Here's a question. If an EB player is on a 'straight ahead' gig playing say, "Autumn Leaves' or 'Body and Soul', do we try to imitate the UB tradition with our line, or do we take advantage of the different technology our EB offers?
I show up to straight ahead gigs 95 percent of the time with an upright bass. Why? 1) It looks better for the style of music and 2) it creates less possible friction with old school jazz guys. If I'm working, I give the client what they want, and that's really the bottom line. Like I said in the article, if I need to be supportive, upright bass is the way to go, and there's no real question in that.
On the rare occasion that I do bring an electric to a straight ahead hit, I do everything I possibly can to take advantage of what the electric can do within that setting to lock in with the drummer, stay out of people's way and make the music feel good. This is extremely hard most of the time, because comping instruments are never used to playing with electric, and can't really account for the added spectrographical range that an electric brings to the table. Playing electric bass with electric guitarists in straight-ahead is pretty much going to sound like poo, so don't even bother (IMO).
What's important beyond everything else is that I don't simply play the electric I might in backbeat grooves (funk, R&B, rock, etc). This will always sound less than professional. There has to be a very specific and cultivated approach to the instrument that can take a long time to develop based upon the principles I outlined in the essay.
Also, if you're getting up there in your local jazz scene, you'll eventually run into guys who will vibe the crap out of you if you bring the electric on a straight ahead gig, and might even refuse to play with you (happened to me once). Think of it as a learning experience.
If we try to imitate, we will fall short of the expectation, if we make the best use of our instrument, we risk a level of disconnect. While your YouTube examples were great fun and a wonderful look at what can be done on EB, we are still lacking that person who can show us how to put 'old wine in new bottles'.
I personally think that every one of the videos I posted show jazz bass guitarists who had thought about these things extensively, learned their instrument up and down, and applied all the positive aspects of bass guitar playing to straight-ahead jazz "of the tradition" as it exists today. The result of all this soul searching, you notice, never sounds like Blue Note-era swing, and it never will. Upright bass is necessary for that sound. No way to put that old wine into the new bottle that is electric. If you're going for that sound, anyway, why not just play upright?
Right up front, I'll say something that perturbs a lot of people. I feel the electric bass is simply a better instrument. That's right. I said it. I believe Beethoven would have been all over the electric bass. It does what the upright does, clearer and stronger.
That really wasn't the point of the article, just so people know. I was simply stating the often-overlooked advantages of electric bass, and the not-that-often-overlooked disadvantages.
For the most part, there's a snobishness to the instrument among jazz players. It shows you're "one of them." And audiences want to "see" the upright. It connotes a different vibe than a guitar.
The snobbishness is somewhat of a problem, yes, but remember that performing music is an act of entertainment. The visual aspect is just as big a part of the whole thing as the actual sound. If it adds to the audience's experience, then that should be a very important part of it.
I worked a bunch of gigs for this guy this past year who was very much of this mindset. He was a talented musician who recognized that I indeed could hold my own on electric in an ensemble, and it sounded and felt good. That didn't really matter, though. He got more gigs when the bassist was playing an upright, so I played upright for him, and got more work.
But there are guys who swing their asses off on electric and in many cases, on recordings, you wouldn't know the difference.
Why would this be a good thing, I wonder? If we're trying to make electric bass come into it's own as an instrument, why do we need to always make it sound "like an upright?" There are other ways to achieve the sonic mark of the upright bass (wide envelope, heavy initial attack) on electric that make the electric sound unmistakably electric rather than a pale imitation of upright.
i think one thing that kills an electric groove is high volume. its easy for electric players to get tons of volume, usually upright players just cant get that loud, so trying to match the sound of an upright bass in the mix might help. also, even when the upright bass is too loud i think the groove suffers. jazz just doesnt sound good with loud bass. it kind of makes the groove bottom heavy, bogs it down, and in my opinion, the groove should be bouyant. dont confuse having a nice full sound with volume. you need a full sound, and an appropriate volume. in my opinion of course.
This is actually a really great thing to do, and I feel like it adds to the "felt and not heard" aspect of locking in with the drummer to create a physical sensation of groove. Part of the great part of electric bass is that when it comes time to solo or be heard, it's just a knob's turn away! Electric guitarists do this all the time when they turn down to comp and up to solo and nobody fusses about it. Electric bass at low volume actually adds a lot in the right context.
There are MANY bassists who have success playing relatively straight ahead gigs on electric (that describes many of my gigs in the 80's).
I recently heard Pat Martino at a local club, and he had an organist kicking pedals (and left hand). There is NOTHING I hate more than that muddy, undefined low end tone, but my god, it was SWINGING and it totally worked. It ain't the instrument, and a great player can overcome what some might see as negatives with any instrument in a 'non traditional' context for that particular instrument.
