Over the top bass playing or tastefully done?

[bigjames]

Straight up, I am not sure I could maintain that playing for the whole song...my hands started hurting just listening to it, but dang it is nice.

 

[MonetBass]

Not overplayed, IMO. Not a fan of the tone, though -- rolling off the highs a bit would help.

Not long ago I was at a show where the opening band had a bass player who overplayed on every song. It was so distracting, which is a shame because otherwise the band was really good.

 

[jerry]

Tough crowd! What's Going On is a standard now, and in my book can be open to artistic interpretation. The band sure didn't seem to mind.

 

[brianrost]

It's not like James Jamerson was just playing roots on the original

 

[mambo4]

I don't see ANYBODY dancing

I thought it was fine cover, enjoyed the bass line, but this is valid criticism
If I were covering Gaye and Jamerson, I hope Folks would be dancing!

Comparing the feel of the Donny Hathaway version with the OP , Will Lee's interpretation makes me want to move more
The OP version feels like there's a constant subdivision and no place of rest or contrast
Makes me miss the double dotted half notes that were so painful to read in SITSOM
I do think those longer sustained notes have a respectable role in the feel of the song

 

[edwinhurwitz]

My only critique is that the bass could lay back in feel just a bit. It feels a bit out front of the rest of band. A couple of the fills are a bit over the top. But overall, I really like it. The dynamics are excellent.

Great lead singer! He's really got it goin' on!

 

[jdjk7]

All I had to do was look around the stage: I don't see ANYBODY dancing, I don't really see the horn players or the backup singers locked in and swaying to a groove. He's overplayed his hand, and if the drummer hadn't been as steady (and steadfast) as he is, this would have been all over the place.

Nobody dancing, no groove happening. What separates the men from the boys . . . . is knowing how much is ENOUGH, and in this chart and this time, it's too busy to be coherently grooving. You're backing up singers, you play to the song, and you lock up in a groove. Missed these 3 by a bit.

Since when do we hear with our eyes?

 

[jdjk7]

The problem I hear with this rendition of the bassline isn't so much it being too busy, but it lacks development. It starts busy, stays busy, and doesn't really go anywhere else.

Music exists in the time domain. It has narrative, even if it's not with words. We start our story, and then something happens, and then some more stuff happens. A bassline that doesn't change with those evolving feelings is like having a character in a story that never has anything happen to him, never changes, never learns anything, etc. It can work, but IMO it needs to be calculated.

So, if I were playing this, I'd be coming up and coming down with the song and illustrating contrast between the low moments (backed-off, simpler playing) and the high moments (strong, bright tone, fills, more interplay with the drums or vocals, etc)

I do think this is a challenging one to do though, as the source material has a lot more going on to dictate melodic motion. The original has a lot of melodic action going on with the strings, and to a lesser extent the vibe and backup vocals. In this rendition, we have an organ laying down mostly static harmony, and the occasional interjection from the guitar. I forget the horns are even there sometimes. The split lead vocals and the backup vocals don't quite hit the same spot as the original. It's a full mix in the frequency spectrum, but in terms of melodic movement, there's not a lot going on. If the organ or the guitar player won't do it, the bass player might as well. I would go as far as saying that, if the bass player had been playing closer to the original with no other changes to the arrangement from the other instruments, this wouldn't be as good of a cover.

 

[micguy]

It's 2024, not 1970, so the sound of a "funky bass" has changed, and we should expect that people hearing covers of that song are going to expect today's idea of what a funky bass sounds like - if you try to play it exactly like Jamerson, you aren't an artist, you're just someone imitating him (at best). We also have to remember that James was so drunk he couldn't even sit on a chair - he recorded that song literally lying on the floor - if he had played it the next day, when he'd sobered up, it would have sounded different.

Would I have played it differently? Of course, and I would have gone for more groove, but I wouldn't have tried to play it exactly like Jamerson. It's not 1970 anymore.

