Next Level Bassist Musicality Issue

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17 & 4 3 œ œ œ œ ‰ œ ‰ œ ‰ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œ ‰ œ ‰ œ . 4 3 ? œ ‰ œ ‰ œ ‰ œ ‰ œ ‰ œ ‰ œ ‰ œ ‰ œ ‰ œ ‰ œ ‰ œ ‰ . Mastering an exercise like this is still only the tip of the iceberg, but it can begin to develop the internal rhythm that you really need to hold a groove. It has been my experience that players of all genres benefit from this. After all, if you go through your life learning incredibly complex concerti and sonatas, you might still get away without spending a lot of time on rhythm. When a great classical musician plays a Brandenburg Concerto, he or she aims to achieve a “swing” in that bubbly, dancing way that Bach is meant to be played. I think this is why jazz musicians are drawn to Bach, Mozart, Beethoven - these composers had a certain unmistakable rhythmic drive in their music. You have to be able to groove to play Mozart 40 in an audition! We’re talking about being able to stand alone and generate an unshakable rhythm independently, and it’s the calling card of every great musician out there. There are ways to test yourself. Record yourself playing an ostinato and check with the metronome throughout to see if you’re drifting. Play with other people and move through a variety of rhythmic feels - 2-step, walking, samba, tumbao - and ask them if they feel like they want to play along! If you can play a 2 bar phrase that makes people want to dance, you’re doing it right! You should endeavor to make a groove sustainable for a very very long period of time. In the cultures where jazz came from, like African and Caribbean music, musicians can keep inside the groove for hours at a time. Your attention span needs to grow, and you need to learn the concentration skills to remain fixated on a groove for a long time. I tell students if you can’t maintain a groove and make it feel incredible for 10 minutes, you don’t have it yet. When you really analyze the idea of groove, you find that it’s about sound…beauty and consistency of sound - if you can’t get that from the bow or from your fingers, then you won’t have the tools to play rhythms correctly. If you don’t have a consistent attack and contact point, your rhythm will suffer. The groove can get disrupted because you aren’t giving the downbeat its proper emphasis, or shaping the inner beats, or you’ll trip over a string crossing. Being able to create a groove is everything wrapped into one - it’s technique, rhythm, sound, emotion, concentration, focus, patience… Part of the time when I ask someone to play me a two bar pattern, he’ll start noodling. NOW AVAILABLE SOLO TUNING Strings Handmade in Germany Photo Credit © Pöllmann 14 NOV/DEC 2013 NEXT LEVEL BASSIST
Bard College Conservatory of Music with the American Symphony Orchestra announces the american symphony orchestra Double Bass Scholarship A full merit scholarship covering tuition, room and board at the Bard Conservatory. Conservatory Double Bass Faculty Leigh Mesh Marji Danilow 845-758-7604 bard.edu/conservatory conservatoryadmission@bard.edu What I want to hear is the different roles of the notes in different parts of the bar. (See example) There are lots of elements to that seemingly simple pattern. If you can’t create that sort of groove, you don’t have musicality yet! ? 4 œ Call Response Repeat Repeat bœ j œ œ œ œ bœ j œ Once you have really crafted your internal rhythm, you can begin thinking about all the styles of music out there where your rhythm needs to be flexible. This can be classical music, or it can even be really sophisticated forms of jazz. You’ll hear this called “rubato,” but I think that can be misleading. This Italian word, meaning “robbing” time, can lead a musician into thinking just stretching out your favorite musical moments is enough, but of course you’ve got to make up for that time somewhere else. What does that really mean, though? Listen to any record of Pablo Casals or Oscar Shumsky playing Bach - they have the rhythmic solidity of a drummer. The real markers, the bar lines, are where the pulse is completely stable, but the music between the bar lines can change all over the place. If you change anything about rhythm, it’s important to remain grounded and come back to that groove you worked so hard to develop. The next step that you can research is what I call “playing over the top of the tempo,” and it’s something you can easily hear in stride piano playing. A pianist can have the left hand in time with the right hand stretched out over that. There’s an even freer way of approaching time I experience all the time in Wayne Shorter’s band - it’s the essence of breathing together and feeling our way through the tempo as a group without a strict pulse at all. We are creating music purely by listening and letting the harmonies and the sounds guide when to change the music. This is a real sign of trust, and I think you can only achieve this in groups where you play together all the time. Wayne’s band has been together for 13 years, and we can telepathically feel our way through stuff together in a way that I can’t even explain in words! I think it’s a gift we can’t take credit for - it’s a spiritual thing. Take a look at an example here. Even the ability to play without a strict beat is only possible for people who have an absolute, rock-solid inner pulse. That’s the level you need to reach to be able to focus deeply on what others are doing around you while you play. I think everyone should push themselves to this level. œ œ bœ j œ œ œ œ bœ j œ œ Inspiration I don’t think ignorance is bliss - I think knowledge is always power, if you have some wisdom to back it up. It’s vital that you learn how music is put together. I feel as though I’ve established deep relationships with certain composers to the point where I felt I understood what they may have been thinking when they wrote the music. I’ve also felt deep emotional reactions to music, to the point where at times I feel I can see cinematic imagery in the music. This is true of composers like Ravel and especially Bach, which for me is so meditative and prayer-like. Wayne Shorter talks constantly about imagery in music! I like getting students on the piano just to practice voicings, and to revel in the sound of the piano. It’s not about practicing scales and arpeggios, or putting restrictions on the music someone needs to learn. Show a musician some sounds and harmonies, let them put notes together and experiment - this can really open one’s eyes. Coltrane said he used to sit at the piano for hours just playing sounds and chords to inspire him. I’ve always thought, “If that was good enough for Trane, it’s what I’ll do!” I’ve spent a lot of time hearing harmonies and responding to them on a personal level. It’s vital to get to that area where music can paint pictures and take people to a magical, other world. I started out as a kid playing by ear, not reading any music. I’m so grateful I had a teacher who made me learn music. I was so lucky for that, because I suddenly had access to hundreds of years of music I could look at and learn from. I was lucky in my childhood to be exposed to a lot of different music, from pop and R&B to Latin and world music. Having a wide range of influences gives you a world of inspiration, and allows you to study how music is put together throughout the world. All these different cultures have musical structures that are fascinating. A lot of things I learned about music were by intuition and from my ears early on. As I got deeply into jazz, I had to train my ear to hear and respond to music that changes by the millisecond, and that’s where musicianship comes in. In Wayne Shorter’s band, there’s so much spontaneity and composition that goes on the top of the pieces we’re playing! You have to be able to operate within a harmonically complicated world, but have it sound intuitive and visceral rather than cerebral. A vital element to musicianship is singing - I grew up in a house where we all sang. Early on, I studied with Charles Siani, Principal Bass of NOV/DEC 2013 NEXT LEVEL BASSIST 15
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Page 7 and 8: ?# ° ¢ play arco or pizz. q = 18
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Page 11 and 12: PHOTOGRAPHY: JEFF GRASS ORCHESTRAL
Page 13: This applies even in strictly class
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Next Level Bassist Musicality Issue

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