One year ago today: December 4, 2015, build that wall!
Five years ago today: December 4, 2011, old school wag needles.
Nine years ago today: December 4, 2007, boring stamp collections.
Random years ago today: December 4, 2012, measuring c in 1675.
(c is the speed of light)
MORNING, NOON, & AFTERNOON
It’s all about music most of today. That’s exclusively what was happening. I arrived a half hour late due to the slow. How slow? This photo is actually a gif. How do you just know they do these Sunday morning long hauls on purpose? But I got there and music took over. It was a day of unusual curves and the music was something else. It was evident after a few songs the new guy had never heard anything like this before. I told ya.
Top of that list is his difficulty playing thirds. That’s a giveaway because a guitar player will anchor his hand where he can play the minor pentatonic scale where a real bassist will opt for the major pentatonic. Guitar and bass design means you can’t have both. He’d get the riff on the root, but when trying to return to it from another position, his fingers would seek the guitar configuration and he’d miss the next few notes finding his place. I know exactly what causes that. His best playing had a predilection for roots and fifths. His equipment was pretty shabby and he kept going out of tune. The nut on his acoustic bass was broken.
But he did catch on when shown, to a degree. That degree is the point where the rehearsal almost becomes a bass lesson. He didn’t mind because several times he admitted he had come up with many of the same ideas but never worked through for the same reasons as me. That is, no guitar player would even give it a try, like they were terrified you might be right. That makes sense. Try to find a guitarist who makes concessions for the common good. Just you try.
We had a marketable sound right away, first song. He could follow anything I showed him (I wisely brought along my own bass just in case that happened). Mind you, he followed it with his own style and once more those sour guitar notes would creep in. The audition was mostly my own tunes because I’m restricted to what I can sing, which he fully understands. I didn’t tell him he was actually talking on key. Other guitar player quirks were he has a lot of obscure songs on his list, more B-side music. And the dead giveaway: he refers to songs by the artist rather than song title. Do you play any so-and-so? I dunno, name some of his tunes. This is always a waste of time.
We breezed through seven songs in two hours. Some are ready to go as soon as he makes them his own. I showed him some generic riffs that require arrangements [to sound proper] and he was astonished at the sound. Good. Even better, he more than one guessed the tune before I’d got to that part. His style is a sloppy and he doesn’t appear to notice when he gets fret buzz or goes out of tune. Maybe just out of practice? He is certainly sold on the arrangement aspect. The sound is already good enough to take on all but the very best guitar soloists. There is little doubt I will once more be the stage darling.
His strong points were grasping new riffs fast and he was totally open-minded about playing arrangements, something guitar players would automatically object to. You see, it gives the other instruments a voice. While he is awful shy on technique and far behind on theory, he never objected to playing bass lines if they capture the sound. And who do we all know who is a pro at that?
You would have got a laugh out of his reaction to learning said arrangements. I emphasize this is different than just learning the music. He’s clearly never had opportunity to play in a situation where the other player is changing his own style to work into the bass line. You know, where the other guy is actually adapting his strumming to draw out the best sound. That solidly impressed him. It made me wish I was on the bass—you see, I’ve never found that kind of guitar player and duh, now I are one.
I mentioned technique and he seems to have only two. Both are guitar-influenced and he never realized how awful-sounding that was to non-guitarists until I showed him. He fumbled with it but assures me he’ll have it nailed by next session. I know the question: how does he compare to me on the bass? After all, the entire band would be made up of bass players. That’s a tough question. He has a quota of damage that needs undoing, but he gobbled up the lessons pretty quick-like. I suppose I should answer by saying it’s the old story. I have fifty years experience; he has one year experience repeated fifty times.
My conclusion for the audition is that this is worth following up. He knows he is getting some top-notch coaching for free. He will never match my stage presence or experience (few could) and for a novice at playing arranged material, he was more than getting it. His face revealed he was getting revelations; he stopped several times to be sure of what he was hearing, then started again. Thus, I didn’t have to convince him or wear down any resistance. I’m looking forward to hearing what he can do after a little time to work with it. Trust me, for most bassists, it is not natural. I think his statement that he’d always wanted to do some of these things but never had the opportunity is influencing his acceptance of the method.
And he’s convinced I’m a naturally good guitarist. Ha, see, I can fool some of the people some of the time. What he’s hearing is the strict timing of a piano player coupled by a notion of what a bassist who knows what the guitarist should be playing. It isn’t all roses, because around a third my song list has to be dropped unless he wants to spend as many years as I did learning to solo the material. Example, Tennessee Flat Top Box, where I play the lead on the bass but can’t play the lead on guitar. Now, is that some quirk of fate, or what?
Last for now, although he has favorites he’d like to do, he is very uncommunicative about them. We got six or eight songs out of the way. Important note: those were NOT the usual easy pieces that other bands usually know in common. No, three of the songs we did today he never heard before because there is no place to hear them. Like my reggae version of “Party Till The Money Runs Out” or my unique arrangement of “What’s On Your Mind”. There’s no place you can hear this music. Yet, within minutes, we were playing the material to a credibly high standard. And that’s good enough for me.
Bill Bailey.
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LATER IN THE DAY
I was happy enough with the audition that I took the batbike on a two hour spin through the countryside. Orange groves, old highways, and parks along the banks of the ice cold Peace River. This is the batbike resting beside a pile of mine tailings, a common site in central Florida. Most places you stand, you can see one of these piles on the distant horizon.
For now, there is little to do but wait for the next rehearsal to see how much work the new guy did with the material. I think he’ll put in the time. I was watching and he definitely got lost in the groove and regularly stopped to make sure he was really hearing just two instruments. When I see this, it is vindication of my arrangement abilities. Several times when the music was moving, he switched to playing his own version of the bass, but quickly returned to what I’d shown him. There can hardly be any comparison on that because I used to bass solo most of this material.
He kept saying my guitar playing was right on, but I know I’m not that good. I wonder if my years of making guitarists sound better is now doing the karma thing back on me? He seems a straight-shooter.
Last Laugh
Meanwhile in Ottawa . . .
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