The First Electric Basses Had Only Four Strings because they were created as substitutes for the string bass. But alas, the electric bass has been its own instrument from the beginning. Whether intended or not, it has capabilities a string bass doesn’t. As innovative musicians explored this new instrument, its role began to change. When Anthony Jackson began pursuing his vision of the contrabass guitar, he had already dispensed with the lingering attitudes of yesteryear. Eventually Anthony realized his vision, and today we have the modern 6-string bass.
I was just 16 when I bought my very first contrabass guitar in 1986. When it arrived, I was struck by the reality of this immense instrument. I felt a little over my head. What in the world was I supposed to do with this thing? Mom told me I’d better get practicing, because that bass didn’t grow on a tree. (I told her that it actually did—big mistake.)
Anyway, I did practice. And I practiced hard. Right off the bat I realized a couple of things: First, the high C string didn’t behave the way I thought it would. There was still something hipper about the range above the 5th fret on the G string, compared to the C. I still found myself moving up and down the neck a good bit, because that’s where I found the sound I wanted. The situation was similar with the low B, particularly when slapping. The B string’s 5th-fret E just didn’t have the subjective secret sauce that the open E did. Even when I filled in for Dave Innis, who plays with a D tuning all the time, I found myself using a Hipshot D-Tuner on my E string, even though I had a low B.
So the 6-string bass wasn’t really going to be a tool for making things I play on a 4-string lay better. I was getting around a 4 just fine, anyway. It was the creative possibilities the 6 opened up, like a painter with a wider canvas. At first, I started with an obvious exercise: extending my cross-fingerboard scales to two octaves with a minimum of shifting. Instead of this: These were great exercises for learning my way around the new frontier, and in some cases, they made reading easier. From there, I started expanding simple and relatively mundanesounding 7th chords into 6/9 chords, or 13 chords. I could reach poly-chords and fully altered types of chords, too. Ex. 3a shows a way to voice a II–V–I progression in the key of C on a 4-string. Examples 3b and 3c show two different ways to voice II–V–I on a 6-string. Ex. 3d shows a few voicings I like to use for relatively common chords.
Pop ballads were changed forever! Living in the bottom octave was really powerful. Even more so was waiting for the perfect moment to drop in that low C at the end of the second repeat of the “out” chorus. Speed seemed easier at first, too—although the older I get, the more I realize that shifting up and down the neck doesn’t have to slow you down. If I play the famous lick from “Havona,” I play it from the E to the G, as in Ex. 4a. It involves a giant shift and a stretch, but in my opinion it sounds better than starting on the B and going to the C, as in Ex. 4b.
As I went out into the world and tried to play this thing, I was met by a number of differing attitudes, though not from bassists so much. It was all the nervous piano and guitar players who were worried about their toes being stepped on. Some thought I was crazy. Some thought it was awesome. And some were just skeptical. This was a new instrument. Who knew what to expect?
As with the development of fusion music, the 6-string started as a cool adventure, and to some extent, turned into an idiom. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but some musicians began to have the attitude that if a bass player played 6-string, he didn’t really play good bass. There may have been some players that occasionally proved that to be true, but thanks to guys like Anthony, John Patitucci, Steve Bailey, James Genus, and a few others who were playing contrabass guitar early on, that attitude has largely gone away. It’s still out there, though. A few years ago, I got a call from a bandleader who hired me on recommendation but hadn’t seen me play. He said, “I heard you play 6-string bass. Do you also play 4-string?” Knowing where he was coming from, I explained that it wouldn’t be a problem. And it wasn’t.
It’s interesting, though, that it was a concern. I believe it’s an idiomatic issue. There were a lot of guys who played the same notes they would have played on a 4-string, but played it in a way that was easier on 6. Imagine, though, if you took lines originally played way up high on an old P-Bass and played them on the contrabass guitar’s C string. Check out the two versions of a line similar to James Jamerson’s on “I Was Made to Love Her.” Ex. 5a is like how Jamerson probably played it, but Ex. 5b starts the line on the D string. Suddenly it sounds like you’re playing it on a guitar. As a good bass player, you must mind your idiom. The ability to do things on your instrument is not a license to dispense with artistic taste and good musical sense.
The contrabass guitar has changed the way the bass is addressed in music today. All of us who play it owe a debt of gratitude to Anthony Jackson, but not just for creating it. Thinking of a wacky new way to make an instrument isn’t necessarily innovation. Anthony did much more than that. In my opinion, his greatest gift to us was, and continues to be, showing us how it is meant to be played.
BIO
New York jazz bassist Mike Pope has performed or recorded with Michael and Randy Brecker, Mike Stern, Joe Locke, Chuck Loeb, Steve Smith, Jeff “Tain” Watts, Chick Corea’s Elektric Band, David Sanborn, the Manhattan Transfer, and Bill Bruford’s Earthworks. www.mikepopejazz.com