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Bass Playing
Sometimes when I’m onstage playing with a band the image
of a river comes to my mind. With the sounds of generally
faster moving, higher frequency instruments swirling and rushing
around and above me, I imagine deeper, slower moving currents underneath
- sometimes pushing, sometimes pulling and sometimes just flowing
along with the gravity and momentum of the music.
I am often in the position of directing as well as playing the
bass and this has heightened for me the paradoxical sensation
of controlling a thing and surrendering to it at the same time.
My approach to bass playing tends to be very song oriented. I
don’t practice toward virtuosity. Rather I strive
to create strong, articulate bass lines and I push myself to
maintain a high level of awareness of what’s going on around
me in performance. If the band as a whole is sounding and
feeling good, if the vocalist or soloist feels supported to the
degree of being able to perform his or her best, then I can usually
walk offstage with a sense of having done my job well. Of
course, I enjoy stepping out for the occasional solo – who
doesn’t? However, I am not driven to be defined by
it.
In no way do I mean to disparage all those players who are pushing
the boundaries of bass playing and exploring it’s potential
as a solo instrument. I have enormous respect for the amount
of time, talent and determination it takes to achieve virtuosity
on any instrument. Marcus Miller and Stanley Clarke come
to my mind as pioneers in this way and I think a lot of what
makes them such great soloists is that they are also great composers.
While I take a lot of inspiration from such players, I haven’t
set out to follow that path. If I have an extra hour in
the day and I can choose to use it to work on revising a lyric
or practicing “two-hand tapping” on the bass, I’ll
pick up a pencil and go for the lyric… it’s just
the way I’m wired.
A few of my favorite bassists: Graham Maby, Paul Chambers, Doug
Stegmeyer, Dee Murray, Charlie Haden, Willie Weeks, Chris Squire,
Lee Sklar, Nick Lowe, Sting, Paul McCartney, Flea, Tony Levin,
Chuck Rainey…
Tools
I’ve gone through a lot of basses and bass rigs chasing
down this thing called “ultimate tone”. Over
time I’ve come to adopt a less one dimensional approach
to tone shaping – less focused on the gear, more focused
on the overall sound of the music and the bass’s role in
it. To that end I have a variety of amps and speakers – Genz
Benz, Aguilar, Eden, Mesa Boogie, Acoustic Image – I combine
them in different ways, depending on the style of music and whether
the gig is Big n Loud, Small n Intimate or somewhere in between.
I used to spend a lot of time and money buying basses, swapping
out the pickups and hardware, endlessly tweaking the instruments
to make them sound better. In 1999 I flew to NYC, spent
an afternoon playing basses in Roger Sadowsky’s shop
and placed an order for one of my own. 6 months later
I got my first Sadowsky Bass… suffice it to say, I spend
a lot less time tweaking basses these days and a lot more time
playing them.
My current basses:
Sadowsky 24 Fret 5 String Bass (NYC)
Sadowsky 24/5 Fretless Bass (NYC)
“Mutt” Fretless – Yamaha body, Warmouth Tele neck, Bartolini
pickups, Bad Ass bridge…
Fender Precision Plus (modified: Duncan pickups, Bad Ass bridge,
Aguilar Preamp)
Christopher’s Workshop Busetto styled Double Bass
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