BassTractor

Oh! Luvverly choice! Are you aware of the other two in the same series? In case, they're "Jazz på ryska" with Arne Domnérus and Georg Riedel, and "Jazz på ungerska" with Svend Asmussen. I think I remember loving two of the three mostly, but "Jazz på svenska" was the first and will remain a fave of sorts as it introduced me to that style. BTW, "svenska" means Swedish, "ryska" means Russian, and "ungerska" means Hungarian.

I don't think so. Why would it be? To me it's more like: if you want to paint the Mona Lisa in Renaissance style, then it might be an idea to not use green for Lisa's skin tone.

Ha! Parts of the tongue. I liked that, as I feel that it might be a perfect comparison as it says something about the physical sensitivities before you even talk about the psychological sensitivities - what one is used to, what is experienced as relevant etc. Consecutive fifths were physically a stomach-turning abomination to my ears when I was young. Then I started using them willingly and a lot - but in new music rather than the original baroque environment that had formed my sensitivities. Interestingly (to me at least), when heard in medieval and Renaissance music, they do not turn my stomach so much as invoke a little smile about the naïvité of old music. BTW, I lurv medieval and Renaissance music. But to this day, a melodic line 4 - 3 - 1 in a Major key, as heard in a lot of popular music, still turns my stomach, and though I wish to be open-minded, I never manage to free myself from the notion that the composer of those three notes should've avoided them with a vengeance (polite wording here ). Not to say I delete those songs from my iPod though.

I hate you so much right now! Now I'll have to listen to the coddemn song!

I suspect you and I might be more on the same line than I initially thought. When I wrote the sentence you quoted, I was not trying to refer to composing by numbers, but to the ability to know in advance how the target audience would respond to (new or old) ways of doing things. Playing what you like yourself, and what you feel is expressing the message effectively, then is one good method amongst several. BTW. to me there is no qualitative difference between someone feeling that say the IV-I is a good idea and someone who was taught in college why IV-I could be a good idea. The first person supposedly has the same good ears as the second person, but the second person probably in addition has been told why this is. The first person presumably found the chords on his guitar and saw it was good, where the second person maybe would say beforehand: "I'm gonna opt for the IV-I in this song". The first person remembers it too, and says the same thing the next time. An important factor, to me, in discussing these things is what one understands the term "the rules" to mean, and I willingly use quotation marks consistently for that term when used in certain meanings. To me, "rules" are not commands about how to write music, and are very far from commands about composing by numbers, but are gathered wisdom about what musical elements have what effect on which listener". As an old and maybe still used example: nobody ever commands you to use a tritone interval in the fourth bar but not in the seventh . but the "rules" do state that our world's shared musical experience tells us that this interval has a certain tension in it that to certain listeners, and in certain musical styles, demands to be resolved - or might be experienced as daunting or ugly in certain circumstances. After that, the composer decides freely to use it or not, and in case how. Rules (without quotation marks) do exist though. Say if you want to write a baroque fugue, then you're probably gonna look up what baroque theorists demanded from a fugue. But that I think is outside of what we're discussing here. More could be said about different types of rules, but I'll only mention the analytical patterns one has found in hindsight when analysing music of days yonder. These rules do not tell you what you should do, but what others have done before you. Enough!

The problem with that notion, I personally think, is that while it's true, it's not the whole truth. Yes, different people have different sensitivities to different things in music (that, I think is your "it's all subjective" bit), but also: some people's ears perform on a higher level than others'. Taste comes in to it, as does getting used to (for example I used to hate hard rock music 45-50 years ago before I heard Deep Purple, but now love death metal too). Most people also have a shared sense for most of the musical forces that are at play, and that's why we for example mostly see regular songs ending in V-I. One could of course go on and on about this, but I assume you get the gist. However, there is no such thing as THE expected in that given situation, as in that there's one option only. As an example I've often written a certain type of church music that for music psychology reasons ended in a IV-I instead as it puts the expected listener in a different state of mind. A pro knows what tools to use to generate certain responses, whilst many composers do not. Example at the bottom. When Prince or other composers create a song, they're essentially working with music psychology - out of what we know about (Western) man's response to certain musical information. Somebody like Prince (in my personal, not generally valid, view), when he wants to invoke certain responses from certain audiences (maybe his own fanatic fans or maybe the generic radio listener), is better than some other composers at choosing melodies, rhythms and harmonic developments so that his musical language is at its most effective in reaching those goals. "Expected in that given situation" does exist, I agree, but is more about that V-I ending and similar harmonic development powers, and about melodic and rhythmic expectancies too, and less about whether one wants to write certain songs and which tools to choose for those songs to be effective at reaching the goal. The people who wrote about "I'm a Barbie Girl" were IMO very effective in that particular endeavour, and I love the song, but I also strongly suspect that they would hardly be able to write a Prince song. People like Zappa OTOH would improvisingly create a new song live without too much insecurity and miscommunication. One would use that which is common music knowledge as a tool to fill out the idea that one of the players (say Zappa himself) started with, but the resulting song would most probably lack finesse or an overall coherence of every element within. I think a lot of jazz might be within the processes I try to describe here. Here's an example of music that I think might be "perfect" as to following all the "rules" (though I can't bear listening to it long enough to even check and I also seriously doubt that they're able at all), but it also shows that this band lacks everything in the departments of control, finesse or even a deeper awareness of what the "rules" are - beyond the most rudimentary. Listen at your own risk: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKFDHbP7R50

