20 Years: Looking Forward, Looking Back: Reflections On The State Of Bass

I wish I could say that was the only battle we’ll have to fight and bass guitars are undoubtedly here to stay. At one point the Fender bass was the exciting new technology pop music eagerly embraced, and the integral link that formed between pop music and bass has allowed the instrument to enjoy remarkable popularity and development in its short life. But I fear in the long run that link could prove to be as much a detriment as it has been a benefit. Pop music is, by its essential nature, mercurial and disposable. As it moves through its inevitable fads, I’m afraid at some point the bass could become as old hat as the Hustle, the Macarena, and the Achy Breaky. The bass guitar’s bigger cousin, the bass violin, has proven it has the flexibility and depth of expression to ensure its veritable immortality, so I’m hoping the bass guitar will follow in its footsteps.

In my opinion, everything rests on how seriously the instrument is played, studied, and listened to. If in the long run the bass manages to become associated with enduring music, I think its future is secure. Don’t get me wrong—I like a good pop tune as much as the next guy, but I believe one of the great things about the bass is that it has the capability for both mass appeal and serious artistic contribution. The jury’s still out on whether what’s been done so far will stand the test of time, but it doesn’t seem like too much of a stretch to imagine the classic bass performances we all know and love being listened to a hundred years from now.

The coming years may be an uphill battle as it seems to me our current informationsaturation culture isn’t particularly conducive to the kind of careful reflection and focus that’s essential to both the creation and appreciation of deep and lasting music. With the average iPod holding something like 5,000 songs, listener impatience seems to be a given, but I’m betting the human need for creative music isn’t likely to go away.

In any case, I’ve had a blast hearing all the amazing music bassists have made in the last 20 years, and it’s been an extraordinary honor to be part of the community. With a little luck, I’m hoping we’ll all be just as jazzed about practicing, gigging, recording, and reading BASS PLAYER 20 years from now and beyond.

Bass today is a two-sided coin! There are more virtuosostyle bass players than ever before. Players with faster technique than I (or anybody in the past) ever had are now on the scene. It’s a new era, with technically stunning bassists showing up more and more. Bass equipment has also improved steadily, with top-quality amps, strings, basses, and effects sold worldwide. But the last 20 years haven’t seen any real change regarding a higher visibility of bass players—not in the commercial world of music at least! Studio bass players have been largely replaced by keyboard and sequenced bass for much of today’s popular music. Also, except for some individual groups, like the Red Hot Chili Peppers or Rush, whose bass lines play key roles, using bassists for their special skills to create interesting parts rather than perfunctory ostinatos is practically an unknown principle in the general music community. Singers in most styles of music have no interest in bass solos or bass melodies on their recordings. This means the bass guitar, at least in pop-rock-country-vocal style music, is still an untapped resource, consigned to service-oriented contributions as it has always provided in the past. Why? Because producers and composers don’t organize their music with bass players in mind!

And yet, in the artful pursuit of bass, the approach seems to be changing due to the handful of fanatical practitioners who play from real musical need, not just a wish for musical or commercial success. Tonality is still ignored by many bassists not interested in how this general principle works. But several new players embrace the idea that harmony, rhythm, and melody—the three important vitamins of music—are important to learn and apply. They are the hope for changing the role of the bass guitar down the road.

The past 20 years has seen music change drastically in many ways, and the role of the bass has evolved with it, and often led the charge. The rise of hip-hop, drum-n-bass, and other variations of urban music has proven that a great bass line can carry a whole record, with or without melodic content on top. The upright bass, mostly relegated to traditional jazz and bluegrass 20 years ago, has had a major resurgence, certainly helped by the ability to amplify its sound with more fidelity and volume than ever before. Solo bass artists, with or without extended-range instruments, have shown how the bass is capable of being the whole band, or that it can still fulfill the traditional bass function with equal grace. Low-end sound has been through its own set of changes, as well. New amplifier and speaker technology and the use of subwoofers—not to mention the countless effects available to alter bass sounds—have given us more sonic options than ever before. The return of drum sounds to a realistic size after the excesses of the ’80s has also helped give the bass a healthier portion of the mix. Hopefully, earbuds will eventually provide a satisfying and convenient way to experience low end while on the move. The body of knowledge that is bass playing has also broadened significantly. Thanks to instructional videos, new media, and magazines such as BASS PLAYER, this knowledge has been shared around the world. This gives great hope for the future of music, as the bass solidifies its rightful position at the center of contemporary music as an innovative, evocative, and influential force. We’ve already taken over the world; next stop, the universe! Bass in space. Why not?

