Good advice from a brilliant player

[LBS-bass]

I think that's good advice, and I think it's important for bassists to use their ears to figure out how to best serve any song.

The bass often plays a role that's like laying a bridge between the rhythmic elements and the melodic elements. You can't be the best bridge if you're only paying attention to one of those things. I do think that in most applications there's an order of priority.

An inexperienced player can do a fairly competent job in a lot of genres by just doing root-5, if they're rhythmically solid in the pocket. But you will make things really sing if you play in the pocket and also take your melodic cues when they present themselves. Being able to that might be the icing on the cake that sets the really good players apart from the average.

 

[Carl Hillman]

"good players beat great players"

He's talking about serving the music before ego, and yes, it *should* be every musician's goal. But, sometimes the music requires virtuosity. It just depends on what music you are playing, and who you are playing it with.

 

[Deleted member 165050]

I have been away from TB for a while due to lack of motivation due to the pandemic, and the shutdown of live music.
This morning I was talking to one of my favorite bass player friends- Terry Wilkins (Rough Trade, Big Sugar, Dr. John, Levon Helm etc, etc) and he said something I thought was worth sharing.
"The bass is truly such a weird instrument. The longer I play, the less I want to be a great bass player. Good bass players beat great bass players in the trenches. I was never much into chops from both an aesthetic or physical point of view and I always liked the 'creative song player' approach. It was with Rough Trade that I totally formalized my relationship with the vocal and the bass. Though they are separated by a lot of other things it is the first line I draw in the song (and not the kick). Like I am a weighty mobile attached by a string to the melody and hanging below it. The position and weight of the bass note would make it always feel like it is being prodded by the melody. I am pretty much always looking for the fattest simplest and most creative approach. I am starting to get the hang of it."
Food for thought from a veteran of the trenches.

It's maybe a clichė, but for the relationship between vocal and bass there is nothing to beat Peggy Lee's Fever. That ultra-sparse arrangement shows up the rhythmic and melodic interplay between melody and supporting bass line and drums like nothing else.

 

[EatS1stBassist]

It's maybe a clichė, but for the relationship between vocal and bass there is nothing to beat Peggy Lee's Fever. That ultra-sparse arrangement shows up the rhythmic and melodic interplay between melody and supporting bass line and drums like nothing else.

OMG YES!!

 

[Killing Floor]

It's maybe a clichė, but for the relationship between vocal and bass there is nothing to beat Peggy Lee's Fever. That ultra-sparse arrangement shows up the rhythmic and melodic interplay between melody and supporting bass line and drums like nothing else.

Spot on. And what a song, what a voice. Great use of space.

 

[red_rhino]

"good players beat great players"

He's talking about serving the music before ego, and yes, it *should* be every musician's goal. But, sometimes the music requires virtuosity. It just depends on what music you are playing, and who you are playing it with.

Well-stated. It's all important; feel, groove, and ability. Some things require an extra degree of technical proficiency, some don't. Chops aren't necessarily bad. It's important to know what to do, and when to do it (and when not to do it). In that regard, bass is just like any other instrument.

 

[Dr. Cheese]

I think I know what the OP’s friend was talking about. This evening, I spent a few hours on a new song for church. It is a pretty song and the soloist sang it well. I came up with a part higher up the neck than I usually play that was a bit melodic. I really wanted to keep that feel so I practiced to the original recording to make sure I had the right changes and to map out my hand positions needed for the different sections. In the past, I might played the song twice and just winged it at service. Getting better is about the attitude of wanting to nail your part so you can actually do your best instead of mailing it in.

 

[smeet]

The quote in the OP does NOT resonate with me. It’s the same old cliche about no money above the 5th fret or whatever an idiot guitarist with too much ego might say. It’s no different than “don’t act too smart dear, men don’t like that. Just be pretty and laugh at his jokes”. I like smart women and I like bassists who can tear it up. For both groups, I prefer those with enough self esteem that they don’t need to show off. But if you have something relevant to say, SAY IT.

 

[JTE]

He didn't say to ignore kick, he said it's not the starting point. The melody is the starting point. There's a lot of music where the key is NOT the kick. People don't go around humming the drum part of "What's Going On".

Our job is two-fold- to define the harmony and to connect the purely rhythmic part of music to the melodic and harmonic parts. To eschew one in favor of the other is a disservice to our role.

Jack Bruce said "Just because the bass has a traditional role to fulfill, that does not mean one has to fulfill it in the traditional manner."

 

[Hammerfield]

"..."Young players ask me, “How do you think of all those things to play?’ And this is one of my lessons that I repeat over and over again: The song will tell you what to play if you listen. You get your ideas from either the melody or the vocal phrasing gives you rhythmic ideas.”
Joe Osborn

 

[el murdoque]

I have been away from TB for a while due to lack of motivation due to the pandemic, and the shutdown of live music.
This morning I was talking to one of my favorite bass player friends- Terry Wilkins (Rough Trade, Big Sugar, Dr. John, Levon Helm etc, etc) and he said something I thought was worth sharing.
"The bass is truly such a weird instrument. The longer I play, the less I want to be a great bass player. Good bass players beat great bass players in the trenches. I was never much into chops from both an aesthetic or physical point of view and I always liked the 'creative song player' approach. It was with Rough Trade that I totally formalized my relationship with the vocal and the bass. Though they are separated by a lot of other things it is the first line I draw in the song (and not the kick). Like I am a weighty mobile attached by a string to the melody and hanging below it. The position and weight of the bass note would make it always feel like it is being prodded by the melody. I am pretty much always looking for the fattest simplest and most creative approach. I am starting to get the hang of it."
Food for thought from a veteran of the trenches.

