Well first I am very impressed by such a talented young group. Stick with it. One of these days I expect to see your name in Downbeat.
The critique I have is minor and it might be totally unfounded because I can't hear what your acoustic (not amplified) tone is really like. I figure you're are posting here because you want feedback. That said this is what it
looks like from the videos.
I have been working lately on using gravity and arm weight to get as much acoustic tone out of the bass as possible. Not muscles. Rufus calls it the 'chicken wing'. It was hard to tell from the videos what your tone was like. I could see that much of the force behind your pizz was coming from the muscles in your fingers, hand, and maybe a little forearm. This works. No question. But it will cause your arm to fatigue faster on long gigs and make your acoustic tone a little wimpy IMO. The second part of this is using that arm motion as part of your time keeping engine. I am a big opponent of keeping time by tapping your foot. Rather I think it should be in your whole body. By that the action of pulling the string is a whole body motion.
I was playing a gig a few weeks ago and a friend of one of the guys sat in on bass. He was a really good player. After I got back on stage the first thing the leader said to me was "Man, it was much harder to hear that guy, did he turn down". I pulled the string and nothing had changed. He just didn't produce as much acoustic tone as me.
Rufus describes all of this much better than I ever could (at about 10 minutes into part 1). Just keep in mind that the bass is an acoustic instrument. Amps are necessary in many situations. They should never replace getting a good solid tone out of your bass though.
Keep it up though. I wish I was half as good as you at your age.