When I think about the last 20 years, so much has changed. There are more players playing at a higher level, technically. The expansion of bassists on both electric and acoustic instruments has been incredible. It’s interesting to note how many more bass players are interested in manning both instruments now. Electric bass sounds and trends in bass tones have evolved to reflect not only the bright and punchy sounds of the ’80s, but also to include the warmer, flatwound-string, sounds that came before. In the ’80s, bassists had to be flexible when recording live with a rhythm section. First, studio calls changed to overdubs (often, one instrument at a time), drum machines, everything played to a click, sequences, loops, synth bass. Then it shifted back towards entire bands in the studio, and playing live along with technology. The way we record our basses has also evolved, with new technologies (including recording studios inside our laptops!) combined with vintage sounds—whether it be miked tube amps for electric bass, or some new active preamp, direct box or effects unit.

On acoustic bass, some players like the old tube microphones, and some even use effects. Acoustic bass students are starting earlier and earlier and developing their skills with miniature basses that fit their young bodies. Acoustic bassists also have so many more options for amplifying their sound today. New microphones, pickups, amps, speakers, and effects give today’s bassists lots of choices. There are also many more kinds of strings that help bassists play in a variety of styles without having to change the type of strings they are using every week! Again, the technical level keeps rising to new heights, but we have to be careful to keep elements like musicality, sound production, and sensitivity as the top priorities.

Bassists of all genres continue to write creative and interesting music. I also feel, because of the computer technology revolution, players of both basses are learning about styles of music from around the world and mixing them with whatever styles they’re already familiar with. As far as the music goes, the most important aspects don’t change much—we have to make the band sound and feel great and make the music breathe! We are still the catalysts, groove-makers and band diplomats in many styles of music. The bass player lives on!

With the advent of new pickups—there must be 50 or 60 different types, internal and external—the bassist can now be heard even in the most difficult acoustic environments. This new “audio setting” has forced the bassist to be more musically productive—to himself, his band members, and to the audience. Due to the new home audio systems on the market, the bassist is aware that the audience knows what the bass sounds like, as well as what notes he plays—no foolin’ around now! The growing variety of bass strings available affords the bassist many combinations of string choices to more easily find his “sound.” Also, the choices of amps, preamps, and speakers offer the bassist another way to produce the type of sound he or she wants to be identified with. These, I think, are the major factors in the “rise” of the instrument—its growth, both musically and sonically.

Where do you feel bass playing is headed? What do you feel the career of a professional bassist will be like in 20 years?

It’s always fascinating to force the future to show itself. You can imagine anything you want, think hard about it, and convince yourself that it’s an accurate prediction. So: My turn.

Within 20 years only a handful of large recording studios will remain, catering only to orchestras and other large ensembles. Midsize rooms will disappear with the proliferation of moderately priced, super-high-fidelity, solid-state recorders that can be used in the home; the present dominance of hard disk will end, barely a decade after it destroyed magnetic tape. Session work will continue to be done, but remote Internet recording, already increasing, will dominate music production, and iTunes and illegal live recording will make it almost impossible for musicians to prosper from their work. Nightclubs catering to live music will largely cease to exist. Musicians will find themselves relegated to local and statesponsored “performance organizations” and university-funded groups. An era of threadbare culture, already descending, will worsen. Case in point: the appallingly corrupt American Idol and Making the Band (where there is no “band,” and the “singers”—few if any of whom can sing without the intervention of Auto- Tune—are clearly unconcerned about music, only with thrusting asses and spastic dance steps) point to a future that will worsen before it improves.

None will escape this scenario—including us. Only the strongest, in any field of art, will prosper. Live music will never end, but the tradition of musicians, musicians everywhere—in small clubs, large clubs, halls, outdoor venues, summer jazz festivals, live TV—will not return in abundance until our popular culture begins to evolve again. Twenty years? Maybe, but I think it may be longer. Still, I sincerely believe good times for artists will return. Hypothetical advice to all of us players: Play well, to give our instrument its best chance to survive this era, where a “musician” is too often anyone who can press a PLAY button

When I think about a future path for bass, what immediately comes to mind is our community pre- and post-Jaco. More than any other player, Jaco turned bass on its ear. In the era before him, bass was fundamentally a necessary support instrument, with a clearly defined role we all know. But ever since the emergence of players with strong personalities—like Jaco and Stanley and a few others, who decided to make the instrument their voice—everything changed about bass compared to how it started. You had these handful of visionaries who were experimenting and creating amazing art, and their concepts gave birth to an incrementally multiplying number of cats who kept being inspired by the explorers before them.

