NEED HELP: I'm ready to confess after 25 years

[rolfplamperton]

Imposter syndrome is real. Very rarely have I gotten on stage and felt like anytime now, someone would find me out. I just deal with it and do it anyways a lot of times…but my own insecurities have probably cost me a lot of work and rewarding musical situations if my own fear of failure hadn't prevented me from just leaping off the boat.

 

[PennyroyalWe]

I'm in the opposite camp, and I think it's the lesser one to be in. I can create lines decently well, understand theory, scales, modes etc. to a moderate degree, but my god it is TORTURE to learn a scripted line.

Being asked to learn someone else's licks or basslines is like being told to proof read all the forms in the DMV. My eyes glaze over, my mind wonders off, and I wish I were doing anything else instead.

IMO, being able copy and faithfully recreate someone else's lines will get you more work than what I've got going on.

 

[Micha84]

Well, I guess you are a very valuable addition to every cover band out there. You know, those bands that get booked, make people dance and sing and earn money.

Most of us can't be masters of everything, and often times the secret to being a good player is to focus on your strengths. Who cares about everything you can't do, as long as you do the things well that are asked of you.

To turn things around, I feel like I am kind of your counterpart: I get along really well in jams. When somebody starts with something, a bassline almost immediately comes naturally to me. If I am asked to begin, I start simple and develop on that and it works just fine. However, once somebody actually calls a song, I am completely lost - I hardly know any. It just never interested me (with very few exceptions) to learn lines, fills etc. of other players. And I guess that is why I habe very limited technical ability. I am most definitely not a shredder.

So, what you have is a valuable skill.

That said, learning scales isn't that hard. I'd say, to be a functioning bass player in a jam, pentatonics alone get you 90% there.

 

[basslayer]

Your blend of riffs is your sound. Even if they are other people's riffs, you are a choice for them to come off the way they do. Since you know a lot riffs, try playing one you like in a different context; make it a part of a solo in a different song, or play it at the tempo of a different song. It may not all sound good, but the point is to experiment to find out what sounds good to you, because that's the theory that will count.

 

[PBassAcidJazz]

Whenever I'm working on original bass lines I always ask myself "what am I trying to say or do with this groove?" Or perhaps "what is its purpose?". I try to find clarity around the intention and strip back what is not necessary. That's my strategy to writing something original. It doesn't matter if it sounds like something else because it's authentic.

 

[brianrost]

Thirty years ago while taking some lessons I moaned to my teacher that after a week working on last week's homework I still couldn't play it. He asked me how many bands I was in (at the time, 3), how many albums I had been on (at the time, 4) and if I had ever been fired from a band (never). He suggested that the BLs who were paying me the big bucks must hear something in my playing that I wasn't. I try to keep that in mind.

 

[Polfuste]

First question: do you have good ears ? If you can copy things really well, i guess yes.
What you can do in parrallel;

- Learn by ear any melody, solo from another instrument (Miles Davis trumpet solo from "so what" is a golden one to try on bass) : by this way you will get out of bassline state of mind and open what you play to other ways and licks. Plus, if you have to try to sound the closer you can from it: you will discover some ways of articulate things that are different from bass playing, and will make you work on different ways of making music breathe.
- Take a bassline you know; set up a drum machine on different styles of music and try to adapt the line you know in another music style. This exercise is really fun sometimes. For example If you'are in Metal, try to play your favorite tune in Latin flavor, tango, straight swing, etc.. It will ead your brain and ears to adapt to a new situation where you will have to focus on dynamics, and how to adapt a bassline to make it work in any style.
- Take a tune you love and which you know the bassline: learn all other instruments parts on the bass. Simulate drums with slap, play the singing melody, etc.. Same benefit than first advice, plus you'll have a wider view of the tune by experience it.
- learn pentatonic scale and switch in guitarist mode in your head: try to make solos over blues tunes using these pentatonic scale and mixing notes in all possible ways with an simple goal: to sound "in tune" with the tune you're soloing over, but without thinkin in licks or already known melodic gimmicks. Don't expect to be great, but just sound the best you can with these notes. (during this exercise, give holidays to yor internal judge )

Pentatonic solos will help you to take confidence about trying to improvese things. And little by little, all you already know will add some flavour in your pentatonic, but without thinking of it, like your inner vocabulary. Cause all you have done in 25 years has built some phrases, some note sequences that are in you, and that can be used as words in a new phrase you want to say. So once you will have crushed your fear to try, little by little these insluences will get out and enrich your pentatonic first solos.

