more filter between bedroom musicians hacking out a few chords and the general public. It's a vicious cycle, the talent pool becomes diluted, the public comes to accept this, and then the talent pool becomes even more diluted.

Here's a little perspective.

Prior to the Rock and Roll era of the 50s and 60s, pretty much every performing musician knew how to read music. It was a part of your general education, even if you weren't a musician. 3 chords tunes outside of Folk music like Bluegrass or Blues weren't popular. Take a look at the popular songs of the 40s. Stuff by Duke Ellington, Tommy Dorsey, Glenn Miller, etc. were popular. These songs were harmonically, melodically, and rhythmically more complex the Rock N Roll of the 50s and 60s. Even a kid's song like Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer had more changes than something done by Elvis. Just take a look at a chart from a popular 40s tune vs a 60s tune, and it's pretty apparent.

Also, amplification changed the game. The volume and sonic space that was once created by a big band was now created by a single distorted guitar. Lots of horn players lost jobs, since you didn't need a row of horns to create the volume that one can with a microphone. Lots of songs just didn't need strings, brass, winds, tuned percussion, etc. like they used to. An upright bass playing the I and V, a drum hitting the snare on 2 and 4, and a guitar playing 3 chords loudly was all that was needed to play Rock N Roll. You couldn't say that about he popular music from a decade ago where you had a large band to pull the material off.

I'm sure some of the stuff you guys are saying today, are the same things musicians said when Elvis and the Beatles came out.

[Marial]

And there you have it.

[powderfinger]

Originally Posted by jive1

I'm sure some of the stuff you guys are saying today, are the same things musicians said when Elvis and the Beatles came out.

I have to disagree...

Didnt Sinatra say that Something by the Beatles was his favorite Lennon/McCartney song?

Seriously tho, didnt Paul McCartney go onto win a Gershwin Award? I doubt Kesha or the Gangham style dude ever will.

[jive1]

Originally Posted by powderfinger

I have to disagree...

Didnt Sinatra say that Something by the Beatles was his favorite Lennon/McCartney song?

That's one musician compared to the many that thought music was coming to an end when the Beatles were on Ed Sullivan.

Seriously tho, didnt Paul McCartney go onto win a Gershwin Award? I doubt Kesha or the Gangham style dude ever will.

That was long into his career. I doubt anyone would think he would someday win that award with "Twist and Shout".
There were tons of people who said the same thing about Elvis and the Beatles, including the head of Decca Records who said that the Beatles have no future in Pop music.

[abngourmet]

What I've noticed is that a lot of younger players want to do the "flashy stuff," e.g., slap/pop/tap/sweep, etc., and ignore the fundamentals. I don't know how many times I've gone into a music store and heard a young guy/gal slapping/popping/tapping like there's no tomorrow. I walk in, and start doing some finger style stuff, and they're like, "wow, I didn't know you could do that with a bass!" This is not to say I'm sort of monster player - I'm not - but it tells me that they don't focus on basics and fundamentals a whole lot, at least not where I live.

The other piece, I think, is ear training as well. As a young player back in the late '70s, if one didn't read well (we didn't have tab at the time), one had to pick things up by ear. For me, that meant listening to something on a 33 1/3 turntable. It forced one to listen hard because you had to pick up the needle on the turntable to start again - there wasn't pause, etc. We had cassettes later, and that made things somewhat easier. What all this meant was that you really had to listen to the music to pick up individual notes, which in turn trained one's ear very well. As a result, to this day I am able to pick up things very, very quickly, a trait I find in few young players. Most of the time, they download the tab and go from there.

Finally, as others have noted, pop music is far different than it was years ago due to advances in musical technology. If one can simply play a simple line and then digitally modify to meet a certain requirement, less technique is needed, and more computer/digital savvy is. Remember, the young folks out there now grew up with this stuff, so it's understandable when they default to it.

My two cents.

[Passinwind]

Originally Posted by powderfinger

I have to disagree...

Didnt Sinatra say that Something by the Beatles was his favorite Lennon/McCartney song?

Pretty faint praise, given this rather famous quote:

"Rock 'n' roll smells phony and false. It is sung, played and written, for the most part, by cretinous goons. And, by means of its almost imbecilic reiteration, and sly, lewd and in plain fact, dirty lyrics ... it manages to be the martial music of every side-burned delinquent on the face of the earth."

[flam]

As a younger musician (19), it's hard, because even though I feel the same way, I know I'm part of what this is being directed at. I'm a big fan of metal (yeah, one of those guys), although I also like jazz, classical, Motown, and a few other things. That's rather unrelated though.

I feel one one the biggest problems is lack of direction. I look at all the older musicians, and try to learn from them, but everybody has a different, conflicting, way they think is right. I have no idea if it used to be that way as well, but it makes moving forward very confusing when you're literally scared of the path you choose being the "wrong" one, so you sit and stay comfortable at a mediocre skill level, not putting yourself out there so more experienced musicians can't criticize you. I don't want to be one of those guys that plays the bottom of the basics, but I don't want to over play either, and that's a hard thing to judge. That's my small (in perspective) take on it, anyway.

[Kenzy]

Originally Posted by flam

I don't want to be one of those guys that plays the bottom of the basics, but I don't want to over play either, and that's a hard thing to judge.

I disagree. I think it's very easy to judge the balance between being too basic and too flashy. You cross the line in either direction when you're either playing too flashy or too basic than what YOU feel is best for the music. Play for yourself, mate. First, and foremost, music is for the pleasure of those playing it, IMHO, so just go ahead and play however you'd like!

[Clef_de_fa]

Originally Posted by bass12

Well, you could say the same thing about any aspect of music, and you'll always have people "thwarting the rules" and pushing boundaries. The thing is, most people don't want to listen to such exploits. You're free to play your bass like a bagpipe (figuratively speaking, of course) if that's what makes you happy, but don't expect to get hired for it.

If I was looking to work in music world I would find it in the jazz fusion world or in an orchestra that would do some Schoenberg, Stravinsky, John Cage or Philip Glass.

Also after listening to John Patitucci solo work, Chick Corea, Zander Zon, Jeff Schmidt, Micheal Manring, Alain Caron and Grzegorz Kosinski. The bass can do a lot more than what people are doing with it and they just prove that the bass is only a voice and a beautiful voice at that.

I may not find a job in a cover band or do sub in a cover band but I sure will enjoy the journey of my artistic expression.

[bass12]

Originally Posted by Clef_de_fa

If I was looking to work in music world I would find it in the jazz fusion world or in an orchestra that would do some Schoenberg, Stravinsky, John Cage or Philip Glass.

Also after listening to John Patitucci solo work, Chick Corea, Zander Zon, Jeff Schmidt, Micheal Manring, Alain Caron and Grzegorz Kosinski. The bass can do a lot more than what people are doing with it and they just prove that the bass is only a voice and a beautiful voice at that.

I may not find a job in a cover band or do sub in a cover band but I sure will enjoy the journey of my artistic expression.

Legitimate enough!