So what I can see down the road is a reality in which we could almost change the term “bass” to a different title because there’s so much that can be said on the instrument. We’ll probably end up needing a support instrument to take over the low-end role we call bass—like a “sub-bass” or something. Players will show up with their so-called bass and say, okay, where’s my foundation to play to? There will no doubt always be traditionally principled groove players, but audiences will begin to get accustomed to— and even expecting—the bass’s function as a solo instrument. The writing is on the wall; I know very few bass players now who have weak personalities. Cats playing bass are pretty outspoken human beings!

Where do I feel bass is headed? I think more and more bass players will get into the driver’s seat, and by that I mean motivating a band onstage via playing, physical sound and resonance, controlling dynamics, and the natural role of being the glue that cements it all together. But I’m also talking conceptually in the studio, where bass players will be thinking more “big picture,” with bass as a part of the music and the ensemble creating it, like a happening chess player who can see the game many moves ahead. So it won’t necessarily fall on us to provide the “big bass riff” all the time that everyone can ride in on; we’ll instead be focused on the rest of the cats on the tune and best fitting them into the piece as a whole. Even on our instruments, it won’t be about bogarting the whole tune (unless it’s reggae!); it will be a matter of finding the right notes and the right holes to unify the rest of the band and pump up the song with heart and emotion— with feeling. I think the world is ready for songwriting to start coming from bass players, who will become more open-minded and will, in turn, inspire other band members to be open-minded about us and our potential.

The other aspect of this scenario is bass players letting go of some ego—not so much in the traditional sense of just “staying in the background,” but letting go when we have to bring our bass to a song after-the-fact. I feel bass players will need to be more experimental and willing to take risks because increasingly bass has become the instrument that can completely change the direction of a track. Bass players will be called upon to give many “options” to a tune. They will also need to not be married to any one approach, because artists won’t be sure of what they want until they hear what you create and try it out—part of the beautiful trip of humans interacting, and then interacting with that interaction. Ultimately, I think bass will become more about a rolling of the dice, in a sense. Having a freedom that guitar, drums, and keyboards have enjoyed.

Where do I feel bass is headed? I think more and more bass players will get into the driver’s seat, and by that I mean motivating a band onstage via playing, physical sound and resonance, controlling dynamics, and the natural role of being the glue that cements it all together. But I’m also talking conceptually in the studio, where bass players will be thinking more “big picture,” with bass as a part of the music and the ensemble creating it, like a happening chess player who can see the game many moves ahead. So it won’t necessarily fall on us to provide the “big bass riff” all the time that everyone can ride in on; we’ll instead be focused on the rest of the cats on the tune and best fitting them into the piece as a whole. Even on our instruments, it won’t be about bogarting the whole tune (unless it’s reggae!); it will be a matter of finding the right notes and the right holes to unify the rest of the band and pump up the song with heart and emotion— with feeling. I think the world is ready for songwriting to start coming from bass players, who will become more open-minded and will, in turn, inspire other band members to be open-minded about us and our potential.

The other aspect of this scenario is bass players letting go of some ego—not so much in the traditional sense of just “staying in the background,” but letting go when we have to bring our bass to a song after-the-fact. I feel bass players will need to be more experimental and willing to take risks because increasingly bass has become the instrument that can completely change the direction of a track. Bass players will be called upon to give many “options” to a tune. They will also need to not be married to any one approach, because artists won’t be sure of what they want until they hear what you create and try it out—part of the beautiful trip of humans interacting, and then interacting with that interaction. Ultimately, I think bass will become more about a rolling of the dice, in a sense. Having a freedom that guitar, drums, and keyboards have enjoyed.

I’m enthused and excited about bass as much today as I was when I was 16—and that was a long time ago! Every single day I discover something new. Every single day! There are incredibly diverse and creative takes on the whole idea of what a bass is—in fact, what music is (the greatest art form, of course). The digital recording revolution has made it possible for almost anyone to make a record of the same quality level as the richest superstars. My only concern is that there aren’t enough opportunities for young players to perform live. Well, let’s make the opportunities! Get out and play. Put into actual use all the things you read about, talk about, practice, and endlessly debate. The real final proof of anything you know or can do on bass (or any other instrument) is to do it—live. And doing it in front of an audience is the supreme payoff. Playing live has been my best teacher. More bass!

Without a doubt, home recording has forever changed the way music is created, and the Internet has changed the way people find and consume music. In a world where music is often thought of as something that is free, the bassist of the future will need more than good gear and Pro Tools to have an impact—and be able to make a living, too! Live music has refused to die, even though for years many people were convinced that records would eliminate the need for the live music experience. As more and more records are being made by players with the ability to fix and manipulate what was once unfixable, the irony of this is inescapable. In 2028, the bass, no matter how it’s played, could be the one element that keeps the magical concept of “feel” alive in music and keeps “perfection” from destroying the essence of music: human emotion.

