When in the studio, how do you do what you do?

[GretschWretch]

After viewing for the umpteenth time the official video of the McLean "American Pie," I got to wondering what is required of bassists in the recording studio. I don't mean bassists who go into the studio after thoroughly rehearsing the material with their bands, I mean hired gun bassists who are called in as part of a "crew." I wonder just what is expected of "call" bassists -- and I know there are several here on TalkBass -- when they go in for a session. The "studio pros."

Are you given a notated part to play? A chord or lead sheet? If part of an overall arrangement, are you given a few dry-runs to familiarize yourself with the part, or must you sight-read while the red light is on? Or do you just wing it, spontaneously composing as you go?

What has prompted this thread is that there is no way I can believe the "American Pie" bassist came up with that part on the fly. Or could s/he?

 

[JRA]

Are you given a notated part to play? A chord or lead sheet? If part of an overall arrangement, are you given a few dry-runs to familiarize yourself with the part, or must you sight-read while the red light is on? Or do you just wing it, spontaneously composing as you go?

all the above! least likely = sight-read without a run-through/rehearsal.

IME: what the bassist does is entirely dependent on the relationship with the producer and/or the studio. lots of times the bass player is given a part/chart but advised/invited to "compose" (e.g., "you can get busy at the bridge"). a lot depends on what the responsible ones think of the musician's work in the first place and their own dependence on that.

don't know about the bass part in question, but yes: lots of bass parts are more or less spontaneously written/played --- doesn't mean the bass player and the producer didn't iron things out for an ~hour (repeated takes, punch-ins, etc.) to get what the producer wanted.

 

[Jeff Scott]

all the above!

I will paraphrase this to: Any of the above!

 

[Bob_Ross]

Are you given a notated part to play?

Yes, sometimes.

A chord or lead sheet?

Yes, other times. And then sometimes you're given absolutely nothing, and the composer plays the song in front of you (or rolls a demo tape of it) and you're expected to pick it up and learn it by whatever method you can make work quickly.

If part of an overall arrangement, are you given a few dry-runs to familiarize yourself with the part

Sometimes. Depends on the budget; rehearsal time is billed at the same rate as recording time, so most producers want to keep the in-studio run-throughs to a minimum, unless they've booked a long-term lockout.

or must you sight-read while the red light is on?

Sometimes. Note, any engineer worth their salt is going to be recording your run-throughs anyway, so the red light is always on.

Or do you just wing it, spontaneously composing as you go?

Sometimes.

[iow, what @Jeff Scott said: "Any of the above"]

What has prompted this thread is that there is no way I can believe the "American Pie" bassist came up with that part on the fly. Or could s/he?

Absolutely could have happened on the fly.

 

[wagdog]

I once had to play American Pie cold at a wedding. I was verbally given the chords and off we went. I thought I did ok. Later, just for fun, I listened to the original recording. Yeah, I wasn’t even close.

 

[bobyoung53]

What has prompted this thread is that there is no way I can believe the "American Pie" bassist came up with that part on the fly. Or could s/he?

I just read something about the bassist who played that part last week and I'll be damned if I can remember where and I was surprised at who it was. I read so much stuff all the time. So this tune was thoroughly rehearsed, Here it is:

"After his introduction to Don McLean performing 'American Pie', Ed Freeman helped to assemble the core rhythm section that would record it — David Spinozza on electric guitar, Paul Griffin on piano, Bob Rothstein on bass, Roy Markowitz on drums — and set about arranging the track.

"I rented a rehearsal studio, put Don in there with Roy and Bob — who went on to play with Bob Dylan and is now named Rob Stoner — and we rehearsed the song for two weeks before we actually cut it,” Freeman says. "Don was very uncomfortable with the idea. He wanted to cut it with just the acoustic guitar. On the one hand, he liked the Tom Rush album, which was very produced, but on the other hand he didn't want his own album to be at all produced, so we had some differences of opinion there.

Roy Cicala, Bill Cheney"I wanted to capture the sound of a band that was really cooking, and for that I made a deliberate choice to not use a bunch of studio musicians who could act like a metronome and turn on like a faucet, without any feel. Instead, the people we used were good musicians but ones with not a whole lot of studio experience who, instead of doing a series of overdubs, would play together and provide us with an organic performance. Overdubs would have really driven Don nuts. He wasn't into that, so I said, 'Fine, but then we're going to rehearse this.'

Classic Tracks: Don McLean 'American Pie'.

 

[bobyoung53]

I was offered to be an on call bassist for a small studio once after knocking off a whole album for a buddy of mine in about an hour but didn't end up doing it, forgot why. But I have done a lot of studio work in my time but I've always thoroughly learned the stuff before going in.