A lot of what he is saying easily disputed. McCartney listened to Jazz. Larry Graham started in an organ lounge act with his mother. Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones were session guys.
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This sounds like he just wants clicks.
- Thread starter Dr. Cheese
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A lot of what he is saying easily disputed. McCartney listened to Jazz. Larry Graham started in an organ lounge act with his mother. Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones were session guys.
Why bother with a guy who is irrelevant? I bet Beethoven never listened to jazz either. There is no point in discussion what great musical figures didn't do - it is more than sufficient to enjoy and marvel at what they HAVE done.
I barely know who he is but since every time he opens his mouth he comes across as condescending and meaningless to me, I will.never bother to discover his music.
Pretty sure a huge part of getting gigs is being a good hang. I can't imagine being in a band with him. He should form a duo with Scott Thunes (the reason Frank Zappa's last band imploded)!
Pretty sure a huge part of getting gigs is being a good hang. I can't imagine being in a band with him. He should form a duo with Scott Thunes (the reason Frank Zappa's last band imploded)!
He turns a whole of people off but IMHO there's some truth in what he's saying.
What we learn to play and how we learn to play tends to come from listening to others playing in the same genre. If I want to improve my approach to blues scales and patterns I should be listening to other top players in that genre. The same should hold true for any other genres as well.
Across a lifetime of playing in many different genre we pick up on those skills and tricks we need to know to be proficient in each of them. I can only speak for myself but I feel I would gain more from a narrower focus as far as developing expertise in those genre I do play in than to simply stack fewer skills in genre I do not.
What we learn to play and how we learn to play tends to come from listening to others playing in the same genre. If I want to improve my approach to blues scales and patterns I should be listening to other top players in that genre. The same should hold true for any other genres as well.
Across a lifetime of playing in many different genre we pick up on those skills and tricks we need to know to be proficient in each of them. I can only speak for myself but I feel I would gain more from a narrower focus as far as developing expertise in those genre I do play in than to simply stack fewer skills in genre I do not.
It's a silly statement. Did he call Macca and ask him? It all sounded like someone shouting at clouds to me.
My issue is that seems to be saying the opposite of what he said for forty years. For years, he was a super strong proponent of formal study although he was heavily influenced by Rock, especially Jack Bruce (another formally trained Rocker.)
My issue with what he says comes from my own experience. I was mainly self taught and there were some serious holes in my music education that I did not catch on my own. I would be much happier with my playing if had done several years of study when I was young even though I learned a fair amount of Funk, Rock, and Fusion on my own.
My issue with what he says comes from my own experience. I was mainly self taught and there were some serious holes in my music education that I did not catch on my own. I would be much happier with my playing if had done several years of study when I was young even though I learned a fair amount of Funk, Rock, and Fusion on my own.
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That is a loss for you. Jeff Berlin is a helluva bass player. And one can always benefit from listening to great players.
He got to be that good by following a path that worked for him. And so he's a believer in that path
But. That may not be the path for you. What he is saying has truth in it. It's not the only truth, or the only path. But it is A path.
I found what he was saying interesting and worth examining. Do I agree with it? Probably some of it.
Mr Berlin can play circles around me. So what do I know.
Re: Scott Thunes. Also a great player, but man, what I've read about him and the 88 band, he's a complete head case. But again, he's well worth listening to as a bassist.
That is a loss for you. Jeff Berlin is a helluva bass player. And one can always benefit from listening to great players.
He got to be that good by following a path that worked for him. And so he's a believer in that path
But. That may not be the path for you. What he is saying has truth in it. It's not the only truth, or the only path. But it is A path.
I found what he was saying interesting and worth examining. Do I agree with it? Probably some of it.
Mr Berlin can play circles around me. So what do I know.
Re: Scott Thunes. Also a great player, but man, what I've read about him and the 88 band, he's a complete head case. But again, he's well worth listening to as a bassist.
Scott Thunes played the bass on “Valley Girl.” That absolves him of any and all shortcomings in my book.
Jeff has always been straight, no chaser, and often controversial as most are who sometimes speak inconvenient truth.
I once took a lesson with a well-known bassist here in Nashville, and I was given Bach cello transcriptions and jazz charts . . . . . so I could be better at country and rock playing?!? and reading Number Charts. If I had been going to learn classically, become the reader I was once again from my piano days, maybe it would have been different, but that was not what I was after.
The day that Jeff and I grew up in does not exist today. IF I were starting out, teaching myself, and listening to music that's out there now, I'm not sure I'd learn much of anything, and if I went to the neighborhood School of Rock or something similar, it would, indeed, be narrow. In my days, the passion was much different, there were many, many influences and music where people had to actually play and sing it right to tape (or live) is sometimes not easy tp find when everything can be 'perfect' from the digital suites recordings come from today. It's far easier to turn sows' ears into silk purses than it's ever been, and you assemble hit records with six co-writers of lame lyrics and the producers cut and paste samples and loops, perfectly tune everything, cram it into perfect robot time, and often get bright shiny recorded products that will be the next Number One. The saving grace is the web does allow real musicians and singers to still find a footing past the big market commercial music, and I remain hopeful this won't change.
I'll swim against the current here, but I get what he's saying, and I'd agree.
I once took a lesson with a well-known bassist here in Nashville, and I was given Bach cello transcriptions and jazz charts . . . . . so I could be better at country and rock playing?!? and reading Number Charts. If I had been going to learn classically, become the reader I was once again from my piano days, maybe it would have been different, but that was not what I was after.