Then, when you'll have a little more confidence, get out to jam and try to improvise with other musicians.

 

[Deleted member 394181]

I can't slap, and I freeze up if I have to solo. We all have something we don't like about our playing. Just throw in some fills that aren't necessarily part of the song. It helps me cause it feels like original mini solos. You can't pull this off live on songs that are too iconic, but a Blues riff, or if your practicing, just go off.

 

[KevInDaBassment]

Part of being a good bassist is being reactive, and not just proactive. Think of building a bassline like building a structure...

- Start with playing root notes of whatever the guitar is playing, in whatever rhythm the guitar is playing.
- If it's straight 8ths or 4ths, try interjecting the 5th of that scale in the 7th or 3rd note of that bar. Should be the same for Major and Minor scale (or just one string down and two frets over)
- Try playing Root-3rd-5th chord tones to whatever the guitar is playing, perhaps ending with the octave or going back to the root
- Interject some dead space in as well, or change four quarter notes into two half notes instead.


The amount of guitarists who will love you for just playing root notes may astound you. Start there and try different things once you get bored (which will be quick). Also not a bad idea to ask for chord sheets or guitar tabs, gives you an idea of where to start. This is a humbling experience, but you may be surprised how many musicians I've run into with the exact same problem. Guitarists who can play all these famous riffs and solos, but couldn't write a Ramones guitar tune if their life depended on it. Try the stuff above and keep at it for a while (like...a couple years maybe). Don't be afraid to play with other people either, maybe even beginners who are just getting their footing.

 

[bigdaddybass12]

I am a very physically proficient bass player. I can play complicated things, have a good sense of rhythm and groove, and am a very advanced slap player.



Fellow Bass Lover

Play (slap/pop) the songs backwards, really. As accomplished as you sound, should not be an issue. You know the saying know it frontward & backwards, pop/slap a pentatonic scale, careful with the 3rd note, if will define major or minor scale. I will usually leave it out. But don't do it in order. Listen/play along with some really weird music or music you really hate, then play it like you think it should be.

 

[JazznFunk]

Stolen licks are fine. Only jazz players are expected to come up with something new every time they play a song or to simply freely improvise rather than playing a song. Classical players are expected to just read off the charts.

In genres other than jazz and classical there are cliche phrases everybody uses.

Even jazz players reuse phrases.... mostly their own, but sometimes others. 'Quoting' was not only commonplace, but required in early eras of Jazz. Bird did it, Coltrane did it, even Miles did. Pat Metheny has a storehouse of 'dribble' licks I hear from time to time as well, and Bill Evans had a few too. Just like with speaking, we all have certain tics and phrases we fall back on as 'springboards' to other things in our dialogue.... but then we move on. Even Jaco admitted that he stole (and reimagined) a few things along the way to make them his own.

One thing I suggest is listening to instruments other than bass and thinking melodically in those terms. I freely claim a lot of inspiration from the aforementioned Pat Metheny and Bill Evans, as well as guitarists like John Scofield and Bill Frisell. Horn players who have influenced me definitely include Coltrane, Chris Potter, Charles Lloyd, Nils Petter Molvaer, Miles, and Ambrose Akinmusire. Eric Johnson was a huge influence on me in my early years as a blues/jazz/fusion junkie, and his playing still informs my electric bass soloing a lot.

If you're keen, a book that truly revolutionized not only my soloing concepts but my bassline construction in general, was Marc Johnson's 'Concepts For Bass Soloing'. I recommend it to pretty much every bassist, no matter their chosen genre. Its illustrations about constructing lines over chords is great.

Marc Johnson - Concepts for Bass Soloing

 

[M-Mittlesteadt]

I'm a retired artist. I used to give art workshops, and every time I told the group, "just put pencil (or brush) to paper". You can always erase it or paint over it. Forget about being "original", Absolutely no one is. Every thought, idea or expression of it has already been done by someone else.

