Ambient/Post-Rock/Textural bass playing thread

[steubig]

Track 01 @ 8:30 is what my day feels like.

uh oh.

 

[steubig]

btw, i know a few people have or are interested in the hydrasynth.

i got a lot from this video. it's long, so bite-size chunks are good.

 

[lordradish]

thanks.

i never thought of wr, but i can hear a few things are probably pretty zawinul-ish. hard for folks my age to escape that, i think. that being said, even though i bought the records for a while, i sorta checked out of wr after the 8:30 live album.

thanks for listening.

That was a good time to check out of WR, although I recently started listening to some of the stuff with Victor Bailey, and there's some gems in there. Yeah, definitely had a bit of a Zawinul vibe in some of that.

 

[lordradish]

... the Live Birthday concert.)

Aw, man, that one blew the doors off of me, so much that my band played that version of Reza on there. That was a fun riff to play on fretless.

 

[ugly_bassplayer]

Aw, man, that one blew the doors off of me, so much that my band played that version of Reza on there. That was a fun riff to play on fretless.

That one also blew my @%#*# mind when I was 15.
Still a fresh memory when I popped the cd .

"I'd like to say hi to my mother....."

BOOOOOM!!!!!
Life changing.

 

[ugly_bassplayer]

more nonsense

What’s your harmonic approach when you compose?
Series of chords??
Polychords??? Superimposed tonalités?.....free???
Modal?

Help a guy out here.



RE; hydra synth.....couldn’t afford it....but will watch vids to se if a few tones in there I can sample\steal.

RE-RE: Just bought the Sonic-Lab Fundamental. Will report back once I RTFM cuz I have no idea what I’ve been doing for the past 30 mins....
But it was definitely cool.

 

[steubig]

What’s your harmonic approach when you compose?
Series of chords??
Polychords??? Superimposed tonalités?.....free???
Modal?

Help a guy out here.

it depends on what i'm doing. in general, i suppose it's tonal areas that pivot into other ones. sometimes hard cuts?

polychords on a lot of this stuff (love major and minor together). some are just stacked triads (some augmented).

some are triads or 7th chords (or other) minus a chord tone and then having some 4ths piled on top of that that create some chromatic clusters separated by an octave. i think the 4ths supply a sense of tonality in a situation that starts to mess with the tonality, ya know? gotta be a bit careful otherwise it's complete crap. i started messing with this stuff this last year based on a friend's youtube discussion of extended harmony.


(bob was actually a really good drummer who i played with in college; also played with his brother, also a good drummer.)

(in looking at this, the front end was stuff i had been doing for a good bit of time.)

also a bit of exploration of modes based on different scales (melodic minor, harmonic minor, harmonic major), whole tone, octatonic, all pivoting into each other . . . okay. that's too much blabbing.

written stuff: no free sections per se in the synth/drum programming stuff; yes in 12-string/synth stuff.

RE; hydra synth.....couldn’t afford it....but will watch vids to se if a few tones in there I can sample\steal.

RE-RE: Just bought the Sonic-Lab Fundamental. Will report back once I RTFM cuz I have no idea what I’ve been doing for the past 30 mins....
But it was definitely cool.

lemme gno. it seemed cool.

someday for the hydra. i think it's gonna be a classic.

 

[steubig]

okay, this came up elsewhere. pre-jaco wr.

alphonso johnson is just killing it. fretless (!) bass plus interesting use of effects.

(sorry if this is a bore, but damn.)

 

[lordradish]

okay, this came up elsewhere. pre-jaco wr.

alphonso johnson is just killing it. fretless (!) bass plus interesting use of effects.

(sorry if this is a bore, but damn.)

Not a bore at all. I love Johnson's playing in WR. It's awesome.

 

[steubig]

Not a bore at all. I love Johnson's playing in WR. It's awesome.

he’s the ebass guy in wr for me.

 

[ugly_bassplayer]

he’s the ebass guy in wr for me.

He’s a monster and criminally underrated.
I also really like the early albums with Miroslav Vitous, the first four WR albums are IMO among the best they have ever done.

@steubig thanks for inquiring about your harmonic approach.
I have to bust out a few old books to refresh my memory on voicing polychords and clusters.
I really liked building stuff around whole tone half tone/ half tone whole tone scales. Also diminished, very colorful.

Remember flat 9 as top note.
a good ole Db for the trumpet dude!!!


RE:
Hydra synth

 

[emjazz]

okay, this came up elsewhere. pre-jaco wr.

alphonso johnson is just killing it. fretless (!) bass plus interesting use of effects.

(sorry if this is a bore, but damn.)

To expound on my Facebook post, it was more about the band as a whole. It was far more open and free. I believe the earlier work had more influence from Wayne, where it eventually became the Zawinul show. Both great, but I prefer the earlier music and vibe.

I also prefer Alphonso e. bass wise. It still sounded like a band. Jaco was so specific and so ridiculously strong as a player and with his voice that you had to follow him. Now you have Zawinul and Jaco battling musically with Wayne's voice becoming less prominent. Still great, but that's why I prefer the bands with Miroslov and Alphonso.

 

[emjazz]

Also, if you listen to the band with Miroslav and then listen to Wayne's final Quartet, there are definite similarities...that openness and freedom throughout. The band having an equal conversation at all times. That's Wayne.

 

[arbitrary]

To expound on my Facebook post, it was more about the band as a whole. It was far more open and free. I believe the earlier work had more influence from Wayne, where it eventually became the Zawinul show. Both great, but I prefer the earlier music and vibe.

