Possibly because he played with 3 fingers...
His biography and every video I've watched says he played with two.
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2--finger shredding?
- Thread starter kevin nowhow
- Start date
His biography and every video I've watched says he played with two.
Well this vid (from Cliff 'Em All) fairly clearly shows him using 3.
Cliff Burton - Bass Solo - Anesthesia (Pulling Teeth) - YouTube
But it can be really hard watching him cause his right hand is so freaking insane, sometimes he plays with 3, sometimes 2, sometimes 4, and other times 1.
Nope, I play plenty fast myself, I'm a fanatic about building my technique etc and can do all that crap that's in this thread, but I've honestly never found myself in a situation where I've had to play that fast (16ths@ 200BPM) or have heard someone apply that type of speed during a bass solo and make it mean anything.
It's no feat to play that fast, playing fast and making it expressive or mean something is much more impressive, to me anyways.
From my perspective being able to play meaningful phrases using swung 1/8 notes at 240 BMP is much impressive.
Besides I wasn't trolling, just making an observation. Chill out buddy no one's attacking you
I'll take being able to play like this over being able to play 16ths at 300 BPM any day of the week:
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It's what I'm striving for.
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It's what I'm striving for.
Now that's what I'm talking about!!! 
He grooves, he plays musically, as fast as he needs to, and with amazing tone.
And if you want speed, show me somebody who can do this part with two fingers:
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He grooves, he plays musically, as fast as he needs to, and with amazing tone.
And if you want speed, show me somebody who can do this part with two fingers:
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Bass solo above starting at 0:40
I don't see how this twiddling is any more or less expressive than this twiddling.
Metallica - [Anesthesia] Pulling Teeth (Kill 'Em All) - YouTube
Or this:
Speed metal kills bass solo - YouTube
Why is it that speed can't, or has great difficulty, being musical and expressive?
(Really this is an actual question, I would like a reasonable explanation why speed is not considered musical)
Can you take a muscially slow piece, speed it up x4, without changing pitch, and it suddenly becomes not musical?
My brain moves much faster than it does slow. I don't feel the musical expression in a slow series of notes with arbitrary silence at random places. I get bored with it.
Headbanging to eighth notes at 120bpm just looks like you are nodding off to sleep.
Now that's what I'm talking about!!!
He grooves, he plays musically, as fast as he needs to, and with amazing tone.
And if you want speed, show me somebody who can do this part with two fingers:
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That's probably one of my favorite solo's that he's played.
I'm still working on his right hand technique, I've pretty well integrated it into my playing, except I've noticed that occasionally I'll slip back to two when I'm playing something completely brand new during a live performance.
I don't get it. His phrasing sounds like garbage.
He plays some - then he stops - then he plays some - then he stops - then he plays for a long time - then he stops then everyone else plays.
Explain his phrasing to me. I want to understand. Why is what he does better, or more impressive, or more expressive than what those other two guys do?
I'll do it for Anesthesia:
Listen to Cliff's phrasing, and thats not all Ill say on that. He goes from part to part, phrase to phrase, balls to the wall, without having to stop and think about what he's doing. He doesn't let silence stop the flow of sound. There is action and spirit and movement flowing naturally and without hesitation from everything Cliff does in that track.
Cliff is playing bass. He is not playing bass, standing around for a while with a bass hanging from his neck, then playing bass some more. There is not a moment where time is wasted. There is not a moment that one part does not mesh with another. There is not a moment that you have time to breath.
It is emotional, expressive, liberating, and badass. The natural course of emotion is flowing. When a person you love dies, you are mad, then you are frightened then sad, then mad again, and on and on. You are not mad. Then nothing. Then sad. Then nothing. It is a flowing and morphing singular event and it is not bits and parts separated from each other.
If space and silence is what makes music expressive and wonderful, then why isnt John Cages 433 the best selling single of all time?
Technically this is elementary. Musically I find it pretty empty too but obviously that's just my opinion. The guitar-fuzz-wah tone is fun, but that's about it. I'm not a very fast player, and I could pretty much duplicate that with almost no practice.
That is just finger-wiggling. A deaf person with fast fingers could do that.
Speed is not musical OR unmusical. It's just a technique that can be used musically or not. Take a different technical detail, for instance playing high up on the neck. Is it musical? Well, it depends how it's used, just like speed or any other technique.
To take the Gary Willis example, he plays fast when he needs to play fast in order to make a musical statement.