The day that Jeff and I grew up in does not exist today. IF I were starting out, teaching myself, and listening to music that's out there now, I'm not sure I'd learn much of anything, and if I went to the neighborhood School of Rock or something similar, it would, indeed, be narrow. In my days, the passion was much different, there were many, many influences and music where people had to actually play and sing it right to tape (or live) is sometimes not easy tp find when everything can be 'perfect' from the digital suites recordings come from today. It's far easier to turn sows' ears into silk purses than it's ever been, and you assemble hit records with six co-writers of lame lyrics and the producers cut and paste samples and loops, perfectly tune everything, cram it into perfect robot time, and often get bright shiny recorded products that will be the next Number One. The saving grace is the web does allow real musicians and singers to still find a footing past the big market commercial music, and I remain hopeful this won't change.
I'll swim against the current here, but I get what he's saying, and I'd agree.
I don’t always understand the things Jeff says, but I really enjoy his playing with Bill Bruford. If you haven’t heard it, give it a listen — the music is great, regardless of what you think of him personally.
What's missing is a recognition of how human activity (or what we might call culture) tends to work, whether institutional or not:
People do things
People like what was done
People figure out what was done
People teach to other people what they figured out about (or what they think they figured out about) what was done.
And from there it moves in any number of directions. Some things stick around a long time. Some things become other things. Some things disappear.
People do things
People like what was done
People figure out what was done
People teach to other people what they figured out about (or what they think they figured out about) what was done.
And from there it moves in any number of directions. Some things stick around a long time. Some things become other things. Some things disappear.
I didn't watch/listen. IME and IMO, any 'musician' who takes the time to truly hone their craft has listened to ALL types of music whether they immersed themselves in it or not. Jazz musicians play jazz because they love jazz and it gives them enjoyment. I'm pretty damn sure Macca has listened to and enjoyed jazz music and it has had some influence in his playing.
Again..............my opinion. As for Jeff...........well he certainly is opinionated. Great player but NOT the greatest. Good teacher but NOT the best teacher. He'd be great if he'd just leave out the negative opinions of others.
I repeat..............my opinion.
Again..............my opinion. As for Jeff...........well he certainly is opinionated. Great player but NOT the greatest. Good teacher but NOT the best teacher. He'd be great if he'd just leave out the negative opinions of others.
I repeat..............my opinion.
For some reason the c and l were too close and it looked like a "d" - so d icks
There is really nothing to hate at what he is saying. The guy can play and his instructional video "Bass Tape" was a great resource for me when all we had were VHS tapes in 88 - 89
I feel like Jeff is so misunderstood. I actually listened to his entire SBL interview and he's a very pleasant person in the interview. I think his writing style comes off the wrong way for so many people, but he's not as arrogant as one may expect him to be. He came off incredibly humble.
He's a huge Paul fan and he's explaining how Paul didn't need to be taught rock music in a conservatory. I know he lambasts teaching styles over musical substance, but this is where I would diverge with him. Not everyone has the knack to be able to understand the why of rock, even if it's fairly basic. Sometimes we need a good teacher to explain why Lemmy works the way he does. Part of it is that I think Jeff is more gifted than he realizes, more than the rest of us who often need a silly Mel Bay book teaching the basics of rock bass or whatnot.
He's a huge Paul fan and he's explaining how Paul didn't need to be taught rock music in a conservatory. I know he lambasts teaching styles over musical substance, but this is where I would diverge with him. Not everyone has the knack to be able to understand the why of rock, even if it's fairly basic. Sometimes we need a good teacher to explain why Lemmy works the way he does. Part of it is that I think Jeff is more gifted than he realizes, more than the rest of us who often need a silly Mel Bay book teaching the basics of rock bass or whatnot.
You nailed it; the man not only worked hard from the beginning, he is also gifted. I think that is why he has a hard time understanding why a metronome is such a useful tool for so many, or that some of us just don’t have the musical instinct to ask the questions that Billy Sheehan asked when he taught himself to play. That is why I say many of us need teachers for what legendary figures picked up on their own.
I get what he is saying. In the case for instance of McCartney, while he had listen to the popular music of the day that his parents listened to, his main influence at the time for his musical playing was American Music coming across the pond. Blues, Rock as well as Skiffle, which was an American product before being adopted by his countrymen.
True about Larry getting his start in his mom’s organ group. John Paul Jones was a big session man and multi-instrumentalist but he didn't develop his musical chops for session work just to play rock. But that is not what he is talking about.
I believe he is talking about the last 40 years or so of rock bass playing where you didn't see that much previous music background in rock bass players or rock players in general. There may be a few but the vast majority of players learned their craft as he described, by listening to rock records and learning like that. Not learning Jazz at the knee of a teacher or at a music school then going into rock as a preference. Now we see this, people enlisting a teacher or going to a music school to learn rock.
Which this is a turnaround in his thinking somewhat. His view as I understood it was, to be a full-rounded professional musician you should train like anyone who wants to be a professional at anything, a doctor, an electrician, a teacher. These professions took extended education to become a professional. And he had touted this view to almost a fault, because in his world at one time, this was true. Now he realizes after fighting with weekend warriors that they consider themselves professional musicians because they got paid for their weekend warrior gigs without the formal education he was promoting was needed to be considered by him or any other professional studio musician to make one be at that professional level, like a doctor, an electrician, a teacher.
He is now saying as the reality of it has hit home for him. Those rockers work with what education they have, which was many developed from listen to records and not from going to MIT or Juilliard. In fact it seems he is saying that would be a waste of money if that is what you want to do, play rock.
Still if one wants to be a better player and not lean on their own understanding, further assistance is needed, a teacher, a course, a school is needed to move forward. You can’t learn what you do not know, on your own.
PS I don't know whether this helps to understand where he is coming from but, Jeff was a child violin prodigy, studying from 5 to 15 before he jumped on that bass. He switched to bass after seeing The Beatles. Then he went to Berkley to study bass. So music education was a big part of his upbringing.
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