It's very late - during a terrible, sleepless night - but I'll try from my personal perspective. To me it's about how the music has a certain flowing, waving character with perfect placement of rhythmic and chordal elements. I think I hear how Prince really hears the musical driving forces in his head before writing them down, and feels them with great sensitivity and sense of balance. With many other hit artists, I think I hear how they struggle with the material and are not really able to convey more than a rough idea (nice and great as that may be, and my iPod is filled with them), and many artists lend their often called "unique sound" from their severe limitations. Not so with Prince. He reminds me of Mozart and partially of Green Gartside (Scritti Politti). This post should've been much longer and with analytical depth, but I have to give up now. Hope it helps somewhat.

Nope. Sustain is in the fingers.

, but that is actually what worries me most about this thread, and it had felt better to me as a Norse Dutchman, if this group hug / top man thing had been less prominent. But I knew there was a considerable risk that that would happen on a British forum, and I felt I had to accept that before even starting to write. Writing this OP was more important than avoiding these likely consequences. At the same time, and at several levels, it's also very heartwarming and highly appreciated, so this really is a mixed bag to me. To compensate though, I stand by my views in several of that "talented" topic's elements, and as such am still the condescending tw*t that some people always have known that I am. I'm not sorry for having a strong opinion about Bassman7755's stance in the matter, but I'm sorry for having invoked the Dunning-Krueger effect about people whom I know little about, and who are not part in the "treating talents badly" thing I wrote about in a later post.

Ah! Whilst you posted that, I was writing a PM to Bassman7755. So synchronicity was true after all. Yup, one can always depend on Jung. Thanks, Rik. (I was aware of the new function, but forgot to use it in this thread. Hard to teach a dead dog a new trick.)

Strictly speaking this is Off Topic, but I put it here because it's a response to a thread within General Discussion. In the thread about the most musically talented musician of all time, I wrote a post that I now believe must have been way more hard hitting than I imagined when I wrote it, and Bassman7755 especially was (or seemed) its target. I have read and re-read the offending post, and now believe that it was an ugly thing to write. I therefore apologise to Bassman7755, and of course all others who may have felt they were its target, for that post's general tone and the aspects of it that put down other people. What I should've said was that the most talented person likely is not a person we tend to know. What I said instead was that people who mention McCartney have no clue about this stuff. I'm very sorry, and wish Bassman7755 and others all the best. Bert

Thanks for the eye popping stuff! Yes, I know, and your description is so creepily true that it resembles science: a Bongo, any Bongo, and a fretless Ray in any colour is all one needs - though I myself choose a Dargie Delight Bongo and a black fretless Ray with rosewood board. I often wonder what Jaco, talented as he was, could've achieved had he had a real Bongo in his hands! Unimportant but as BTW for the uninitiated: Robert Altman made a film that was much better than its renommé, with a creepily correct description of how wealthy ladies in Dallas, TX function:

Great post, Dr. T-without-the-women-but-with-a-Ray. I was trying to write a post building on yours, but saw in time I was only repeating what you'd already said. Hehe. I don't see how I could top what I've already done before.

I do! I have a fraction of his vision or of his ability or of his skill!

Nice post, and I agree - except with the quoted part: I think they had several great songs in the beginning (as in: on their first album).

