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Double Bass Picking across/perpendicular to the strings w/ right hand

E

Ed S

Nov 14, 2019
1,983
3,032
#1


This vid popped up on my Youtube feed, and I wondered what the rest of you thought about the bassist's technique. You can see very clearly around 5:00, he is consistently playing across the strings, rather than with hs finger parallel to the string thumping on the next string. Just wondering why he was doing that? They've got a little air under that tune, but it isn't crazy fast.

Amazing collection of talent on that stage, but I generally live for the thump, and only tend to play across the strings if a pattern is crazy fast or something. Always eager to learn.
 
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#2
I put a metronome on that and it is somewhere between 145-150. Like I said - a healthy pace, but not insane.

And I found this slower tune from the same show.



The bassist is ROCK SOLID, but both his right and left hand technique are not what I strive for. I guess it really goes to show that there is no single way to skin a cat - at least in BG!
 
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#5
Ed S said:
I put a metronome on that and it is somewhere between 145-150. Like I said - a healthy pace, but not insane.

And I found this slower tune from the same show.



The bassist is ROCK SOLID, but both his right and left hand technique are not what I strive for. I guess it really goes to show that there is no single way to skin a cat - at least in BG!
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Well, if you consider the bass player playing on 1 & 3 the tempo is actually twice that. Brisk indeed!
 
#7
turf3 said:
The tempo is 300 to the quarter note. ..
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Yeah, I'm sure the amplification explains it. And I didn't mean anything I wrote to question the bassist's contribution. Amazing group (tho the extended guitar intro is not to my personal taste!)

But I'ma gonna have to give some thought to the claim that it is 300 BPM.

I might be wrong with how I've counted beats all my time as a bassist - or wrong how I counted them in this song. But I never thought I had encountered a BG tune over 200 BPM. Actually, I thought some wicked fast Dillards recordings were in the neighborhood of 175 BPM.
 
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#8
statsc said:
Well, if you consider the bass player playing on 1 & 3 the tempo is actually twice that. Brisk indeed!
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Were I writing this song, I would use 2/4, with the bass on every quarter note and the upbeats on their "ands." Putting it in 4/4 with bass on 1 and 3 is a little misleading at that speed.
 
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#10
AGCurry said:
Were I writing this song, I would use 2/4, with the bass on every quarter note and the upbeats on their "ands." Putting it in 4/4 with bass on 1 and 3 is a little misleading at that speed.
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AG - with the understanding that I don't have the musical training or experience you do - help me understand what you mean about "misleading." I've played that tune probably 100 times, in jams and on stage, and can't figure out what you mean. Thanks in advance.
 
#12
Well, I think of it in 4, with the bass player playing on 1 and 3. Stated that way, it'd be 300 BPM. If he were to leave the two-beat pattern he's playing and start walking, he'd be walking quarter notes and playing 300 of them in a minute.

The truth is that these old tunes, when played in the traditional two-beat format, would be written in cut time, 2/2, because they're essentially the same thing as march tunes (two legs per soldier, thus two beats per measure). That's how all those old-time tunes are played. We call it "two-beat". But in the late 1920s, dance bands began playing four beats to the measure. The dances of the time changed as well, from the two-step and schottische to the foxtrot and swing and jitterbug (these developments continuing through the 1930s) and the dancers were making four steps per measure, smaller steps, which matched with the four-beat time of the rhythm section.

So whether you want to consider this as two beats per measure at around 150 or four beats per measure at around 300, really depends on one's background and how the rhythm section's playing. In the recording above, I clearly hear a "chop" from the rhythm players on "2 and 4". I wouldn't think of it as "on the and of 1 and the and of 2" and I think that trying to communicate it that way would be confusing to the majority of players.

At any rate, the tempo's pretty far up there. 150 in cut time or 300 in four-four with two-beat bass (150 bass notes per minute) is way different than 150 in four-four with the bass playing on one and three (in other words 75 bass notes per minute). Even Diz and Bird were not often playing faster than 300 BPM in four-four with most of their solo lines in eighth notes - these guys are playing at the same speed - whether you want to say the soloists are playing sixteenths with the thing written in 2/2 at 150, or eighths with the thing written in cut time at 150, or eighths with the thing written in 4/4 at 300, they're playing about the same number of notes per second as Charlie Parker would have on an uptempo tune.
 
#13
Another thing to consider about the bass player's right hand.

From the video it looks to me like he's a tall man, with correspondingly long arms. He's got what looks like an ordinary 3/4 bass jacked way up on the pin, and yet the nut's about at his eye level, and though he's got his fingers pretty much perpendicular to the strings, he's pulling pretty close down to the end of the fingerboard. If someone 5-6 with shortish arms were playing the same bass, they'd have to get the right hand lower on their body to play at the same place on the fingerboarrd, which would dictate a finger-parallel-to-the-string approach by itself.
 
#14
BobKay said:
AG - with the understanding that I don't have the musical training or experience you do - help me understand what you mean about "misleading." I've played that tune probably 100 times, in jams and on stage, and can't figure out what you mean. Thanks in advance.
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Bob, I'll start by admitting that probably no one plays this song from sheet music, so it's a purely academic discussion. BUT if I were to do so, I would want to see it in 2 (2/4 preferred but 2/2 okay). It affects the way I interpret the "feel." 4/4 time, although it works mathematically, "looks" busier and doesn't give a clue about feel.

Just one factor: In 4/4, would the bassist's notes be half notes or quarter notes? Seeing half notes and realizing I have to play them that fast can confuse me, and my eye has to race along the staff. If they're notated as quarter notes, then I have to deal with the rests (which really aren't rests but rather, the decay of the plucked note). Each of those options gets in my way, becomes something harder than it needs to be.

