Hodge

Joe Jackson's Jumping Jive Graham Maby's playing on that is gorgeous.

Bought a Lakland 44-01 from Alistair, absolutely immaculate condition. He really looks after his gear, and very easy and relaxed bloke to deal with. I'm happy.

This has been such a useful thread. I've never really gotten serious about studying jazz, but I've often heard stuff and thought "now that sounds like alot of fun.....but how the hell do they do it?" I've found that as I get older the idea of jazz gets more and more appealing, but not knowing where to start, it's very daunting, especially if you know that your own knowledge of scales and general music theory is far from solid. I've literally lost count of the number of "Aaaah!" moments these two pages have given me. Can't wait to get home and have a play. Thanks

First off I'd have to say don't worry too much about feeling that you're a crap player. I can guarantee that there's not a single person here that hasn't at some point felt dissatisfied with their playing...otherwise we'd all be quite content playing quarter notes on the root to every song. As people above have said, the bass is possibly the easiest instrument to play in a band, but the function that the bass fulfills in a band is definately the hardest to master. You're basically the link between the harmonic structure of the song and the rhythmic structure of the song. You tie together what everyone else is doing and make it into a cohesive whole. That's not an easy thing to achieve and it's this challenge makes the bass so interesting and so satisfying when you feel you've done it well. The majority of the audience may leave a gig talking about how great the guitarist was, but you can leave knowing that YOU are the one that made their night and they don't even realise it..... I quite like that. A good example is a gig our band played many years ago (before I'd learned to tuck my lead back over my strap)..... in a crowded pub some drunk bloke fell into the guitarist's mic stand and it smacked him in the nose. He stopped playing for ten seconds or so, yet the crowd kept on dancing to the rest of the band. A while later a balloon wandered onto the stage and I kicked it back into the crowd, kicking my lead out of my bass in the process. The dancing faltered and everyone looked around, confused as to why everything felt empty all of a sudden, once I was back in action the party resumed.......THAT's the level of control the bass has over a crowd, whether they're conscious of it or not. To me it seems that the mere fact that you've posted this request for advice shows that at some level you already understand this, and are aware that at the moment you're not doing it as well as you'd like. That's a promising start, all you need now is to learn how to do it.....sounds easy if you say it fast. Thankfully it's not easy at all, if it were we'd all have mastered it a long time ago and then given up out of sheer boredom. My advice would be to develop the habit of ACTIVE listening. What I mean by that is rather than just passively letting a song wash over you, as most non-musicians do, actually think as you listen about what the bassist is doing.....where they're playing root notes, where they're adding little phrases that make chord changes flow together smoothly, where they leave spaces, how their notes fall on or around the kick drum, how their line relates to the more obvious melody of the singer or whoever. Get a cheap guitar and learn a few chords, then when you're working out a bass line you like also learn what chords are being played, that way you'll develop more of an understanding of how each note of the bass line relates to the song as a whole. Take time to listen to bass players who aren't flashy soloists with super-human technique....the fancy players very often have the basics down before they begin the flashy stuff, but it's not easy to pick out amongst all the ickety ickety ....sorry, I mean slapping.... or the tapping or 32nd note solos. I don't know what sort of music you're into, but in any style you can find solid players who don't get alot of glory but do their job and put how good the song sounds above how good they themselves sound. At the stage you're at you'll learn alot more from them than you will from all the Wootens and Sheehans and Berlins combined. Not knocking any of those players, but with them the fundamental skills aren't so easy to hear through all the fancy stuff when you're just starting out. As for who to follow...well it's not really a matter of following anyone, but more a case of playing WITH someone...so that each of you compliment what the other is playing and the result is more than the sum of the two parts. 99 times out of a hundred that person will be the drummer. You never follow the guitarist, it's actually the guitarist that occasionally follows you.....we just let them think that they're leading to keep them happy. A guitarist's ego is the only thing more fragile than their strings. I tend to think of a band in terms of cake...... just bear with me, alright?.......you and the drummer are the cake, the guitarist and the singer are icing and fancy little baubles. A cake without icing is still a cake, but icing and baubles without cake is just a pile of sugary crap. It's easy to be fooled into thinking that the fancy stuff is the hard part, but it's really not. As an example, when I was younger I was a massive Geddy Lee fan, I could play along to all the earlier rush albums (up to Moving Pictures) all the way through, note for note.....I thought I was awesome. Then one night I found myself having to play Clapton's "Lay Down Sally" so that the birthday boy at the party we were playing at could have a sing. Could I play a steady, simple root-fifth type thing all the way through the song without losing the groove?.....not a hope. It was a real kick up the arse for me. So don't get disheartened, rise to the challenge, actively listen to anything and everything; the most ardent death-metal freak can still learn alot from a Rutger Gunnarson line on an Abba song or a Duck Dunn line on Otis Redding song, even adverts on the telly....nothing is out of bounds. Good luck, and enjoy.

A bit wary of resurrecting and old thread, but I feel the need to add my two pen'eth. Firstly I have to give a +1 to all above who mentioned Watt-Roy, Wobble, Watts, Prestia, Barrett, Maby, Palladino, Thompson and Dorsey. In addition I'd propose Skeet Curtis, Herbie Flowers and whoever played bass on Dixie Chicken by Little Feat. The only reason Jamerson doesn't make the list of "Bass players who can do no wrong" is that I know for a fact he carried a gun, and he must, at some point, have been in the same room as Diana Ross....... EDIT: How could I forget .... Rutger Gunnarsson