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I Feel Like A Dinosaur

#81
Brad Johnson said:
Depends. If you're having fun playing with whatever technique you use at the time...

I typically play fingerstyle these days but I play in whatever fashion I deem appropriate. That's up to me. I'm having fun more often than not and don't concern myself with how others do what they do. It's a great position to be in. Give it a try.

I wasn't going to post this... this is an idea that came to me last night so I recorded a scratch take to my cellphone so I'd remember it, warts and all. It was fun and maybe someday it'll part of a composition, maybe not. Probably not anyone's idea of "standard" slap.
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I guess if Percy Jones slapped, he would play something like that. That's an interesting bassline, Brad.

As for my original post, I did not say I stopped slapping, I think slapping is currently irrelevant for what young R&B bassists are doing.
 
#82
BassUrges said:
I love lots of stuff from before I was born, and some new stuff, too. But I do wonder if something isn't wrong with our culture. Mustang Sally will soon be a half-century old. One of you dinosaurs tell me: in 1967, how many bar/dance bands were playing hits from World freakin' War One???

Seems like we've gotten a bit stagnant.
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I hear there are orchestras playing hits from 200 years ago.

Jokes aside, there was a major technological shift in music between WWI and 1967. I'd say MIDI and digital recording has changed music quite a bit since 1967.
 
#84
Dr. Cheese said:
I guess if Percy Jones slapped, he would play something like that. That's an interesting bassline, Brad.
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Definitely on the PJ-influenced side of things... "different". Just goofing around but maybe I can used some of it. It definitely ain't Marcus Miller.
:D

As for my original post, I did not say I stopped slapping, I think slapping is currently irrelevant for what young R&B bassists are doing.
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I don't know... depends on the bassist and the song. It's not dominant but it's not gone either IME.
 
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#86
May I join the club Doc?
Best bass thing I think I can do to dig out some new good music is to look through YouTube or iTunes but it seems to be more and more difficult to get what I consider good music ... tastes have ch aged quite a lot ... however a genre that seems resisting well is jazz ... maybe because it has stronger theoretical roots while proved by large space to improvisation?
 
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#89
"Oh no - there goes Tokyo. Go, go Godzilla!"
- Blue Oyster Cult 1977

IMG_0532.JPG
 
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#90
I have said this a few times here. I am really sick of slap when I hear someone telling me to listen to, "this awesome bass player." Don't get me wrong, I really appreciate slap and the skill to play it competently. I am not very good at it so I may be enamored with it based on that alone, but never enough for me to put the time into improving my ability to play it. I would rather learn other styles or techniques that are a little more common or have the ability to fit into more compositions. I figured there is already enough people playing slap anyway. I guess I also didn't want to be "that guy" in GC or some other music store where everyone just rolls their eyes at them. You know who I am talking about, It is the same guy who plays Stairway every time they pick up a guitar.
Every now and then I hear a relatively new song or even one I never really listened to that has a touch of slap in it, and it totally belongs there. I think I have just heard too many players trying to shoe horn it into pieces where it does not belong because either they just learned how to do it or it is their panacea.
 
#92
BassUrges said:
I love lots of stuff from before I was born, and some new stuff, too. But I do wonder if something isn't wrong with our culture. Mustang Sally will soon be a half-century old. One of you dinosaurs tell me: in 1967, how many bar/dance bands were playing hits from World freakin' War One???

Seems like we've gotten a bit stagnant.
Click to expand...

The thing that makes that era's music different was that (from the '50s up to the mid '70s) a lot of the music was intimately connected to some of the huge social changes going on here. First it was the civil rights movement, and then the anti-war movement, the ecology movement, and the whole counter-culture. There was a huge amount of politics and political intent and calls to action in the music of that time. And to a certain extent you could say that the music of that era was the rallying point around which a lot of those movements revolved. Music wasn't just entertainment. It was often a battle cry. Or a mark of solidarity in an era when individuality was more highly valued than it is today. Movements didn't wear their 'colors' back then. They sang them.

That all changed in the '80s and beyond, although punk and rap made a stab at getting some relevance and social protest back into popular music. But the world had changed. And subsequent youth cultures moved in very different directions than it did with the Boomer generation. The Who was chanting: We're not gonna take it! Never did and we never will! John Meyer is singing:

Me and all my friends
We're all misunderstood
They say we stand for nothing and
There's no way we ever could

Now we see everything that's going wrong
With the world and those who lead it
We just feel like we don't have the means
To rise above and beat it

So we keep waiting
Waiting on the world to change
We keep on waiting
Waiting on the world to change

It's hard to beat the system
When we're standing at a distance
So we keep waiting
Waiting on the world to change

Now if we had the power
To bring our neighbors home from war
They would have never missed a Christmas
No more ribbons on their door
And when you trust your television
What you get is what you got
-------------------------------------------------

That's some change in mindset. If...if...if...we keep waiting...we don't have the means...

Whole 'nuther world today. So much so that those who remember things when it really was different have trouble relating to much of what followed - including the new 'purely for entertainment value' type of music that constitutes the bulk of what's being recorded these days.

Not a problem - or even a judgement on the new stuff, or the people who write or like it. It's just music is a very different thing than it once was. And those of us who lived through those days when it meant something miss the larger thing popular music once was. Like Mick Jagger said - music isn't a form of rebellion anymore. People don't go to concerts to protest. The kids all know their parents went to concerts and liked rock. So they can't throw music in mom and dad's faces to shock or defy them.

The times they aren't a changing. They've already changed.

So be it.

And so it goes. :)
 
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#100
I try listening to new music, and apart from the occasional gem, it only goes to prove to me how fantastic older music was, especially pre-digital. And I don't feel like the time searching was wasted, as it opens my mind, and serves to reinforce the passion and talent of past musicians. I also really enjoy discovering older music that I missed in the past!

And, like movies, actors, cars, etc... IMHO there will be no more classics. Virtually everything is a rehash of the past. We've been overcome by sheer volume, and I blame technology for that.

It kinda makes me grateful to be old and to have lived through such amazing musical eras!
 
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