Bass: Positioning for Power

Warwick Corvette Electric Bass

As primarily a keyboard player, I am often called on to hire  bass players to fill out an upcoming duo, trio or quartet gig and have learned from experience, that my choice on this is critical to the success of whatever the project is.  Bass is THE "power-position" in any band.  You might think that drums would fill that role, but it would be hard to convince me of that.  Bass players define the harmonic progression by their choice of notes, they define the "groove" with their time feel, articulation, sound, space and they set the dynamics of the band.  When the band is lost, all ears go to the bass - conversely, if the bass player is lost, all is lost.   The sound of the bass fills the air like no other instrument and is responsible for establishing the overall sound of the band and is the main instrument that is in a power position to change and vary the overall sound of the band. 

  Choosing a bass player, I consider the following criteria.   Every bass player brings something different to the table, but, like choosing a financial planner, I want someone I can trust and who is looking out for the overall interest of the group and is genuinely concerned for the outcome and is willing to defer to the big picture.

Marc Johnson

Slam Stewart

These are the things I look for in order of importance.  Notice that " Soloing Over Jazz Changes"  is not even on the list ( which is, ironically, the main thing that bass players work on in the practice room)

1. STYLES - my "number one" consideration....
        I want a bass player that has a huge vocabulary of styles, that knows the difference between a mambo and a merengue, a beguine and rhumba, that knows a dozen ways to play "swing" feel, a dozen distinct ways to play "bossa nova", that is willing and eager to differentiate styles from one song to the next.  Does the bass player default to a "walking 4" or a "generic  Latin feel" on every tune or can she bring something refreshing and different to every tune?  Does the bass play vary the length of notes, the articulation of notes, the amount of space, the timbre of the lines to bring some dramatic and creative stylistic variation to the table?    I want to hire a bass player that has listened and studied many styles, old and new and knows a half dozen ways to play the waltz, that plays Gypsy Jazz differently than a Broadway Two-feel, that has studied and dissected jazz and pop bass styles of the last century.  In a nutshell, I want a bass player that is musically informed, has a depth of experience and can clearly differentiate styles.

2.  HARMONIC KNOWLEDGE
        A bass player needs to understand CHORDS.  Not just chord spellings, but how chords move horizontally.  The bass supports vertical AND horizontal motion - this is not obvious when looking at individual chord symbols on the page, which are a gross simplification of what changing harmony does.  I will always prefer hiring a bass player with piano skills for this reason.  Chords connect in ways that are not clear to someone without this experience and NOTE CHOICE is critical in making sense of the flow of the song.    Bass players often miss the fact, for example, that a C/D chord is a type of D chord and not a C chord, while an E/D is actually an E chord and not a D chord;   or that an Ebdim7 may be actually functioning as an F7(b9) and the appropriate bass note might actually be F, or that the 6th of a min6 chord may be the best choice of notes in the context.   A bass player that can see through the lead sheet abstractions and recognize what is REALLY going on, is my #2 consideration when hiring a bass player.  Note choices are completely up in the air on the bass, and every single one is important and sends the band down a different harmonic path.   A bass player that knows before playing it, that a chord symbol is wrong, or a poor choice, or that the root of the chord-symbol is not the note to play to make sense of the progression.  A bass player with a piano-player's harmonic understanding is a huge asset.


3.  TIME FEEL
     Every bass player has a different sense of exactly where to place the attack on the notes.  Some are relaxed and laid-back, some push ahead.  I generally prefer the latter or somewhere in-between, but that's just me.  But time feel is also related to "groove", or just the overall feel of the rhythm.   Much of that has to do with simply the NUMBER of notes coming out of the bass.  I will hire a bass player that keeps it simple, but establishes a feel-good groove and knows how to leave space and vary note density.  Fewer notes is my number 3.  

4.  TUNES
     The ability to play by ear combined with the wide depth and breadth  of listening experience will produce a bass player that is a real asset to a band.  I prefer to hire bass players that will know tunes, in any key, when called up - they acquire this skill through intentioned and connected listening.  Playing jazz from lead-sheets simply doesn't look good, or sound good.  Creative playing, the supposed backbone of improvisational jazz, does not happen when reading from a lead-sheet.  A bass player with a huge repertoire of songs, independent of key, is my #4 in things I look for in a bass player.

5.  CREATIVE ATTITUDE
      One of my favorite bass players barely knew any tunes by ear and was pretty much unable to do jazz-soloing over changes, but I hired him often anyway.  Why? Because he would LISTEN and bring something to the table that made the performance unique.  He was attuned to dynamic and stylistic changes, and would take the performance to a new level by taking it seriously.   Often I will start a song with a solo piano intro and might set some twisted and adventurous rhythmic feel in the short time afforded to me - this bass player would go WITH it and push it even farther into adventurousness where most bass players would channel the groove BACK to a comfort-zone of "walking 4" or "pseudo-bossa nova".  Linear Regression in statistics, is the tendency of data to revert to the mean, or average, - I will hire a bass player that likes to skew the data away from the mean, or the normal-predictable way of playing.   My #5.

6.  DUO CONCEPT
   Many gigs end up being just bass and piano - an artform that requires a different set of skills brought to bear.  I will hire a bass player that is able to leave the "trio-concept" in the drawer and play an entirely different way.  There is a strong urge, apparently, to fall in to a compensatory style of playing where the musicians are making up for the missing drummer.  The tendency is to play MORE notes, MORE percussively, MORE emphatically, with MORE sound effects and slapping, MORE volume .  I will always hire a bass player, in this situation, that has a solid time-feel and is able to let go of all this and play LESS of all of these things instead of MORE.  An implied groove between musicians with solid time, that trust each other and sense the time without having to actually play it, is much more effective and just easier to play and easier to listen to.  And it's much easier to accomplish my #1 objective, which is to always differentiate styles.

7.   SOUND
   I personally like it when a bass player has a variety of sounds to work with, from a round-warm full sound, to a punchy-funky edgy sound to a buzz-saw fretless sound.   It goes back to #1, where I really want big overall conceptual changes to be happening depending on the tune.  I also prefer a bass player that is listening to balance and blend between the bass and the chordal instrument - out in front of the band stand, this is ultimately what is heard.   A bass that is too loud or too soft ( that's pretty rare ) kills the blend.  Bass notes that are too low may not blend or support what is going on in the chordal instrument -- a bass player that is LISTENING and cares about this issue is on my list to hire.   Bass sounds have changed over the years and, like piano sounds, they have gradually become more edgey and wirey sounding.  My preference is generally for a sound where the high end is EQ'd to be out of competition with the other instruments, to maintain a bit of sound-spectrum independence between the instruments.   We've all heard those recordings of guitarist-singers where the pick noise and finger noise on the guitar is as much in the foreground as the voice.   I prefer to hire a bass player that thinks about these ideas and brings a sound to the bandstand that supports, complements and can be heard without creating "frequency-clutter".

I sincerely hope that these ideas can help some aspiring bass players, whether you accept or reject the ideas, at least think about them....

Steve Brown - played with all the greats...