Bilbo

Most Jazz musicians are employed as teachers and get the bulk of their income from that rather than performing and recording. The relationship that each of us has with our music is very much our own. We define it as we see fit.

On 13 th December last year I had a heart attack. I survived and live to play another day. Two days after me, Arthur Maia, first call bass player for dozens of Latin Jazz artists like Djavan, Gilberto Gil, Mrisa Monte, Lulu Santos and Ney Matogrosso, suffered a cardiac arrest and didn't make it. Arthur was only a few months older than me. A sobering thought for me but, more importantly, the loss of a player whose work I had enjoyed for some years. Here he is leading his own band.

My view on the concept of practising is that it is our individual decisions as to what we practice that determine what kind of player we become. There appears to be a belief, for instance, that 'educated' players lack feel, or that 'groove players' do not know theory etc. The reality is that we are all a mixture of all of the things that we learn and all of the different ways in which we learn them. The art, if that is the right word, is probably in establishing the most efficient means of learning our craft. There are a myriad questions we need to answer before we determine what it is that we need to incorporate into our 'practice' time (I put that into inverted commas for reasons that will become apparent). Firstly, what is it that we are trying to achieve? Are we trying to be the best player that we can be or is our playing subservient to our ambitions as, say, a composer or entertainer? Someone like Stevie Wonder who can play lots of instruments to a competent level, may only need to be a 'good enough' bass player or drummer to meet his needs in terms of demoing his songs. A player like Victor Wooten makes his living by being the go to guy for clinics so will need to ensure that his bass chops are top drawer. Billy Sheehan has an approach that allows him to entertain the kinds of audiences that his playing attracts, as would (in their very different ways), say, Gene Simmonds, Les Claypool or Peter Hook. Secondly, what are we practising? Are we practising playing the bass or are we working on composing tunes? Are we learning to play the bass or are we learning tunes? Are we learning to sight read or are we learning to play by ear? Most of us will be prioritising different things at different times depending on where we are or what we are doing at any given point in our career. Our choices at any given time are, over the length of our careers (to date and on-going), going to add up to a knowledge base that is entirely our own. If we spend a lot of time doing the wrong things (subjective) we will undermine our own progress whereas, if we spend our time doing the right things, we will be more successful in achieving our goals. Looking at the music world over the four decades I have been playing, I have determined that I have probably spent most of my practice time poorly. I have a certain skill set but, compared to 'the cats', I lack polish in the detail. My problem, as I see it, is that I have a, spent too much time practising other instruments than the bass (guitar, bass, double bass arco and pizz, saxophone) or techniques I will not use (slapping or tapping), b, failed to decide whether I want to play well or compose well, c, have failed to 'deal with' extended harmony in anything other than a superficial way and, d, have failed to sustain the progress I have made in reading dots (I take two steps forward and one step back). In addition, I have always lived away from the best scenes so cannot find players (or teachers) to share my enthusiasm for that which I like and never had the courage to commit to the life of a professional musician so have only ever been able to 'snatch' time for practice. My shortcomings as a player are, to my mind, an absolute consequence of my choices including and especially my practice priorities. Scales or arpeggios? I think that the thing that matters is not what you practice, per se, but why you practice what you practice. If you know what you are trying to achieve, you just need to make sure that your practice regime is targeting the right things. And that takes wisdom.

I hear note and phrase relationships based on knowledge of scale as learned through rote repetition. If another musician plays a phrase I can not only repeat that phrase but harmonise it or construct a variation based on the their theme. I also have access to the entire neck of the bass at all times. My capacity to do this comes from years of scale practice.

No it doesn't.

Dad is wise.

Practising scales helps you to find your way around the neck and to hear the interrelationships between notes and chords. If you are a root note player, you can probably get away without learning them. It depends how far you want to take your music. I haven't really practiced the bass for about 5 years, at least not in a systematic way. My practice time is currently spent on learning to read guitar music.

I agree with Tiny. You want to play double bass. EUBs are EUBs not double basses. Buy an EUB and you will immediately GAS for a double bass. Buy a double bass and you won't ever GAS for an EUB. You need to feel the air moving.

They are like basses but tuned an octave higher to make them easier to play.

I did one rehearsal with a Kool and The Gang tribute band and thought, bollocks to this.

I once had this problem and solved it by putting new strings on the bass. Go figure.

Led Zep would sometimes steal the whole song, lyrics and all (see the Mick Wall biography). No shame.

Jimmy Page couldn't complain about being plagurised. He was Rock's greatest tea leaf.

Masons Arms, Pantygasseg, 1980. Aged 17. 39 years ago.

Anything with Paul Chambers on will give you endless examples of walking bass lines.

It's great, isn't it?

I have been spending a lot of time with acoustic guitar lately as I find I am getting fewer and fewer calls and want to get involved with something that is self contained. The players I like are Ralph Towner, acoustic Al Dimeola and guys like Yamandu Costa and Jose Luis Monton. I am not interested in playing 'Jazz guitar' just in playing beautiful music. I am exploring a lot of solo guitar arrangements of Astor Piazzolla stuff like this.

Absolutely agree. Much fusion is a pissing contest driven by the need to impress rather than the desire to move (emotionally). Juggling athletes rather than artists. I think JB can be guilty of this.

I saw JB and KW with a drummer at a bass clinic at the Bass Centre in Wapping many years ago. KW is a great player.

In my experience, JB's tone always sounds better when he has a producer and he is not the leader. Which is now, apparently, rare. Which is a shame. I believe his concept as a composer/performer, which revolves around his bass and choral playing, is flawed and his material actually quite weak, despite its bass heavy content (or maybe because of it). I feel that it is when other people are in charge that he is at his best.

I guess it depends on what you mean by Jazz. A lot of stuff listed here is fusion, Jazz rock or Jazz funk which is one thing whilst more purist forms of Jazz may be what is needed in terms of the op's need for exposure. In a nutshell, at this early stage, more is more!!

Nothing wrong with that list, Frank.

I am intending to wait for proper medical advice but I just wanted to hear what other people's experiences have been. Have depped out the first couple already.

I played one of these when they came out. It was very easy to play.