Yeah, right. "There's something unique and beautiful about seventeen people swinging hard together," yeah that's great, but that's not what I'm talking about. Every player in the band gets to have that. We bassists get to have that and something else which is entirely separate.
There is nothing I've encountered in music which is quite like deconstructing a big band bass chart live and in the moment. So many big band bass charts are written bass-ackward. If there's a long notated passage there's a high likelihood that the composer/arranger doesn't really care about making all those particular notes (except when s/he does). Conversely, when there's changes there's often a good chance that the c/a had some particular things in mind, at least sometimes, and just didn't care to clue us in about it. So you're sight reading, listening to the band, listening to the rhythm section and always thinking about what underlies the notated chart and how you can find the best music for that moment in spite of much of what is written in front of you.
I love that. The listening and filtering is part of jazz playing always. The "decoding" though, you don't get that particular experience anywhere else.
+ + +
In case you can't tell, I just joined a real good big band. The charts have much less malarkey than the traditional "Tuxedo Junction" book but there's still plenty of opportunity for this peculiar brand of joy.
You?
There is nothing I've encountered in music which is quite like deconstructing a big band bass chart live and in the moment. So many big band bass charts are written bass-ackward. If there's a long notated passage there's a high likelihood that the composer/arranger doesn't really care about making all those particular notes (except when s/he does). Conversely, when there's changes there's often a good chance that the c/a had some particular things in mind, at least sometimes, and just didn't care to clue us in about it. So you're sight reading, listening to the band, listening to the rhythm section and always thinking about what underlies the notated chart and how you can find the best music for that moment in spite of much of what is written in front of you.
I love that. The listening and filtering is part of jazz playing always. The "decoding" though, you don't get that particular experience anywhere else.
+ + +
In case you can't tell, I just joined a real good big band. The charts have much less malarkey than the traditional "Tuxedo Junction" book but there's still plenty of opportunity for this peculiar brand of joy.
You?
! 