I strongly believe that bass playing, and indeed the future of music, can head where we want it to head. We have way more control over the direction of music than we give ourselves credit for. The business is in a different place now, and in order to facilitate positive change for bass players, and for music, we must take uniform action. Hopefully, the best attributes in music can thrive in a society arguably in cultural decline. If musicians proceed forward in their careers and increase the public’s awareness of quality, virtue, and the importance of artistic expression, perhaps this can happen. The actual careers of bass players, as well as other instrumentalists’ careers, would obviously be determined and affected by how music is produced and exchanged. If piracy is curtailed, so that there is an equitable means of economic exchange for music produced, with actual bass “playing” in music production; and if live performances with real musicians continue to be valued, then the future of being a professional bass player is bright indeed. Again, I don’t believe change will happen without action, so we must push for what we want the future of music to be. We need to communicate a need for sincerity, depth, and originality, and we can do this by simply being those things. What we begin to push for can dictate the next 20 years, and create a “butterfly effect” on the rest of the world. So let’s start now. “We must push for what we

Can you share something you’ve learned in the last 20 years from BASS PLAYER or elsewhere, that has been particularly inspiring, informative, surprising, or meaningful?

When I was growing up as a young bass player, it was quite a bit harder to get information on any of my favorite bass players. I had to wait and hope for them to appear on TV or for an article to appear in a magazine. Now, having a magazine dedicated to our instrument is a wonderful thing. Not having to wait for an interesting article has made getting information about the musicians, their methods, and their instruments much easier to come by. It’s easy to forget how wonderful this is.

Many young players believe there is one “magical” thing that must be done in order to reach stardom or a certain level of proficiency. BASS PLAYER gives us access to lots of information, allowing us to clearly see that there are many different methods to reach our goals. Learning about our similarities and differences can be a great way to validate or improve on our own ideas and methods. Reading about a musician who has been through something similar to you, or reading about someone who has taken a completely different path, can be very rewarding and helpful. Having access to articles, lessons, reviews, and other information every month is beautiful. BP continues to be the leading source for this.

Many of you learned of me through BP. I’m happy to say that most of my 20-year career with Béla Fleck & the Flecktones has been chronicled and even helped along by the magazine. My journey through music has been different from most, and it’s nice to have a magazine to allow others a glimpse into my past. I’m also thankful that BP featured me in their magazine very early in my Flecktones career.

I rarely get to see many of my friends because of our touring schedules. BP helps us keep up with each other’s careers. I enjoy reading about players that I grew up with, like James Genus, Oteil Burbridge, Keith Horne, and others. If it weren’t for the magazine, I might not have any idea where they are or what they’ve been up to. I found out that SMV was actually going to record and tour by reading it first in BP!

I’m very happy BP has lasted this long. That says a lot about all of you—the readers. A magazine cannot exist without readers. So, let’s keep reading, writing, playing, and challenging the magazine to keep its standards high. Thank you, BASS PLAYER! See you in another 20 years.

From the very first issue until now, there has yet to be an issue of BASS PLAYER that hasn’t inspired me in some way. The diversity of the players and styles covered has impacted my playing, whether it’s the latest rocker or a jazz veteran. Some of the personal standouts for me were Jonathan Herrera’s May ’06 piece on Steve Swallow, and Chris Jisi and Jeff Andrews’s September ’97 transcription and analysis of Jaco’s “Dry Cleaner from Des Moines” and “Donna Lee.” Reading about how much time Steve devotes to composing daily, or how Jeff is able to transcribe all kinds of instrumentalists just by ear, away from his bass, is truly inspirational. I’ve also learned so much from reading about the two masters of my instrument, Jaco Pastorius and James Jamerson. There’s not a bassist I run into now who doesn’t know who Jamerson is, and that certainly wasn’t the case before BP and Allan Slutsky’s Standing in the Shadows of Motown book hit the scene in 1989.

I’m especially a fan of the complete song transcriptions; I love the challenge of reading and playing through them, as you would with the Charlie Parker Omni Book or the Bach Cello Suites. It’s very inspiring to open up to a Dee Murray or Chuck Rainey part and see what they played, and then read about why they played it. Here’s a true story: A while back, I got called by Slash to play his birthday party in Las Vegas (I’m a friend of Duff McKagan’s), and he told me we’d be doing “Sweet Child o’ Mine.” Well, I had everything going on that week: TV and movie sessions and a record date, plus 20 songs I now had to get together for Slash’s bash, but I really wanted to learn “Child” authentically. I got home and found the latest copy of BASS PLAYER waiting for me, and the complete transcription happened to be “Sweet Child o’ Mine”! As with bass playing, when it comes to reading BP, I’m a lifer.