 

[micguy]

Since when do we hear with our eyes?

Anyone who has ever played in a cover band (works for a lot of other genres as well) knows that what you see happening in front of you is very important - if you're hired to provide entertainment, you can tell if you're succeeding by what is happening in front of you.

 

[jdjk7]

Anyone who has ever played in a cover band (works for a lot of other genres as well) knows that what you see happening in front of you is very important - if you're hired to provide entertainment, you can tell if you're succeeding by what is happening in front of you.

Well sure, but that's about being in the room. An cinematographed video like this is an account of a thing that happened, yes, but it may not be true-to-life. There's a lot you can do in both pre and post to emphasize or de-emphasize elements that may have been painfully subtle or obvious in the room.

However, I still think the original observation is a stretch. This is still a supremely danceable groove even with the busy bass part, and any lack of dancing, real or perceived, is hardly the fault of the bass player in particular.

I think what we're seeing is a video of a regionally successful soul band with a central lead singer figure who is largely the focus of this video and of the band's marketing, as I've seen on a cursory Google search. Another thing that's important: when backing up a Lead Singer Figure Whose Name is the Band's Name, your best bet is to stand there, do your thing, and be inoffensive. That's been a dominant mode of several big genres for a long time. It conditions the audience to want to look at the singer, their dynamics, their presence, and their expressions, and while you may politely acknowledge the band's existence, their energy is functionally not core to this experience. I mean, watching the video front to back, the only time the lead vox aren't the focus of the frame is one, maybe two 3-4 second cuts to a side cam on the drummer.

Speaking of the editing, the way this video is edited make it difficult to get a sense of the band's energy. Most of the shots are quick-cut, narrow-angle focusing on the lead singers, with the band either out of frame, out of focus, or obstructed. I mean, the bass player himself is only in frame, in focus, and unobstructed in a couple of shots throughout the entire video, despite him having such a front-and-center role in the music.

 

[FunkHead]

here's bass that serves the song:

 

[J Wilson]

Since when do we hear with our eyes?

Ever been to a gig with a great band, and most of the band and the crowd just stand there like Easter Island statues? Me neither.

 

[Akami]

Because of the thread title, I was getting ready to vote that it was too busy, but all I could think was how wonderfully the bass was following the song, just like dancers out on the floor.

Very enjoyable player to listen to.

 

[jerry]

Because of the thread title, I was getting ready to vote that it was too busy, but all I could think was how wonderfully the bass was following the song, just like dancers out on the floor.

Very enjoyable player to listen to.

+1, He was reacting to other musicians, flowing. There is an old rhythm section saying "one foot in the groove, the other up the soloist a$$".

 

[jerry]

here's bass that serves the song:

I dig BOC, but totally different genre/context. IMHO

 

[40Hz]

You can often tell by the comments who has actually worked in bands and who hasn't. Most working bands have elements of their live show where they put their own spin on a well-known song. If you have a good bass player it makes perfect sense to do an arrangement that gives them space to play cool stuff.

As for overplaying, uh, have you guys never listened to Jamerson? At the time he recorded this stuff you guys would have been SCREAMING that he was overplaying and a REAL bass player would never dare to play so many notes.

Awful lot of speculation about people without any real evidence and some gaslighting in your comments. If you think it's great then that's fine. No need to get insulting just because somebody doesn't agree with you. There's room for differing opinions when it comes to bass lines.

 

[EliasA]

Straight up, I am not sure I could maintain that playing for the whole song...my hands started hurting just listening to it, but dang it is nice.

Same here. Also, the pops were quite unnecessary in my opinion. Other than that, it's magnificent and fits the arrangement like a glove.

 

[WG Plum]

It's not to my taste, but that doesn't mean it's bad.

 

[BurtsO]

What yall think of this cover of a MG classic?

Very nice cover, top notch band with excellent use of dynamics, love the bass.