I think the main reason that speed is considered unmusical is that when most people play fast, they are at the limit of their ability, so they can't pay attention to being musical. If your mind doesn't move faster than your fingers, it ends up just being a technical exercise. Any technique used inappropriately is unmusical.
The Johns don't seem to have a problem being fast and musical:
Dream Theater - Panic Attack + Lyrics - YouTube
nor does Joe:
Joe Satriani - Midnight - YouTube
Alexi:
Alexi Laiho solo's Master of Guitar - YouTube
Or any of these guys:
Stanley Clarke - Flea - Billy Sheehan - Stu Hamm - Marcus Miller - Stewart Copeland - Jam - YouTube
Or this guy?
A bass serves several goals. Some styles cannot just be compared.
The bass can be melodic: it is expressive, it speaks, it tells a story. Playing that way is the challenge of the right attack, the right sustain, playing staccato, legato, jumping from string to string, mixing some chords in and doing some harmonics. Mostly this has nothing to do with sheer speed.
The Rhythm section: following the drummer, mainly using roots and fifths, beating the crap out of the strings. Depending on style this can go pretty fast.
My son asked me to play along with a melodic metal song with a beat of 185. I've to play triplets, four minutes long. This is kind of twelfth. I can do this pretty well with two fingers.
The bass can be melodic: it is expressive, it speaks, it tells a story. Playing that way is the challenge of the right attack, the right sustain, playing staccato, legato, jumping from string to string, mixing some chords in and doing some harmonics. Mostly this has nothing to do with sheer speed.
The Rhythm section: following the drummer, mainly using roots and fifths, beating the crap out of the strings. Depending on style this can go pretty fast.
My son asked me to play along with a melodic metal song with a beat of 185. I've to play triplets, four minutes long. This is kind of twelfth. I can do this pretty well with two fingers.
Unless someone would like to explain, I'm just sensing some emperor's new clothes business going on here. Gary is probably the better all around player, but I certainly preferred Cliff to his performance. It simply doesn't captivate me in any way. It just sounded like Gary would lay down little unsorted pockets of solos without any cohesion or direction, rest for a few beats, and do it again. Granted it WAS likely improvised, but it is what it is. Cliff's solo/song is very well organized. It begins with laying down a few chords, then moves into a very haunting set of arpeggios doing a great job of building up tension and resolving it with major chords, heads into some shredding, and then finally hits it hard home with some balls-out shredding with Lars. I'm not exactly sure why anyone would put Gary's solo over it. Not that it was a bad solo.
Like I said, really, really pay attention to Gary Willis's phrases and the musical statements he makes with them. Think call and response and you'll begin to gain a better understanding of what makes that a great solo and how all those "unsorted pockets, relate to each other. I wasn't able to get past his chops and appreciate his phrasing until I did ALOT of maturing as a player. All his solos are improvised btw.
Here's one of my favorites: Gary Willis - Say Never ( High Quality ) - YouTube
IMO a solo that isn't improvised is just an arrangement. It's not a solo anymore. All the originality and musical expression that goes with a solo is stripped out once you start pre-writing things.
It's like painting the mona lisa 800 times and calling the 10th or the 799th an original piece of art.
Seems like i kickstarted a debate here 
Truth is i've been playing with a pick all the time while using my middle finger for the occasional pop with my band.Recently i started utilizing slap riffs on a song that, at some point, goes into Thrash territory.Since i won't have the time to convert to plectrum in the mid of the song, i started practicing on 2 & 3 finger techniques & see how that goes.
In case i stick to these(& not the tip/fingernail approach which icecycle66 suggested-really eye opening i must admit!) i have one more questiono i still rest my fingers on the previous string as i normally do during slower passages?
Truth is i've been playing with a pick all the time while using my middle finger for the occasional pop with my band.Recently i started utilizing slap riffs on a song that, at some point, goes into Thrash territory.Since i won't have the time to convert to plectrum in the mid of the song, i started practicing on 2 & 3 finger techniques & see how that goes.
In case i stick to these(& not the tip/fingernail approach which icecycle66 suggested-really eye opening i must admit!) i have one more question
o i still rest my fingers on the previous string as i normally do during slower passages?
If it's really fast, I rest the thumb on the pickup, touching the string lower in pitch than the one I'm playing. The rest of the muting is for vacant left hand fingers. I have to admit that my technique is a little chaotic sometimes, but it works.