This is such a stretch that it starts to resemble goalpost moving - deliberate or otherwise. I don't know whether joking is involved or whether this is to be taken seriously, and a any rate, I'm not gonna discuss this further. Sparked by this post, however, allow me to talk about some concepts. LONG POST WARNING: MOST PEOPLE SHOULD NOT NEED TO READ THIS. See, I already sense/understand that this post is gonna be way too long, and only part of that has to do with me struggling to be brief in a foreign language. My apologies. Also, I'm not writing anything that I do not assume is general knowledge. It's just that some posts in this thread make it seem necessary to remind some people of some things. Apologies, again. Anyway, Bassman7755, in his very own words, said: In other words: he is able to judge that I lack social calibration. He's possibly right, and me defending myself is not why I use his text here. The point however is: WHY can he judge this? Because he himself is socially calibrated on a higher level. In his choice of wording, one of the unspoken premises in the whole enthymeme-like construction is that people have social calibration on different levels. Bassman7755 happily is one of the people who can judge that people like me (or me only) operate on a lower level. Now, I'm fine with this. I'm just about resourceful enough to realise that I'm a far-from-perfect being, and my social calibration is mixed. I do not agree with his assessment entirely though, supported by my happy experiences in the area, but I do accept that at least I should've worded more carefully and empathetically. BTW, when I used McCartney as an example, I honestly was unaware that that name was even mentioned already, and mentioned even by Bassman7755 in the same post I quoted. I naively used the name in expectation of people mentioning McCartney later. I'm truly sorry about that aspect of my post that Bassman7755 reacted to, and would have worded more sensitively had I remembered that Bassman7755 has used the name. I only had noticed him mentioning Kate Bush. But at any rate, Bassman7755 himself seems to accept the very concept that is at play here: Some people are better equipped than others in different areas. Some are better equipped than others to judge aspects about others. My neighbour judged that I had no talent at football. He was right. But if I'd shown any talent, then we'd probably need someone else than my neighbour to judge exactly how far I could go in my football career. In most or all aspects of life there are certain statistical distributions, and a startling amount of those distributions roughly follow the Gauss curve (standard distribution). This would for example mean that only few people function on a bottom level and very few on a top level - the easiest example being that few people have an IQ below 50, and roughly equally few have one above 150. Most people are less than a standard deviation away from average. As to being musically talented, without going into theoretical debates about what it is and is not, but just going by the regular term as we tend to use it, those that are least talented musically, either just have no relationship to music, or they only like the least demanding forms of it, and more demanding forms of music are deemed to be noise or similar. That non-demanding music is still easy to judge by others who're higher up on the staircase. The rest gives itself. The more advanced the music, the fewer people are able to create it or appreciate it. Theoretically, only one person at the top is able to appreciate all existing music and to create that stuff. In real life of course it doesn't work exactly that way. Oh yes, I hear voices in my head, Bassman7755's voice amongst others, but bear with me: What music can become very popular, and what music can become popular classics that we hear on the radio decade after decade? By definition it's the music that large groups in society can appreciate (not too demanding) and at the same time: that will not bore them easily. That last part is essential as it is there some of the quality lies.The quality does not often lie in the three chord harmonic development. Are those popular classics written by highly talented people? Very often: yes. Sometimes: no. Burt Bacharach and The Beatles are certainly highly talented, but others exist as well who just are not. Are they written by the one, single most musically talented musician of all time? Not very likely. Why not? Because that person very likely showed talent at an early age, and got this talent developed. That person would experience popular music as demanding little, and also as giving little, and would turn his/her brain to other music - music that is not only food of love, but also food for brain. Mozart at an early age could write much more well-constructed, well-flowing and error-free music than most of us can ever dream of, and since he only developed upwards despite his life style and general lack of Bach-like driving forces. In all likeliness, the one single most musically talented person of all time, unlike the many highly talented people of more regular shape who write popular classics, is in the group of people who are somewhere in that ivory tower that many people hate, where new concepts are created, and the borders of what can be art are moved. Bach conservatively stayed within that old baroque music, but at the same time let it go on paths where no music had gone before. If you know your stuff, the gap between Bach and Vivaldi is enormous! (I may earlier have written about how Bach and Vivaldi react differently when a certain chord/voice sequence brings the music to steeper, narrower paths with higher danger level.) As an example of what I'm on about: In the eighties, I heard two interviews. One was with a highly respected Norwegian folk music player. The other was with B.B. King. Both in all essence said the very same thing: "People always ask me what music inspires me, and what rocks my boat. But at my level, what I love, and what inspires me, is not the same stuff that the people who love my music love, and when I answer, they always respond: "But that isn't even blues anymore" / "That isn't even folk music anymore!". But it is blues/folk music! It just is more demanding, and it's appreciated by the likes of me - not by the masses who love my music." There! B.B. King said it, so it must be true even though I said it too. I'm sure I wrote some unnecessary stuff and forgot some essential stuff, but I'm quitting now. Again, I apologise for the length and for the low speed in the thought development area. I know some people on BC could have said the same in one sentence. I can't. I've started and deleted an answer many times, and have also thought many times I'd delete the whole thing written above. But I didn't. I just hope it's of service to one or two people.

Simples. They're the most musically talented musicians of all time! Aw, c'mon! Someone had to say it!

