Michael Manring has waited a long time to make a true solo bass album. In fact, he’s been thinking about it since he was ten years old, just a year after he first picked up the instrument. Now 44, the electric bass virtuoso has finally gotten the chance with his latest release, Soliloquy.
Solo bass has been fundamental to Manring’s approach since his first big career splash in the early ’80s as a sideman for the late acoustic guitar innovator Michael Hedges. Believing solo guitar and solo bass were equally important, Hedges gave Manring regular solo spotlights during gigs. The rapturous response eventually led to all-solo bass shows worldwide and the inclusion of a handful of solo pieces on Manring’s previous three CDs, which otherwise focus on ensemble-based jazz, rock, and electronica work.
A full slate of session work and collaborative efforts—including Attention Deficit, with Primus drummer Tim Alexander and ex-Testament axeman Alex Skolnick, and Yo Miles!, a band inspired by Miles Davis’s mid-’70s fusion output—made it a challenge for Michael to find the time and resources to record an entirely solo bass disc. But with the encouragement of his enthusiastic fans, Manring put aside other projects to record Soliloquy, whose 14 tracks go from mellow and meditative to funky and flamboyant. Soliloquy finds Manring employing the entire range of his instantly recognizable blend of altered tunings, slapping, tapping, strumming, plucking, and harmonics. His unique sound also partly derives from his unconventional choice of instruments, such as his Zon Legacy 10-string and signature Zon Hyperbass, which has advanced tuning mechanisms that enable him to rifle through more than 100 different tunings in a single piece.
Soliloquy makes a highly personal musical statement about solitude. As a significant contribution to the modest but evolving catalog of solo bass albums, it also shatters preconceptions about the limitations of bass guitar as a solo instrument.
What considerations did you keep in mind when conceiving Soliloquoy?
It goes back to when I was a kid, playing bass alone in my room and thinking, Wow—it would be really cool to do a whole record of solo bass. People said it was a terrible idea and that no one would ever buy that, because it’s not what the bass does. However, the sound of the bass is so expansive and rich that I could listen to it for hours and hours without getting bored. It’s capable of an enormously broad emotional range. Still, I had to really think about why other people might not be interested in a solo bass album. I came to the conclusion that for many, the sound of the bass is very monotonous—but what impresses me about this instrument is the wealth of sounds and the variety of timbres it’s capable of, and that’s something I tried to explore on this record. I wanted people to understand the different things you can do with the bass, both from a technical standpoint and also by electronically changing the timbre. That’s why each piece on the album has its own little sonic world.
Describe some of the approaches you explored.
I used five basses, and they are all significantly different from one another. They all have completely different pickups, they’re made from different woods, and most of them have radically different setups. The Hyperbass has piccolo strings. One bass is acoustic. And then there’s the 10-string, which has five pairs of strings tuned to unusual intervals. I also play the basses in lots of different ways. For instance, on “When We Were Asleep in the Earth,” I didn’t actually play the strings; I drummed on the body of the Hyperbass with my fingers and allowed the strings to vibrate in sympathy with the drumming. “Selene” was recorded live at a San Francisco show. “Makes Perfect Sense to Me” is based around a harmonizer-like program I made on my Boss VF-1 multi-effect. In addition, I recorded all of the pieces live without overdubs or fixes. I wanted the album to feature real, contiguous performances, as opposed to so much of the music we hear today that’s edited to death.
Describe your compositional process.
My earliest memories are of composing music in my head. I can remember composing little melodies and listening to music on the radio and changing it in my mind. So, composing for me is a deep part of who I am, and I try to integrate it into everyday facets of my life. I usually don’t have much time to write stuff down in notation, so I capture a lot of ideas on my little Zoom PS-02 palmtop recorder when I’m practicing. Also, during long flights, I spend a lot of time thinking about themes and orchestrating pieces in my head. I also create scratch notes on paper, where I write down a few musical notes and thoughts about how I can organize ideas in different ways.