Except when you do it, it is unique to you. Even if you copy it note for note.

The best thing I've ever done, whether it was art or music, is to simply change the form/genre. Feel like you're unoriginal? As an artist, I painted just about every subject, in every media there is...oils, acrylics, watercolors, etc. As a musician, I learned to play other instruments, and play almost every genre, sometimes even mixing them in an eclectic manner.

I've played in original bands and cover bands and then quit playing music completely. When I came back from my hiatus, I bought a 6 string bass and started experimenting with chordal work on bass. I started writing and arranging my own music and/or bass parts because it just seemed to be different although it isn't. And I've always considered myself to be only an adequate bass player.

My advice? Just play...anything and everything. Try different instruments, or try 4, 5 and 6 string basses. Play different musical styles and genres. Most importantly, have fun. Play to the groove. Soloing is overrated anyway and IMO boring as heck. I hate bass solos. I also hate drum and guitar solos. I love music...the groove of musicians playing together as a whole.

 

[JazznFunk]

I'm a retired artist. I used to give art workshops, and every time I told the group, "just put pencil (or brush) to paper". You can always erase it or paint over it. Forget about being "original", Absolutely no one is. Every thought, idea or expression of it has already been done by someone else.

Except when you do it, it is unique to you. Even if you copy it note for note.

The best thing I've ever done, whether it was art or music, is to simply change the form/genre. Feel like you're unoriginal? As an artist, I painted just about every subject, in every media there is...oils, acrylics, watercolors, etc. As a musician, I learned to play other instruments, and play almost every genre, sometimes even mixing them in an eclectic manner.

I've played in original bands and cover bands and then quit playing music completely. When I came back from my hiatus, I bought a 6 string bass and started experimenting with chordal work on bass. I started writing and arranging my own music and/or bass parts because it just seemed to be different although it isn't. And I've always considered myself to be only an adequate bass player.

My advice? Just play...anything and everything. Try different instruments, or try 4, 5 and 6 string basses. Play different musical styles and genres. Most importantly, have fun. Play to the groove. Soloing is overrated anyway and IMO boring as heck. I hate bass solos. I also hate drum and guitar solos. I love music...the groove of musicians playing together as a whole.

I'll beg to differ on not being able to do anything 'original'. We definitely get stuck and sometimes think we're on a 'new' path only to discover 'hey... this sounds way too close to 'X' for my comfort. Let's start over.' There's a spectrum which runs from 'copying' to 'derivative' to 'original/unique'. While the materials we use are all the same (there are only 12 notes and you can't copyright chord progressions), the manner in which we become inspired and use those materials is another - possibly an intangible. Bebop used existing popular song forms and improvised new melodies over them. Were they 'original' songs? The melodies were, but the chords weren't. However, the approach to get to those new melodies was revolutionary. Wayne Shorter as a composer was as far from 'derivative' as you can get - often non-functional harmony to create melodies which were hardly 'derivative'. Bill Evans was the same. What inspires us to sit down and act on a 'spark' is often birthed from something we heard at some point along the way, but unless you are consciously taking something from an existing song - a full chord sequence, a melody, a fragment - I would argue that you CAN create something original. It may be inspired by something you heard in the past, but as the artist, it's your job to find a way to mold the elements into something unique. That's where the road diverges. It takes years of writing to discern when you are on the derivative path, or have created something unique in some way. I'm very conscious of that in my own writing, and anything I can quickly trace back to an exact 'seed' in the past is often quickly discarded. Some of my best, most original songs came about when I wasn't thinking about music at all.... usually when I was running. I then have to figure out if the idea - sometimes an entire song/form - is something unique enough to explore, or if I can say 'oh, my brain just recycled X song.... moving on!'

 

[edmidlifecrisis]

I've studied philosophy, social science and political economy for over 30 years now. There is nothing in this realm that hasn't been "stolen" "rebranded" "remarketed" and sold off as something original.. absolutely nothing. If it's good for all these "well educated brilliant minds" who paid large sums of money and years of sitting quietly in a room full of other out of pocket brainiacs, then it's good for you and your bass.
Go to a jam session and step outside your comfort zone. You'll be amazed at how good you are.

