Edgar Meyer

When it came time to record his latest, the MacArthur “Genius Grant” Fellowship winner put down his little black book of friends, collaborators, and musical foils, and he retreated to his home studio with a few double basses, his piano, and a host of other stringed instruments to record Edgar Meyer, a remarkable solo effort from one of the world’s top bassists.

In your collaborative projects, the interplay between musicians is what gave the music its life. How did you channel that when you’re doing it all by yourself?

When there are two or more people, a lot of the best stuff you don’t see coming; that’s what makes it cool. And I did give up that interaction. But after playing with so many wonderful musicians, I have a feeling for what it means to play together, and I know how to evoke that, even by myself. I’m always trying to get the feeling of people listening to each other. I just had to prepare those first tracks and have the shape of the pieces in mind.

For what you give up by not having other people, there’s one thing I love that you gain: the ability to explore the side roads, and to indulge the kinds of ideas that would normally be unacceptable with other people around. For example, in one section I wanted mandolin and gamba, so I practiced it for days. But when I recorded it, it sounded terrible. So I went back and redid it, this time playing it one note at a time. If people are sitting around you, you do the most efficient thing—but you don’t have to take that into consideration when you’re alone. Normally when you do a recording, there’s a writing phase, a rehearsal phase, a recording phase, and a post-production phase. But in this kind of project, those phases are completely intermingled. In a few cases, I would start recording before I had finished writing the song. In recording it, I learned what I needed. Sometimes, you can’t tell if something is written well until it’s played well.

Musicians tend to be their own toughest critics. In order to play along with your own tracks, did you feel they’d have to be flawless?

Yes and no. Obviously, the first track you lay down is the important one. But even more important than perfection is that it conveys the shape of the piece, the flow and the emotion. You just have to take a long time, and you have to stay very critical. Those ears were always on!

I spend a lot of time doing everything I do, but this was the slowest of all. For “Roundabout,” I practiced piano for weeks before I even got to recording. But I cannot emphasize how enjoyable and fulfilling it really was. There was something delightful about being able to pursue whatever interested me during the process. I guess I’ve never really had anything like that; I’ve always fantasized about it. I have wanted to make a record like this since I was 20.

Which basses did you use?

Almost everything is the Gabrielli [tuned EBEA]. It’s the bass I play every day, and it’s really a superior instrument. It’s small, clear-sounding, and it responds very easily. It’s not as deep as my other instruments, and that works out for most of what I do. My favorite thing is playing in small groups, where clear sound is worth a lot. When it gets to be a bigger group with drums and brass, I need something a little deeper, so [a larger bass] can provide that piece of the puzzle that the other instruments don’t have. In smaller groups, big basses actually don’t speak well; they can sound muffled and indistinct.

Right now I’m a little flummoxed when it comes to strings, because I had only changed strings a few times in the last 20 years. Right now I have Pirastro Permanents on the top two strings, and Thomastik Spirocores on the bottom. They are good for acoustic road gigs without amplification, because they have really strong and clear sound. But the instrument just had its top taken off, and now it’s brighter and clearer. So I’m not sure what I want to do, string-wise.

With such a naked-sounding record, you must have put a lot of thought into which microphones to use.

We did a shootout with a lot of mics in this room, and we ended up using DPA and Neumann mics. For bass, I didn’t love either mic perfectly. The DPA was more dynamic and true, but the KM 184 had a color that liked. I ended up using both mics together. I set them five or six feet away from the bass; engineers and soundmen usually won’t let me put them that far.

What don’t you like when the mics are way up close?

It gets a little explosive—so you can’t play with the same dynamics—and the extreme highs and lows get featured. I don’t like it when one part of the sound is bumping out like that.

What’s some music that you’ve recently found inspiring or exciting?

For the last seven or eight years, I’ve kept Bach’s complete cantatas in the car. I grew up learning all about his instrumental music, and I got to know probably the majority of it. But I realized in my mid 30s that I didn’t know his cantatas, which is half of what he wrote. Each one of them is an entire universe unto itself. They usually have a main hymn with a choral prelude, and then Bach would expand unbelievably while keeping that melody at the center. At the end, he does a chorale on that melody. So each one has two very different treatments of a melody. Anyway, that’s kind of a slow burn—I’ve been kind of stuck on it for years, but I’m not even more than halfway through.

Are you always in writing mode?

No, I’m not. But I’m in a period where I’m really over-extended, writing-wise. It’s not how I want to live; I’d rather be balanced, recording some, writing some. And I like not working on music sometimes. And that won’t be the case for the next year or two.

What do you have going on that’s kept you in writing mode?

I just finished a piece for [violinist] Josh Bell, and I just debuted a Concerto with Béla Fleck and Zakir Hussain for the new symphony hall opening in Nashville. Emanuel Ax and I are going on tour next spring, and I need to write for that. I’m also writing a piece for bass and woodwind octet that’s being premiered next summer.

Zakir Hussain is someone I’ve admired for a long time, and this is my first time working with him. He’s known as a great drummer, but I’ve rarely seen a musician with such a sophisticated or well-developed melodic sense. So that’s been very exciting and inspiring.

Do you compose on paper, or do you compose with your instrument in hand?

Mainly on paper, but I like to vary it up as much as possible. Each way of doing it has different results. The problem is that after doing it for a long time, an instrument tends to give you the same results. At this stage of trying to break out of my old ruts, I actually like to sit and think about it.