Some of the pieces on Soliloquy were very difficult to compose. Some took months for me to put together, pull apart, look at each note to decide if it really fits, and put the piece back together again. Other pieces on the album are hardly compositions at all; they were more a case of, “I’d like to record a piece like this,” and I went ahead and recorded them without practicing.
What attracts you to unconventional instruments such as the Hyperbass and 10-string?
If you play piano, you are somewhat affected by its long and beautiful history. But the bass guitar’s frontiers are wide open. The rules aren’t as set, the options are much more broad, and it’s really an instrument of this time and place. It’s still evolving, too, as evidenced by those Zon instruments. Having these options gives me the opportunity to express ideas and emotions about being alive in these extraordinary times. We’re also living in very dangerous times in which we’re facing amazing challenges to civilization. As an artist, I feel I have a responsibility to work in unique ways that deal with those issues in a musical manner.
Where does your fascination with altered tunings stem from?
It derives from a desire to expand the instrument’s expressive palette. When you change the tuning of a string, you’re also changing the tension. You alter the way it vibrates, and that alone says something different. If you tune the string very loose, it gets a floppy sound. If you hit that string hard, the pitch goes sharp, then it goes a little flat, and then it comes to rest in a center pitch. That sound has an emotional resonance with people; they perceive it as loose, funky, fat, and wild. If you tune a string really tight, you hear more overtones than fundamental, and people tend to hear that as more proper and organized. So, changing a string’s tautness opens up different emotional possibilities. If you mix strings of different tensions together, you can draw from an even bigger set of emotional choices at any moment. It always blows my mind that most bassists don’t change their tunings.
Your work with Yo Miles! finds you playing Michael Henderson’s two- to four-note bass lines for up to a half-hour at a time. What appeals to you about that playing style?
I don’t feel that playing a two-note bass line, like on Miles’s “Ife,” is any harder or easier than playing a more intricate solo piece. I put just as much thought, work, and energy into playing either one. The goal is always the same: to find out what the music is all about, what it has to say about who we are, and how it can resonate with us as human beings. I love the fact that a lot of Miles’s pieces from that era are built around the bass. Michael has an amazing, bouncy feel that makes those old Miles recordings so funky; he’s been a hero of mine since I was a kid. Henry Kaiser, who co-leads Yo Miles!, asked me not to try to replicate Henderson’s style, but to try to play the lines in my own way. So, it was a matter of finding ways to maintain the integrity of the lines while making them my own. The tunes go on for a long time, so it was necessary to introduce some variation to avoid monotony—but the variations had to remain in the spirit of the original line. There has been a lot of water under the bridge since those original Miles recordings, so I was trying to balance the post-Jaco concept with that late-’60s, early-’70s sound.
What recommendations do you have for bassists seeking to develop a unique voice?
The main thing is to have an open mind and not assume that anything is impossible or should not be done. You should try things out, no matter how stupid they may seem, if you think some interesting possibilities might emerge. You should also really listen carefully and think about each thing you play, what it says, and what the possibilities are within that. And if you have a bizarre new idea, don’t force it down people’s throats. It’s important to look for a place where that idea fits and then offer it as an option. If you’re doing a session and have a strange idea, you might say, “There are a couple of possibilities here. There’s this way that’s more conventional, and there’s this bizarre and interesting idea. I’ll play them both for you, and you can decide what you like.”
You’ve always been outspoken about getting the music industry to take the bass guitar more seriously. What’s your take on the current state of the bass?
The fact that the bass became important to pop music is a double-edged sword. Pop music is so ephemeral and represents planned obsolescence. Does that mean the bass is also subject to becoming obsolete? I hope not. My fear is that the bass could become this century’s sackbut—a wildly popular instrument in the 17th century, but no one plays it anymore. I think things are healthy right now, but we stand at a crossroads where the bass could either really develop or completely disappear. What happens will entirely depend on the depth with which people dedicate themselves to both listening to and playing the instrument. For me, that includes taking a positive attitude no matter what musical context I’m working in. The question I always ask myself is, “How I can participate in this music while keeping that bigger picture in mind?”