IMHO it always carries more weight when you have the chops and decide not to use them (because it's better for the song) than to not have the chops and doing the best within your abilities (even when playing the exact same thing).
You know, like when someone tells you his Squier is such a phenomenal instrument that it mops the floor with the MIA Fender equivalent. You go like 'sure it does' and think whatever. When that person continues with 'I have three MIA Fenders at home, a '68, a Custom Shop and a 2002 but all I play is that Squier' you're suddenly interested a lot more.

 

[TomB]

Listen to J.S.Bach some time. ...or Beethoven.

 

[glocke1]

I have been away from TB for a while due to lack of motivation due to the pandemic, and the shutdown of live music.
This morning I was talking to one of my favorite bass player friends- Terry Wilkins (Rough Trade, Big Sugar, Dr. John, Levon Helm etc, etc) and he said something I thought was worth sharing.
"The bass is truly such a weird instrument. The longer I play, the less I want to be a great bass player. Good bass players beat great bass players in the trenches. I was never much into chops from both an aesthetic or physical point of view and I always liked the 'creative song player' approach. It was with Rough Trade that I totally formalized my relationship with the vocal and the bass. Though they are separated by a lot of other things it is the first line I draw in the song (and not the kick). Like I am a weighty mobile attached by a string to the melody and hanging below it. The position and weight of the bass note would make it always feel like it is being prodded by the melody. I am pretty much always looking for the fattest simplest and most creative approach. I am starting to get the hang of it."
Food for thought from a veteran of the trenches.

Its always been the bass players that play in a more functional and melodic manner that moved me. The chops players just honestly never resonated much with me.

I've been playing off and on since roughly the late 80s and really it wasn't until maybe a decade or so ago that I finally "got" Jaco, and that was largely more of a result of some YouTube videos of him playing with Pat Metheny and Joni Mitchell.

Stanley and Victor ? Still don't really get, they are great players but I can't listen to more than a few minutes of either of them before I have to turn it off. Interesting enough, I can listen to Marcus for long periods of time his stuff just sounds so much more musical to me for whatever reason..

 

[DirtDog]

He doesn't stray from the kick in this tune at all and sticks right to the root so it's actually the opposite of what he described above at least to me.

Yeah, there is that. But maybe the kick is following the bass?

 

[OptimalOptimus]

Sounds to me like another cliché pontifical thing. There is no magical recipe for playing bass.
I also think that this kind of cliché just hurt bass playing in general by accepting the dumbing down of our contributions. This kind of view is so not Rock n Roll ... rock music was created on the idea of ditching conventions and do what you want and here we are with formulaic rock music.
I guess this kind of pontifical thinking may be good for cover band or studio guys ... if you are in an original band be as creative as you want.

 

[Dr. Cheese]

Listen to J.S.Bach some time. ...or Beethoven.

Apples and oranges, composers create a song from the ground up. A sideman or woman has to fit a part into an existing piece of music.

 

[rashrader]

Wait.... There are different kinds of Bass Players with different approaches to playing? And, even more astonishingly, players can find their own unique voice and approach to the instrument? Get out.... That's just crazy. And, wait.... Lol. Nevermind.

 

[HolmeBass]

This is very interesting and somewhat validating. First off, I have never been a proponent of following around the kick drum like I was a lost puppy. I prefer to let off of the drummer’s subdivision of the beat, but if the bass and kick are to play together, I like to explicitly frame out “the part” - a more minimal must-have set of rhythmic elements - and then both of us improvise our parts within that framework.

In the past few years, I’ve started noticing that the bass lines I have written for original songs that I am most proud of actually take their primary rhythmic queues from the vocal melodies. It’s never been intentional on my part, either, these were all lines I came up with while learning, practicing, or rehearsing the new songs, and that I felt worked well.

It has been only on later consideration that I realized they were anchored rhythmically, for the most part, to the vocal melody in a contrapuntal way. Not necessarily moving in lock-step with the vocal melody, but always in a way that highlights the rhythmic motion of the vocal melody.

Of course there is another huge pile of tunes that instead feature a bass ostinato, either alone or in unison with one or more other parts. Those are a different beast in my mind, even if the ostinato moves with the changing chords.

 

[Stevorebob]

The TalkBass irony between follow the drummer and fire the drummer amuses me. A contributor so freely dispensed occupies a role demanding our unwavering devotion? Whatever. Sometimes those beats maybe ought to work with the melody.

Paula, thanks for sharing this refreshing take.

 

[stratovani]

Maybe that's why I admire bass players that just serve the song, like Ron Blair, Pino Palladino, and Duck Dunn, rather than the flashier Jaco types.