Oh. Didn't notice that. In that case: Paul McCartney! Aye, but as long as it's just a giggle, I have a hard time understanding how it could be interesting. We'd basically name any of the well-known artists that clearly have one form of talent, and that's it. The moment we do try to answer the impossible question however, it becomes interesting right away. I don't have the answer or any answer, BTW; but I do have a story that proves it's not me: Through the years, I've been in discussion with several of my composition teachers, where the pattern was that they were negative towards popular music whilst I talked warmly about it. One day I used the argument over all arguments (or so I thought), when stating: "Listen, I've loved your music since I was a kid. I must be very musical, so give me some credit when I say that there's a lot of value in at least parts of popular music." He simply stated: "I'm more musical than you."

Hehe. Your language. Wiktionay taught me that regatta (the regular one with 1 'g' ) not only means boat races, but also striped cotton fabric. BTW, back then people did say the album title was a loose playing with the words "reggae by whites", but I've never seen any confirmation by a Police bandmember. I'd guess people just invented a likely interpretation in their heads, and spread it. As to Sting, I've always been impressed with his choice of notes and rhythms in the bass parts, as well as with the combination of his playing and his singing. Also, The Police to me are a prime example of what you can get out of a trio with just one guitar and one bass. Highly impressed - for four decades now.

Nonsense! It means a white cotton fabric with white stripes.

Aye, and I think everyone understands. I even think that the unspoken premise of the whole thread is that we know about reality. But the question in the thread title was "who would you most have enjoyed playing bass with", and then we answer that - each in our own way. People not mentioning they need to make money does not mean they're unaware. That said, and as an example: My own making money off music has been through teaching on all different levels, from total beginners to post graduates. Even before going to music college I started and ran a music school so as to see whether I could bear living as a music teacher. You see, I'd noticed a pattern: most musicians started at music college with an idea of being a world star, and most of them wound up as frustrated music teachers. I didn't want to be like them. My gig work has cost more than it brought in, and I've been rigid about choosing gigs with near total freedom. Most of my gigs in fact haven't even been paid gigs, but the experience of working with all kinds of musicians - literally from beginners to world famous people - has been most rewarding. Making very little money off teaching has just been part of the investment and lifestyle. For me, playing with artists of all calibers has indeed been all fun and games, so Zappa wouldn't even have to pay me (but please don't tell him or the family trust ).

It needs to be fun, varied and demanding/giving enough every single night, so for me personally this band would need a huge song base too. Living Colour for example must have bored themselves to near suicide whilst repeating the same few songs live for decades. Zappa would probably be it for me.

Chris Squier never warranted a signature bass! Sorry. Somebody had to, I gathered.

Actually, people who can write hit classics are ten-a-penny, and that's why there are millions of hit classics on this planet. People like Bach, Mozart and Penderecki are extremely rare. Me, I love thousands of hit classics, and my iPod is filled to the rim with stuff you might appreciate - ranging from death metal to Spice Girls to Beatles to Prince to the Dixie Dregs and other already mentioned artists. However, the hit classics seldomly have been written by the most talented musicians ever, which is what the thread was about. I still love them and appreciate these songs for what they are. I do not need to dream up myths about them in order for them to become valuable enough. For example, I love the Beatles and have every album from Rubber Soul and on - but one. Paul McCartney still ain't no Bach. BTW, there's this little quick-and-dirty litmus test: ask Penderecki and McCartney to analyse and critique each other's work... You'll soon find that Penderecki immediately sees the strenghts and weaknesses of Sir Paul's output, where Sir Paul will not be able to even start analysing Penderecki's work. Yes, I'm aware that that is not of value to you. Your story is somewhat more like this: if by a weird coincidence a newborn child cries loudly and it somehow becomes a hit classic, then this newborn child is mentioned by at least 5 of the random people you stop in the street, and this newborn child then logically is way more talented than Penderecki ever was... I call BS. Sorry about that. Actually, in any part of life, I am always open for any criticism. You and I have never met, and I do not expect you to believe me, but what counts to me is trying to find something that has some value and some truth, and I like to find this stuff in a (fighting if need) collaboration with other minds. If that truth reveals my weaknesses, then I've learnt something and have received a clue as to what I need to work on. Criticise me all you want, but I do prefer it when people who criticise me base their input on facts and reasonable analysis. My calling people clueless may have been misguided, but does not come from a vacuum. It stems in part from some form of truth (Paul McCartney is a talented person who has written many songs that the general public can love (me included) but not more than that, and in 300 years he'll not have the status that Bach and the like will still have), and it also stems from observing the loudmouths on this planet for six decades and seeing how badly they treat the talents on this planet - talents who often accept this maltreatment in silence because they understand how the talentless function. When I wrote my above post, I was a bit fed up, and also remembered another thread that I sadly couldn't find and link to. I was unsure whether I should post, but the being fed up won. Your remark about my social calibration is the typical use-of-hastily-found-stick that I'm not too enthusiastic about (not that it was a particularly heavy stick).

Thanks, Dad. I was gonna like that, but computer says no. ("Sorry, you cannot add any more reactions today." - an unexpected feature of the new feature.)