Way back in the late ’70s, I remember periodically buying Guitar Player magazine for the rare bass feature, and the almost-as-rare “bass column” (which featured the writings of, among others, Jeff Berlin). What a joy for a kid like me to read about how Jethro Tull’s Glenn Cornick hung his speaker on a nail, and how Stanley Clarke strung his piccolo bass. It never occurred to me then, that someday my name would be on a Jethro Tull CD, and that Stanley would be a friend and collaborator. I do not say this to name drop, but to make the point that BASS PLAYER MAGAZINE IS TO BLAME! Bear with me . . . .

When BP came around, it was the catalyst for what was to become a community. Before BP there were no solo bass concerts, bass symposiums, and bass bashes focusing on the electric bass. There were no bass camps operating, no bass groups touring—and dammit, there were definitely no hats, shirts, jackets, or keychains upon which that little cult symbol was conspicuously embroidered, printed, or stamped. BP has been the Miracle-Gro that has taken a most promising Jamersonaurus clarkesinian pastoriusii plant and fortified it into quite a specimen, with new leaves and branches flourishing on its ever taller trunk.

Some might say that BP has done a great job in chronicling the surge in “all things bass.” That’s absolutely true, but it’s done much more. BP is the conduit by which most, if not all, revolutionary new gear, recordings, books, and DVDs have made their way to our stages, practice rooms, TVs, and iPods. More than that, BP has given a voice to hundreds if not thousands of bass players, who’ve shared everything from how to get a gig, to how much fun fishing is, to how to recycle bass strings into a weed eater.

So, what does all this have to do with my earlier statement that BP is to blame? Follow closely: Without BP and its back-cover ad, ADA amps would have never called me, Les Claypool, and Victor Wooten—all relatively unknown at the time—to San Francisco for a photo shoot back in the early ’90s. That is where Vic and I met, and where Bass Extremes was conceived. Ian Anderson heard some of our first CD, and that led to the Jethro Tull gig.

At a BASS PLAYER LIVE! event in New York, I got to sit down with Stanley Clarke and talk about music, education, and the bass. He said, “Man, I learned about you, and lot of the new cats, through BASS PLAYER magazine.” I thought, Wow—I learned about Stanley’s piccolo strings through BP’s “uncle,” Guitar Player, and 20 years later he learned about me through BP.

I am pretty confident that I’m not the only one who recognizes that BP has made all of our lives better, beginner to pro, 2-string to 12-string. Thank you Jim R., Chris J., Richard J., Karl C., Bill L., Jon H., Greg O., Brian F., and everyone else who has been a part of BP. I feel very blessed and content in my life and career, and I know you all have been an integral part of the journey.

For 15 years I’ve kept a list going of my most inspiring realizations about bass playing. It’s called Bass Playing Thoughts, and while it’s mostly an accumulation of mini-epiphanies during peak experiences I’ve had playing or watching music, there are also some quotes in there from BASS PLAYER articles. Toward the beginning of the list I write, “BASS PLAYER 6/93, Gary Peacock: Pressure to ‘become’ something, usually at expense of own being.” This is a lesson that resonated deeply and inspired much revisiting later in the list with such entries as, “Play what I can play— stretch that,” “Don’t do to it, let it be,” and, “Surrender to the flow— what you’re playing doesn’t matter.” While these are my own variations on a theme, I can still relate with the original sentiment. There is a lot of pressure to “become” something. When I’m on tour and standing in a room of people, knowing that some of them are musicians themselves, I might think, I need to become funkier, or, I need to show these people that I know a lick or two.

The nasty thing is that this all happens subconsciously. Rather than surrendering to the flow, on a tentative night I worry about what the groove could be if it were different, and what I could be if I had practiced more. But then on a great night I entirely accept what I am, and it’s then that the muse takes over and does her thing, like she did when my new band just played in Madison, Wisconsin. I remember thinking that each note doesn’t matter so much, or each lick, and that it’s more important to let the groove play me, to let the bass play me. Then I become the “hose” that Carlos Santana told Phish about when we toured with him—with the audience being the flowers, and the water coming from the gods, as long as you get out of the way. Recently I added to the list: “With acceptance you can’t play the wrong thing. As soon as you do, acceptance makes it right.” Peacock was saying just look inside, and I’ve discovered that once you do, you hook up with something eternal. Anyway, after many years of reading BASS PLAYER, I’d like to say thanks for being part of my spiritual path!