where does bass go from here?

[Mystic Michael]

You need to look beyond the TECHNICAL side of the innovative players and consider the MUSICAL side.

Anyone remember Adrian Davison (sic?) the guy who advertised his recordings by stating he was the fastest basist in the world? That's cool to listen to once or twice maybe for the gee whiz factor but where did it take him and who did he influence in today's scene?

Jaco, Stanley, etc. all grabbed ears because of the music they played. Yes, their technique was awesome but it was needed in order to achieve their musical goals. For example, Jaco used false harmonics so he could voice chords that would have been impossible to play otherwise, Larry Graham developed his slapping to compensate for lack of a drummer, etc.

So "what's next" is someone solving a musical problem by developing an innovative technique.

Bingo. I agree, people get too hung up on technique & execution - without paying enough attention to the compositional aspects of music...

Although technique will continue to change & evolve as long as adventurous players continue to experiment with it, at the end of the day the technique has got to serve a compositional purpose - not the other way around. To me, the best way to think of bass is as a musical component (i.e. the bass part), rather than just a particular instrument.

If J.S. Bach had access to bass guitars in his time, he may well have used them. Instead, he had access to acoustic string basses and the left side of the organ keyboard - so he used those. Bass is bass...

MM

 

[Amastacatious]

I'd like to hear alot more "Advanced" rhythmic stuff with all the thumping. Instead of 8 measures of triplets and 16th notes, do some jazz drummeresque polyrhythm stuff. I'd also like bass players to use fancy techniques like sweeping and double thumping and tapping in smaller doses, like only slap a few notes in a solo for accents or sweep 1 arpeggio just as way of getting between 2 notes that are far apart.

 

[Matt Till]

It blanks from my blank and it blanks my blank.

 

[Joe P]

I dunno, I don't really think the future of bass--or of any other instrument--is important. All musical instruments are just tools for making music...
...what matters is what you build with it.

Y'know: I've played basses and basses and basses over the last couple years - since I got serious about music, and especially since I became involved on TalkBass - and in all that time spent at music stores and whatnot, I never even picked up a Jazz Bass, assuming that it's old-fashioned or un-refined or whatever.

Well yesterday I picked up a used MIM Jazz 5 sunburst with a rosewood fingerboard (in perfect condition, except for fairly small roundwound-wear in some of the frets), and was amazed. It felt and played and sounded wonderful! I dunno, but I'm seriously considering forgetting the rest, and just going Fender!

I say all this because I maybe used to think that the electric bass had been greatly 'evolving' over fifty years, but now I'm thinking that - except for Warrs and Chapmans and the like - there's no excuse not to be able to change the bass world as we know it with an 'old' bass.

Bytheway: they wanted US$300 for that Jazz 5 - that's a pretty good price, isn't it?

Joe

 

[lemur821]

Yeah, that's a pretty good price. It's not a steal or anything, but it's average.