Double Bass Bass and Sax Duo

[bandito]

So my friend and I have a low pressure gig. We're playing for tips at someone's 75th birthday. We usually play in a trio with drummer but he lives to far away for us to call him out without pay. I've never played live with just the two of us though. We're doing an hour set of jazz standards and a couple of tune's we've written. Most of them are short loop forms like solar, blueses and blue bossa but we'll probably read through some longer tunes like desafinado. I've been working on soloing without a drummer and keeping time more solidly. I want to know if you guys have any advice or Ideas to add interest to our set. Any links to something similar would be appreciated too.

thanks, Ari

 

[Shakin-Slim]

I've always imagined Naima sounding cool with just that type of duo. It obviously wouldn't be the greatest work out on bass, but that pedal has a great effect.

 

[iiipopes]

"Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square" Bass-vocal & break is Bass-sax by Harry Connick, Jr., of his "We Are In Love" album.

 

[onionpuzzle]

Yeah -- with a bass and sax duo YOU NEED TO BE THE RHYTHM.
Plus, a sax is not a chordal instrument, you might want to throw some chords in there.

 

[bandito]

Cool, I like those suggestions. I was thinking nardis would be pretty cool too. And yeah, time and form.

 

[Don Higdon]

What difference does it make what tunes people suggest?
I think you should play tunes you like. It's most probable that if you like the tune, you've played it enough to be familiar and at ease with it. No one wants to hear you phumphering around trying to do something you're not familiar with, no matter how great a tune it is.

 

[r.t.swing]

As a trumpet player, I love it when I can feed off interesting rhythms from the bass. Especially when the drums lay out. Personally I wouldn't want to play a whole gig like this but a few choruses on Autumn Leaves with only horn and bass for exampled are great.

 

[r.t.swing]

On a side note, it shouldn't just be your job to keep time, its everybody's. Now I just need to get my guitarist to realize this.

 

[J. Montgomery]

On a side note, it shouldn't just be your job to keep time, its everybody's. Now I just need to get my guitarist to realize this.

If only I could get my drummer to realize this . . . :scowl:

 

[Baswithone"s"]

I feel like there's actually more that the bass can do with just two instruments. There's a lot of albums that utilize this format. If I could recommend some:

Joe Henderson - The State of the Tenor (yeah, Al Foster plays drums, but Ron Carter kills it. Def. worth checking out)

Anthony Braxton featuring John Lindberg - Six Duets (1982)

Tim Berne/Michael Formanek - Ornery People

Remi Alverez/Mark Dresser - Soul To Soul

The classic Don Byas/Slam Stewart bootlegs (this one you'll have to search for, but it's all over the web)

Also on all of the Paul Chambers cd's under his name, he really strips things down from time to time, plays heads in unison, does a rubato chorus out front, tons of ideas!

 

[mdcbass]

After seeing Frank Wess and Milt Hinton play duo at a university workshop, I was inspired to do some restaurant gigs in this format. It is a lot of fun and very open but you have to play nice changes and keep it together. Here's a link to a duo recording made by Red Mitchell and Lee Konitz.



I think I'd stick to standards considering this is a 75th birthday party. Bye, Bye Blackbird etc. that peole will know.

 

[J. Montgomery]

The bass/trumpet duets with Red Mitchell & Clark Terry are unbelievably awesome. YouTube it!

 

[r.t.swing]

It was listening to Clark Terry that got me soloing with the bass only.

 

[Bass Catcher]

I highly recommend Rebecca Martin's new album - When I Was Long Ago. It's Rebecca singing, Bill McHenry on sax and Larry Grenadier on bass. Larry kills it on this record. It's a great example of just a bassist accompanying just a vocalist or sax.

Matt

 

[pcreelbass]

Also, encourage the saxophone player to be supportive while you are soloing. He can play guide tones and little riffs that outline the changes that help a ton. Since it's just duo there needs to be a lot of mutual support.

 

[mtto]

Listen to the Red Mitchell / Warne Marsh duets.

 

[John_Madere]

No one has mentioned the Ron Carter/Houston Person duet CD. Great stuff. Tenor and bass only for the whole record. You could get plenty of ideas for your gig by checking this out.

 

[bandito]

Thanks for all the input! We've rehearsed twice so far. The first went fairly bad but we both had long days before it. This morning we ran our list and it sounded great!. I'll give all of these suggestions a listen. I'll get him to play a bit durring my solos. We said we'd have about an hour set and we have about 2 45 minute sets worked out. We have two more practices lined up this week which should be more than enough. Also we're doing Blue In Green and it's hard him to find where we are in it. Is there a trick to this? On latin stuff I've been slapping the fretboard on the 2 and the 4 and anything that I walk is easy to follow but ballads are tricky. I was thinking that he should just play the arpeggios so that he can hear the changes better when we play together. What else might help us?

 

[Shakin-Slim]

Please let us know about your set lists. It would be cool to see some of the choices cheers

 

[bandito]

Ok It's all from the same fake book but,
Solar
Blue Bossa
Blue in green
Black Orpheus
The Girl From Ipanema
Tell Me a Bedtime Story
Mr Pc
All Blues
Freddie Freeloader
Nostalgia in Times Square
Song For My Father
Minority
Nardis
There Will Never Be Another you
Well You Needn't
My friend wrote a 3/4 ballad and I wrote an ubeat latin tune also. Thats not the order we're going with. We have some others we might throw in also but that's enough already.