Written music has conventions, and they're useful. I ran into something similar in arranging a piece for my orchestra. I notated (in 4/4) an 8th note followed by a quarter rest followed by an 8th note. Our conductor informed me that "nobody writes it that way," that the quarter rest should be replaced by two 8th rests. My way was mathematically equivalent but harder to parse. Sheet music should be made easy as possible.
 
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#15
I should have written "these old time tunes and more recent ones written to sound the same way". I'm not sure whether Free Born Man is a newish tune or an old one. The date of the song doesn't matter, it's the style that matters.
 
#16
AGCurry said:
Bob, I'll start by admitting that probably no one plays this song from sheet music, so it's a purely academic discussion. BUT if I were to do so, I would want to see it in 2 (2/4 preferred but 2/2 okay). It affects the way I interpret the "feel." 4/4 time, although it works mathematically, "looks" busier and doesn't give a clue about feel.

Just one factor: In 4/4, would the bassist's notes be half notes or quarter notes? Seeing half notes and realizing I have to play them that fast can confuse me. If they're notated as quarter notes, then I have to deal with the rests (which really aren't rests). Each of those options gets in my way, becomes something harder than it needs to be.

Written music has conventions, and they're useful. I ran into something similar in arranging a piece for my orchestra. I notated (in 4/4) an 8th note followed by a quarter rest followed by an 8th note. Our conductor informed me that "nobody writes it that way," that the quarter rest should be replaced by two 8th rests. My way was mathematically equivalent but harder to parse. Sheet music should be made easy as possible.
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If I were notating a two-beat bass pattern in 4/4 I'd use half notes, not quarter notes separated by quarter rests.

And if you listen to the recording up above, he's clearly playing "half notes" - i.e., his notes are long, not with a gap between. Putting that gap there is a stylistic choice, but omitting it adds to the drive feel on a fast tune like this one. I'll do the quarter notes with rests thing sometimes in a jam when the group is having trouble staying together and playing in time, which most often occurs when you don't have a strong 2 and 4 back beat. For example, no mandolin player and all the guitar players want to do that hippy-dippy folkie constant strum thing interspersed with finger style stuff rather than the good old firm bluegrass Boom-chick guitar pattern. OF course with strong players they can do any thing they want, but the usual random jam crowd, their strong point is lack of meter.
 
#17
turf3 said:
If I were notating a two-beat bass pattern in 4/4 I'd use half notes, not quarter notes separated by quarter rests.

And if you listen to the recording up above, he's clearly playing "half notes" - i.e., his notes are long, not with a gap between. Putting that gap there is a stylistic choice, but omitting it adds to the drive feel on a fast tune like this one. I'll do the quarter notes with rests thing sometimes in a jam when the group is having trouble staying together and playing in time, which most often occurs when you don't have a strong 2 and 4 back beat. For example, no mandolin player and all the guitar players want to do that hippy-dippy folkie constant strum thing interspersed with finger style stuff rather than the good old firm bluegrass Boom-chick guitar pattern. OF course with strong players they can do any thing they want, but the usual random jam crowd, their strong point is lack of meter.
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Agreed, although a rest in pizzicato doesn't mean "silence" unless the preceding note was marked staccato.
Also agreed on the effect of and importance of letting notes ring. I've seen many bassists who've developed the musical "tic" of muting almost every note on the upbeat, and it can really hamper a piece's velocity.

But I stand by my statement that this type of beat (as well as similar polka, klezmer, and country beats) should be notated in 2, not 4. You said it yourself: "If I were notating a two-beat bass pattern..."
 
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#18
AGCurry said:
...

But I stand by my statement that this type of beat (as well as similar polka, klezmer, and country beats) should be notated in 2, not 4. You said it yourself: "If I were notating a two-beat bass pattern..."
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Well, it's not a hill I'd be willing to die on.

In the end, though:

"...whether you want to say the soloists are playing sixteenths with the thing written in 2/4 at 150, or eighths with the thing written in cut time at 150, or eighths with the thing written in 4/4 at 300, they're playing about the same number of notes per second as Charlie Parker would have on an uptempo tune..."
 
#19
turf3 said:
Well, it's not a hill I'd be willing to die on.

In the end, though:

"...whether you want to say the soloists are playing sixteenths with the thing written in 2/4 at 150, or eighths with the thing written in cut time at 150, or eighths with the thing written in 4/4 at 300, they're playing about the same number of notes per second as Charlie Parker would have on an uptempo tune..."
Click to expand...

Yeah, it's not life and death, for sure. If I can distill my point to its essence, it's that a piece's time signature is not just about math. Yes, you can notate in 4/4, 2/4, 2/2, or even 1/1 ... and 3/4 and 6/8 are mathematically equivalent too ... so why do we have all these choices? There are reasons.
 
#20
Yeah, let's not even get into the difference between the traditional waltz (in 3) and the Viennese waltz (in 1) and how to notate those. There's a well known Bob Florence chart called "Willowbrook" that's written in 3/4, but it's played in 1 at tempo-di-tear-ass and I've always thought it ought to have been written in 12/8 and played as if in 4. In the 3/4 format it's something like 18 pages (30+ pages for piano) and you've just got the guys skimming pages off the left of the stand onto the floor at warp speed.

And to go back in time a bit again: why were those old marches written in 2/2 rather than 2/4? Ease of reading, and ease of copying. Imagine the Sousa band; their composers (Mr. Sousa, but others too) were writing a march every week for a while. No Xerox machines. Every part written out by hand. Cut time reduces the number of beams. Endless strings of eighths become quarter notes. The occasional thirty-second note pattern becomes sixteenths. Much easier to read when the first time the band reads it is on the gig and the copyists are copying so fast that the notation might get a bit sloppy.
 
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