What do we make of Danny Sapko?

[Steve Browning]

The genie is long out of the bottle. Influencers earn their living from clickbait, whether that be players or personalities. Debating the pros and cons is pointless. 

 

Good luck to them but it's a game I have no interest in playing. Other than to lament its existence to other bass players!!

[ezbass]

4 hours ago, Dan Dare said:

The good news was that she copped a lot of grief in the comments.

Just a quick look at some of those (checked them with obligatory, opening ad paused, so no ‘watched’ registered) and that video has really backfired for her.

[TimR]

10 minutes ago, ezbass said:

Just a quick look at some of those (checked them with obligatory, opening ad paused, so no ‘watched’ registered) and that video has really backfired for her.

People will not have heard of her before. People will have subscribed to her.

 

There is no such thing as bad publicity. 

[peteb]

8 minutes ago, TimR said:

People will not have heard of her before. People will have subscribed to her.

 

There is no such thing as bad publicity. 

 

Dunno, ask Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor about that... 

 

[Misdee]

Regarding Mohini Dey, I wouldn't condemn her as being a bad person for playing unnecessarily complex bass guitar, or for trying make some money from it by endorsing AI, or whatever. I just think she's either made some bad decisions, and/,or been badly advised by someone on how to further her career via social media. In the Internet Age there's so many more opportunities to make bad decisions that can be instantaneously shared with the whole world forever.

 

Everybody makes mistakes, I've made plenty of my own and then made more when I should have known better. It's important to keep things in proportion. No one has been irreparably harmed by Mohini Dey and whatever she does on social media. Myself, I couldn't care less about AI, it's going to do whatever it's going to do. Nothing is going to hold back that tide. Bring a crap bass player and trying to make a few quid doesn't make her The Wicked Witch of the West.

Edited 7 hours ago by Misdee

[Leonard Smalls]

9 hours ago, Misdee said:

It could all be so different if she did.

There's a proper groove going on here... With no excess widdleywoo (well, just a touch but if you've got it etc!)

 

 

And remarkably restrained here - love Greg Howe's guitar playing!

 

 

 

 

[SimonK]

30 minutes ago, Leonard Smalls said:

There's a proper groove going on here... With no excess widdleywoo (well, just a touch but if you've got it etc!)

 

 

And remarkably restrained here - love Greg Howe's guitar playing!

 

 

 

 

 

Yes they both have very different styles - and you can see how they clash - here was Danny this weekend:

 

 

[TimR]

This was the first I saw of her. She can play! 

 

 

 

[Steve Browning]

Well, if she's good enough for Simon Phillips....

[Leonard Smalls]

5 minutes ago, Steve Browning said:

Well, if she's good enough for Simon Phillips....

And Greg Howe!

And Guthrie Govan...

 

[Linus27]

2 hours ago, TimR said:

This was the first I saw of her. She can play! 

 

 

 

 

I don't understand why the other girl was so impressed with Mohini writing charts when working out a song. This is literally exactly what I do first time listening to a song. I have books and books of charts from bands I've played for, mostly original music where I've charted out the chords. I then work out the bass line based on the groove or what I'm hearing melodically. I thought this was the norm and everyone does it this way but there was nothing impressive or amazing to me what Mohini did in this video. 

[Misdee]

4 hours ago, Leonard Smalls said:

There's a proper groove going on here... With no excess widdleywoo (well, just a touch but if you've got it etc!)

 

 

And remarkably restrained here - love Greg Howe's guitar playing!

 

 

 

 

For my taste, this music is very hard to listen to. It's all too much to take in. There's too much going on. It's relentlessly dynamic, and has no dynamics as a result of that.

 

I'm not averse to complex instrumental music by any means, and the virtuosity of the playing is there to behold, but all I can say is I'm surprised Simon Phillips hasn't got anything better to do.

[TimR]

11 minutes ago, Linus27 said:

I thought this was the norm and everyone does it this way but there was nothing impressive or amazing to me what Mohini did in this video. 

 

Yep. That's the norm.

 

I'm impressed that you can do it with just one listen through though, without ever hearing the song before. 

 

Generally I give the song several listens and then pick out the chords while playing along with my bass as reference. Not do it all by ear. 

[Cato]

I can't remember the exact story but I'm pretty sure Mohini Dey's dad was a pro musician and she started learning music and theory very young.

 

There's no doubt she's a top tier player, one of those you could drop in any situation from a pub level covers band to an all star jazz ensemble and she'd be completely comfortable.

 

She does have a tendency to post short clips of very fast highly technical solos up on her social media which can sound pretty unmusical to the casual listener (and I count myself in that group) especially out of context of the rest of the song, which I guess makes her an easy target for 'She's talented but would you want to listen to it' type criticism.

Edited 4 hours ago by Cato

[mep]

10 minutes ago, TimR said:

 

Yep. That's the norm.

