Do "Pro-Bassists" Ever Mess Up?

[BAG]

I remember seeing Phil Collins on one of the Live Aid concerts drop a bit of a clanger on piano.



It's funny but my memory was that he hit more than one clanger but having viewed it for the first time since 1985 there appears to only be the one mistake.

 

[Bob_Ross]

I was just watching a youtube video of one of the Chick Corea Elektrik Band 2016 reunion shows last night, and there was this one moment during one of those insane ensemble unison passages of blistering syncopated 32nd notes where John Pattitucci sort of flubbed a note or two. Sort of...

It was a relief to learn that these guys are indeed human.

 

[njones89]

We owe a lot of creativity and skill to the discovery of our own mistakes.

 

[pmcd]

My favorite example is this video of Marcus Miller playing with Herbie Hancock. They are playing Cantaloupe Island, and at about 2:11 in Marcus accidentally cuts out the last 4 bars of the form and goes straight to the Db at the top of the form. Herbie does his best to cover up. The next shot of Vinnie on drums he is kind of glaring in Marcus' direction.

 

[Jim Kuzman]

" If you hit a wrong note, it's the next note you play that determines if it's good or bad"
- Miles Davis

Amen and amen. I am not a professional bass player but I've played piano professionally for 30 years. We're human and we goof now and then despite skill and practice. It happens. How you react to it and your ability to instantaneously recover from it is what matters and one of the things that defines a "real" pro. If you do it right, the listener doesn't notice and gets to stay in the moment instead of being yanked out of it; when you're playing live, that's a big part of your responsibility - not doing anything to break the magic.

 

[interp]

Agreed. Back in the day there were hundreds or thousands of nightclub gigs around - many were 4 nights a week, 4 sets a night, weeks on end. Load in once, go home with your axe each night, meet and jam or add material during the afternoons, finally load out at the end of the run. So much playing, churning it out night after night, couldn't make a mistake if you tried. Mostly ancient history, vast majority of today's players probably cannot even imagine the scene as it was. Looking back it seems like a dream. There were clubs everywhere...

I had a gig like this back in the 80s--4 sets a night, 5 nights a week, for two years. During that time I think we had two rehearsals. Every Saturday night the BL would hand us cassettes with 4-5 new tunes that we were expected to be ready to play the next week. Come Tuesday we'd play the new songs--not great but not bad. Wednesday night they were much tighter, and by Thursday night we had them down cold. After a few months of this we had such an extensive repertoire that we could play a completely different song list every night of the week.

Mistakes became an extreme rarity.

 

[interp]

My favorite example is this video of Marcus Miller playing with Herbie Hancock. They are playing Cantaloupe Island, and at about 2:11 in Marcus accidentally cuts out the last 4 bars of the form and goes straight to the Db at the top of the form. Herbie does his best to cover up. The next shot of Vinnie on drums he is kind of glaring in Marcus' direction.

Not to compare myself to Marcus but I have a tendency to do that same thing on that tune.