When I worked for the federal government every year or so they would bring in a new consultant and adopt a new philosophy. Every one said the same thing, repackaged and wrapped up in a new wrapper and sold at exorbitant prices to the feds. We would all have to sit through a couple of days of this idiotic training. It was all the same old stuff- management 101. Every year the top brass would get excited over adopting this "new" strategy and it would be forgotten in a few months. Until the next big new thing arrived. Sigh.

 

[Michedelic]

I'm not trolling. I have a confession to make that I've been secretly hiding for over 25 years and I'm ready to come clean and I need help. I am a very physically proficient bass player. I can play complicated things, have a good sense of rhythm and groove, and am a very advanced slap player. But, I have a huge problem: everything I play is a stolen lick, fill, bassline, solo etc. I have next to zero original ideas. I don't know any theory, scales or how to apply them, I don't know the fretboard well at all, and I can't solo or create unique bass lines to save my life. My brain goes completely dead - there is nothing happening inside if I'm not playing something already scripted out by someone else. Once in a while I can come up with something if I really work at it, but it definitely is not great, and again....scripted. Because of this, I limit my own playing. I turn down opportunities, shy away from certain settings or jams, beacuse I'm absolutely terrified of being exposed. The most recent controversy surrounding Giacomo Turra - the Instagram guitar sensation - was the last straw for me. It turns out he rips off much if not all of everything he plays, records things slowly then speeds it up for the video, looks completely lost when he's on his own etc.. It's all just a shiny exterior. Someone's comment on one of his recent videos hit home for me - and it hurt: "Without a stolen lick, this guy sounds like a beginner and is completely lost". I realized then and there, my God - that's me. Even early on when I first started, I remember just wanting my bass teachers to show me how to play cool songs and bass lines. I never got much of any actual training. Another similar skill I've always had since I was young: I can look at something and draw it very well, almost exactly the same. But as soon as the picture is removed, it turns into a stick figure. So I think there's something in my DNA about being an expert copy-cat, but pointless when left to my own devices in the creativity department. I feel like a fraud. How do I get better? Where do I start? I need to be in Kindergarten and moved through the different grades, from the ground up.

Thanks for reading and any advice - I needed to get this off my chest.

Fellow Bass Lover

Swipe(err, uhh, derive inspiration)from obscure sources. Don't know any? Seek them out. Broaden your musical tastes. Combine snippets from stylistically disparate players. Mash up genres. Tonight I'm going to see some old friends who've had this band going for 45 years that are equal parts of Sun Ra, Ellington, Zappa, reggae, and funk, plus other random stuff.

 

[dannylectro]

Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.

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[Church-Bass]

I am a very physically proficient bass player. I can play complicated things, have a good sense of rhythm and groove, and am a very advanced slap player.

You could have just stopped here. Sounds like you're a great bass player. Keep it up. And don't overthink it.

 

[What4]

Likely far, far underqualified here to chime in as I dont know that I have ever fully taken a bass solo. But possibly this could be helpful - beyond the many comments to the effect that almost anything we play is a variant of something we have heard before or intentionally learned (even coppd), and there should be no shame in using the words we know best and tossing in some less familiar ones when its appropriate, I pose something that I have read or heard some of the greats say about this. So I am copping this lol. McCartney has said that when he hears a tune internally, that the bass line 'heard' typically is not a bass at all. It is a tuba. And I could be mistaken, but I think Flea said he internally hears trumpet or maybe mellophone. So an approach to try and allow you to pull away from what you describe as unoriginal, could be to imagine another instrument and what it might want to say, and play that on yer bass. And even if our vocabulary does come straight from xyz player for any given song, micro differences in attack, tone, note duration, and iterplay with the percussive stuff happening with your drummer still makes for your variation. And that is all good in most folks ears, I'd hope.

 

[fdeck]

Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal. -- Stravinsky

 

[Jeff Scott]

Who cares? John Mayer built a whole career off stealing licks from blues masters… lol.

(He's actually a very proficient somgwriter but his soloing is mostly derivative.)

And, Led Zeppelin stole whole songs from the blues guys.