I also prefer Alphonso e. bass wise. It still sounded like a band. Jaco was so specific and so ridiculously strong as a player and with his voice that you had to follow him. Now you have Zawinul and Jaco battling musically with Wayne's voice becoming less prominent. Still great, but that's why I prefer the bands with Miroslov and Alphonso.

To expound on my Facebook post, it was more about the band as a whole. It was far more open and free. I believe the earlier work had more influence from Wayne, where it eventually became the Zawinul show. Both great, but I prefer the earlier music and vibe.

I also prefer Alphonso e. bass wise. It still sounded like a band. Jaco was so specific and so ridiculously strong as a player and with his voice that you had to follow him. Now you have Zawinul and Jaco battling musically with Wayne's voice becoming less prominent. Still great, but that's why I prefer the bands with Miroslov and Alphonso.

whats a good earlier album to check out with more of the Wayne influence. Something with Alphonso on it maybe?

 

[ugly_bassplayer]

whats a good earlier album to check out with more of the Wayne influence. Something with Alphonso on it maybe?

I'd go with self titiled with Miroslav Vitous.
Classic stuff.

My 2 cents.

 

[emjazz]

whats a good earlier album to check out with more of the Wayne influence. Something with Alphonso on it maybe?

@steubig

 

[arbitrary]

...I did just say I'm not buying any more records. Always seems to happen...

 

[lordradish]

To expound on my Facebook post, it was more about the band as a whole. It was far more open and free. I believe the earlier work had more influence from Wayne, where it eventually became the Zawinul show. Both great, but I prefer the earlier music and vibe.

I also prefer Alphonso e. bass wise. It still sounded like a band. Jaco was so specific and so ridiculously strong as a player and with his voice that you had to follow him. Now you have Zawinul and Jaco battling musically with Wayne's voice becoming less prominent. Still great, but that's why I prefer the bands with Miroslov and Alphonso.

I agree with all of this. For me, though, as much as I love Jaco (and took years to get away from that as a fretless player), I think the overall tone of the band kind of shifted towards a more smooth-jazz sound. I'll never forget the first time I heard Heavy Weather, the first WR I heard. I though, uggh, smooth jazz - what the hell is everyone so excited about with this album? I still hate Birdland, both tonally and melodically, I find it cloying and annoying. I think a lot of that really has to do with Zawinul's evolving synth choices at that point, and I think it got even worse as the band progressed in the Jaco era... I mean a lot of Mr. Gone is unlistenable to me. 8:30's a gem, because it's live and not so polished.

A lot of his poly sounds just sound super cheesy to me, kinda in the same way I don't like a lot of Bernie Worell's sounds in Parliament. Throw in that soprano sax, even if it is Wayne Shorter, and then you get that smooth jazz vibe. Too polished. The Johnson stuff sounds like JAZZ to me, raw but not too unrefined, but not overproduced and slick. That vibe in that video steubig posted, really encapsulates some of my favorite kind of music, ever, that early-mid 70's jazz thing, not so much the later slick stuff of Spyro Gyra or Fourplay or the "how many billion notes and time sig changes can we throw in here" of Mahavishnu or later era Return To Forever.

@steubig I'm exhausted. I saw that video around 1 am, right before bed. Ended up watching the whole thing. I love Zawinul's sound, so basic.... phased Rhodes and an ARP2600.

 

[steubig]

whats a good earlier album to check out with more of the Wayne influence. Something with Alphonso on it maybe?

for live stuff, the clip i posted above is really good alphonso action. the live in tokyo set is insane miroslav stuff—one high point is an arco bass solo with wah-wah pedal that is very miles davis.

studio: first alb, sing the body electric with miroslav; sweetnighter, mysterious traveler, tale spinnin’, black market with a shifting group that settles on alphonso, but ends with jaco on a few tracks.

 

[ugly_bassplayer]

@steubig

With Alphonso.
Black market (jaco on a few tracks)

I agree with all of this. For me, though, as much as I love Jaco (and took years to get away from that as a fretless player), I think the overall tone of the band kind of shifted towards a more smooth-jazz sound. I'll never forget the first time I heard Heavy Weather, the first WR I heard. I though, uggh, smooth jazz - what the hell is everyone so excited about with this album? I still hate Birdland, both tonally and melodically, I find it cloying and annoying. I think a lot of that really has to do with Zawinul's evolving synth choices at that point, and I think it got even worse as the band progressed in the Jaco era... I mean a lot of Mr. Gone is unlistenable to me. 8:30's a gem, because it's live and not so polished.

A lot of his poly sounds just sound super cheesy to me, kinda in the same way I don't like a lot of Bernie Worell's sounds in Parliament. Throw in that soprano sax, even if it is Wayne Shorter, and then you get that smooth jazz vibe. Too polished. The Johnson stuff sounds like JAZZ to me, raw but not too unrefined, but not overproduced and slick. That vibe in that video steubig posted, really encapsulates some of my favorite kind of music, ever, that early-mid 70's jazz thing, not so much the later slick stuff of Spyro Gyra or Fourplay or the "how many billion notes and time sig changes can we throw in here" of Mahavishnu or later era Return To Forever.

@steubig I'm exhausted. I saw that video around 1 am, right before bed. Ended up watching the whole thing. I love Zawinul's sound, so basic.... phased Rhodes and an ARP2600.

Mr Gone is absolutely a horrible record.