Doing what Jaco did (but not what Jaco did)

As I play more I find myself being increasingly pulled into the vortex of Jaco, but not for the reason I originally thought I would be. There's always talk about "The Jaco sound" and "playing like Jaco," and while I can understand that, it's never been very gratifying. I like my sound and playing like me. Yet I keep thinking about his playing, even though I have no interest in playing like him, and I was trying to figure out why.

I play often with my wife who's musical aesthetic is very modern folk/singer-songwriter. In fact, when I first met her so long ago I thought she reminded me of early Joni Mitchell. Like all (well, most) bass players, I want to fade into the background and just support her music--fill it out, so to speak. The interesting thing about this is she's not the best guitar player, and doesn't care to be. She plays guitar only well enough to have something to sing by. This means she often leans on me to play lead lines or fill in finger picking parts. For a while I had a huge pedal board to support this, to try to effectively play lead guitar at the same time as bass. It was less than gratifying.

Then I started thinking about different ways to accomplish this, and went back to Shadows and Light and Hejira trying to figure it out. Jaco supported Joni so well, while almost sounding lead like-but not being lead. For a short time I thought "I guess I just have to 'play like Jaco' to do what Jaco did" but again, I want to play like me, so that was less than gratifying.

Then recently, I heard a quote from him saying that all bass players should learn the melody, and it FINALLY hit me what the REAL brilliance of Jaco was: He didn't JUST map out the chord changes in an interesting way. He brought the melody down into bass clef WHILE mapping out those chord changes. THAT'S what I want to do! I don't want to PLAY like him or SOUND like him, I want to PHILOSOPHIZE like him.

His genius was NOT playing lead, but having a bass line that filled in like a "lower lead," NOT just playing roots and fifths but still playing roots and fifths, NOT walking the bass, but still walking the bass. I suddenly realized that the reason he changed the bass was not his style or technique, but the fact that he truly brought an understanding of the melody into the bass (See also: Jamerson, I also suddenly realize). I used to think that 16th note groove was just his "shtick," but now realize in some ways it's really a functional necessity: You simply need more notes to play more melody, so he used more notes, NBD.

It's a cool realization. Both that his real genius was not technique but the philosophy, and the realization of what I'm really trying to do musically. Simply exploring more of the melody in my basslines allows me to just play the bass while almost "invisibly" filling in those lead and finger picking parts that my wife doesn't want to play. In other words, I get to do what Jaco did for Joni, but I don't have to do what Jaco did!

 

And there's yet another realization. I remember learning that Jaco studied Dotzauer, so I bought Volume 1 of the Cello studies. Playing them was less than gratifying and now I know why: I was playing them thinking that the point of studying them was to learn technique, like old-school etudes of other instruments I've studied. But you saying that makes me realize that the real value in studying Dotzauer, or any classical music, is to build a melodic vocabulary, not just a technical proficiency. That's a TOTALLY different feeling.