I’ve been having the time of my life learning a lot of Alphonso’s bass parts on the 1976 Black Market album by Weather Report.  He played so many great lines on this record and in my opinion is still criminally underrated as a player.  Some of his fills especially, seem to come from another place of source, and don’t fall easily under the fingers like other bassists.

One thing thing which stood out when transcribing was his playing behind Wayne’s (Shorter) sax solo on the track Elegant People (see above clip) which start at about 2:28.

I wrote this short-hand on a flight from Dusseldorf to London. 3 Things…

• In bar 1 and bar 3 he never leaves the initial main groove throught the whole 36 bar solo.
• In bar 6 he jumps straight in and catches the hits that Chester Thompson flips on the drums – he’s LISTENING
• After the first 8 bars experimenting on a few different ideas he grabs a 6 b7 pattern (I mean 6 b7 over an F) and uses that for bar 2 and 4 afterwards.

Throughout he employs restraint, If you want to hear what he’s capable of just listen to any of the fills on the II V I VI on the outro to Black Market the track. The fill in bar 4 is one you wouldn’t automatically go for either.

But, the overall thing I was left with was definitely bar 6. I think if you were to aspire to one thing to be a really great bass player, listening would be at the top of the tree.

“Black Market” by Weather Report

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Here’s a look at the classic bass line on “Midnight Train To Georgia”, by Gladys Knight and the Pips.  It was a 1973 number one and it later went on to win the group a Grammy award in 1974.  It’s become quite a signature track for Gladys Knight over time and if you ever fail to break the LA acting scene it’ll be on the iPod on the flight home.

This had got to be one of the more awkward to play bass lines from the era and the bass player in question is legend Bob Babbit, who along with Jamerson, helped define the motown bass sound.  It’s a constantly twisting line,
If you’re ever on stage, thinking, “You need to make this bass line more interesting”…. “What patterns can you make your hand go in now?” or perhaps “You need to prove to anyone watching that you’ve learned all the notes on the neck!” it helps to remember that some of the baddest ‘holding it down’

bass parts are quite contently slap bang down the business end of the bass.  Maybe one of the best things though is the realisation that is can be and probably was played in just the first 4 frets where the whole chromatic scale lives…….

Jazz Pianist David Patrick once scolded me (he was my teacher at the time) when I brought in my lovely new 6 string bass, “Don’t move your hand anywhere until you can play your ass off in the first 4 frets!”.  It seemed harsh then but I’ve come to see the point he was making.  This bass line is a good reminder of that truth.

Midnight Train To Georgia

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Guitar Jedi and friend of mine Ant Law, has recently written a book:

“3rd Millennium Gtr: An introducion to Perfect 4th Tuning”

which has just been published through Mel Bay.

As the bass normally goes the way of the 4th, his book could be valuable for some bassists also, especially if you play the 6 string or want to get your scales and arps down.

Ant’s book includes full neck diagrams & patterns (in 4ths like the bass) for

• Pentatonics
• Extended Arpeggios
• Scales, – Major, Melodic & Harmonic Minor + loads more cool stuff.

- Ant has toured internationally as guitarist with the hit “Thriller Live!” show, played with Leon Ware, who crafted the hit album, ‘I Want You’ for Marvin Gaye and performed at Jazz Festivals across Europe.  He also performs with Camille O’Sullivan, notably recording a live CD at the Royal Festival Hall.  He tunes his guitar in 4ths.

You can buy his new book as a downloadable e-book here.

Check out the Crystal Fighters here:

www.crystalfighters.com

Here’s the first part of a great BBC documentary – parts 2-4 should be easy to find once you watch this. Happy birthday Jaco!

A few weeks later, I was in the studio in the midst of deleting emails about lengthening my “pension fund” when a Debussy Piano Pieces album I got about 10 years ago appeared on Shuffle. I hadn’t heard these Preludes for a few years, but picked up my bass and spent the rest of the day coming up with a solo bass arrangement. After, I decided it would fit well with these carp I had filmed and so… here it is.

It’s been a a few years since I did a solo bass piece, – I love them, but really my heart & time’s more devoted to trying to make that low end groove and learn and play the grooves of my favourites from the last 50 years as best as I can. Every once in a while though, it’s fun to try something different & keep things fresh.

I arranged this and played it on my 4 string Vintage Sadowsky Jazz.

Debussy – Preludes Bk 1

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The Crystal Fighters are currently in the UK promoting ‘Star Of Love’ after a successful tour of Russia, Mexico and South America, I’ll be joining them to play bass at Moseley Folk Festival this Friday 2nd September. Here’s a clip of them in action on Jools Holland recently….

“When drums stop, people scared, they know bass solo is coming…..”

Here’s a clip from a recent gig I played with singer Zena James and her band at Swindon Jazz Festival.

The band featured Mike Guy (keys) Mike Bradley (drums) and Simon Allen (sax) and the gig took place at the reverberating venue that is the Christ Church.

Zena James is currently playing shows around the UK in support of her latest album “Captivated” which is available on Amazon here, and features top UK bassist Patrick Bettison.

Zena James – Captivated

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Bass Jam:

We spent one of our free days at the Ferrari World theme park on Yas Island, home to the world’s fastest roller coaster. Here’s a bass jam I came up with, to go with the video I took of the group that went before us. ;)

‘Come Get To This’ appeared as track number 5 on the original LP and was released as a single in June 1973, peaking on the Billboard Pop Singles Chart at #21 and #3 on Billboard’s soul singles charts.

The album featured notable musicians such as Joe Sample and Vibes player Victor Feldman, (wrote ‘Seven Steps To Heaven’ – later played by my Miles Davis), whilst bass duties were shared between James Jamerson and Wilton Felder.

Bass Notes:

Feel – This is another shuffle tune, so the key to the feel is having a consistent swinging 8th note rhythm behind everything.  One way to internalise this is to practice slow and count out loud a spoken triplet (similar to the solfege used in Indian music).  I use the phrase “ba sha da” with ba and da being the first 8th and swung 8th note.  The “sha” is the silent, unplayed middle beat (unless you have an 8th note triplet – see beat 4 of the 2nd bar).

Notes – On major chords, a common motif in motown is using the 5th and 6th as notes for riffs or fills (e.g. bar 1 of the A section C∆).  There are also some great chromatic fills leading to the next chord’s root note (check beat 4 of bar 2 going to the B half-dim and beat 4 of bar 3 going to the E7).  On the G 7th of bar 8 there’s a classic Root to 5th pattern (also heard on the pre chorus of ‘heard it through the grapevine’ which works great on shuffles).  In the B section, the F major sees the return of a riff based again on the classic R 5th and 6th over a major chord.

“Let’s Get It On” – Marvin Gaye

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