 

I'm impressed that you can do it with just one listen through though, without ever hearing the song before. 

 

Generally I give the song several listens and then pick out the chords while playing along with my bass as reference. Not do it all by ear. 

I found her impressive. She wrote the chart out on the first listen and played her version of a bass line on the next listen. Ive seen a few of these on SBL and she did it the quickest. 

The other girl (for Linus27) is Sharon Reynolds who is a very competent bass player herself.

[peteb]

41 minutes ago, Linus27 said:

I don't understand why the other girl was so impressed with Mohini writing charts when working out a song.

 

 

17 minutes ago, mep said:

I found her impressive. She wrote the chart out on the first listen and played her version of a bass line on the next listen. Ive seen a few of these on SBL and she did it the quickest. 

 

 

Has anyone seen the videos that Tom Bukovac (a Nashville session guitar player) puts out? He did a behind the scenes one of a session he was on, where literally everyone in the room does exactly the same as Mohini did. Then they go back to joking around, quickly compare the charts they have just done, then go for a take. 

 

To be fair, I think that most people here will do something similar when learning new material. The difference is for people like me is that I will stop the playback a few times to give me chance to get each section, then listen to it again to check that I've got it right. If you are a top studio player then you're expected to be able to get it right first time (like she did)! 

 

[SimonK]

16 minutes ago, peteb said:

 

 

Has anyone seen the videos that Tom Bukovac (a Nashville session guitar player) puts out? He did a behind the scenes one of a session he was on, where literally everyone in the room does exactly the same as Mohini did. Then they go back to joking around, quickly compare the charts they have just done, then go for a take. 

 

To be fair, I think that most people here will do something similar when learning new material. The difference is for people like me is that I will stop the playback a few times to give me chance to get each section, then listen to it again to check that I've got it right. If you are a top studio player then you're expected to be able to get it right first time (like she did)! 

 

 

She sounded great on the video and had chops that I couldn't possibly play, but, the thing that filled me with a bit of hope is that they were all very pentatonic within the 1/5/octave box (even the slapping), showing that if put under pressure even the great players resort to something that is a bit more recognisable.

 

Staying on topic - Danny was on exactly the same show (link posted a few pages back) and did a pretty good job albeit on a far simpler track, which in my view had more of a groove, emphasising again that we have two people from very different spectrums of the bass community here - possibly as far apart as you can get - and maybe hence the entertaining clash.

[tegs07]

6 minutes ago, SimonK said:

 

She sounded great on the video and had chops that I couldn't possibly play, but, the thing that filled me with a bit of hope is that they were all very pentatonic within the 1/5/octave box (even the slapping), showing that if put under pressure even the great players resort to something that is a bit more recognisable.

 

Staying on topic - Danny was on exactly the same show (link posted a few pages back) and did a pretty good job albeit on a far simpler track, which in my view had more of a groove, emphasising again that we have two people from very different spectrums of the bass community here - possibly as far apart as you can get - and maybe hence the entertaining clash.

I am not sure that the clash is about how they play bass. It seems to me they can both play well and will appeal to different audiences. For me it’s more of a cultural clash between being a blinged up, revenue driven persona and a more down to earth, less sell your soul kind of ethos.

[Leonard Smalls]

1 hour ago, Misdee said:

For my taste, this music is very hard to listen to.

I'd class that as easy listening proggyjazzrock, with a relatively straightahead rock groove!

Here's a bass player who's just as good as La Dey but doesn't do dodgy ads for toxic slushies, and goes off-piste a bit more! One of my fave albums, btw...

 

And in slightly less easy-listening news here's another bass player who despite often venturing quite well off-piste still manages to groove. And no influencer nonsense, though he had the "pleasure" of producing (arguably) John Lydon's best work... Waddya reckon, Sapko? 😁

 

 

[BassTractor]

Demn you, @Leonard Smalls! 
I'm too poor to read your posts!

[TimR]

27 minutes ago, tegs07 said:

For me it’s more of a cultural clash between being a blinged up, revenue driven persona and a more down to earth, less sell your soul kind of ethos.

 

One is from up north.

One is from across the pond. 

 

It's probably that simple. 

[Linus27]

2 hours ago, TimR said:

 

Yep. That's the norm.

 

I'm impressed that you can do it with just one listen through though, without ever hearing the song before. 

 

Generally I give the song several listens and then pick out the chords while playing along with my bass as reference. Not do it all by ear. 

 

I've have always had a really strong ear which I guess is why I gravitated to fretless but I will still work out charts with my bass as reference the same way that Mohini did. Sometimes I will work the chords out on the first listen but I will hear the chord or note and know what it is through pitch and then go back and write it out after. I was just amazed at the other girl gushing over that technique when I do that all the time and just assumed thats what everybody did. I thought she was just trying to be dramatic and play up to the camera 🤣

Edited 1 hour ago by Linus27