You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - "Bakka Chuka...Bakka Tuka" - Find Funky Basslines

Episode Date: January 17, 2022

Peter and Adam help you find your funky basslines. Watch Live: YHI LIVE Mondays at 4pm ET on YouTubeWoosh or No Woosh? Hit us up on Twitter and let us know which team you are onCheck out Open Studio Pro hereSupport the pod by spreading the word with the link youllhearit.com Interested in more music advice? Go here to browse our catalog of jazz lessons and courses available for purchase. And be sure to check out our All Access Pass - every course from Open Studio on every instrument.Let us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel.Follow us on Twitter | Instagram

Hey Peter. Hey, what's up? Shall we be funky? I'm Adam Dennis. And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear Podcast. Music advice and inspirational and funkiness and funkiness. Fonkiness.

Coming at you. Funciness coming at you today. Sponsored by Open Studio, of course. Peter, why are we being so funky today now? Well, we, you know, we've been, we just kind of through, well, okay, it started from the Herbie Hancock, Stevie Wonder a couple weeks ago. We're working on this video. On the St. Louis Blues.

Yeah, the St. Louis Blues. And it's just a funk fest. It's just a groove fest. It's so. great. We love that track. And we talked about it here on the pod, I think a couple of weeks ago as well. And so we did a little thing on the, you'll hear it live on Mondays. What do you know about Mondays? Exactly one week ago from right now. A week ago, exactly. And we invite you to join us every Monday, 4 p.m. over on the YouTube's, totally on the Open Studio YouTube channel where we do a live

show that's ephemeral. You taught me that word earlier. I'm not sure if it's right. No, it's right. Yeah. It's like something that's there and then it just blossoms the word that's like, it de blossoms. It de-blossoms. It self away. And so whatever. You know, I think about like a flower that just becomes like, you know,

it's like a dandy lion. Yes. A dandy lion. That's a dandy little phrase that you, little turn of the words. Yeah, so we do that at 4 p.m. Eastern,

please join us over there. But we were just sort of grooving on that and then, you know, we turned that into a little video because it was kind of fun. But the idea was about like how do you develop and how do you work on and really how do you learn

how to play funky bass lines. And I mean, the bigger thing is like, how do you play funky? But we're not going to be able to tackle that on the pod fully today. But we thought we could talk about specifically baselines, how you could practice it. Because I think that the hand independence element is so important.

But you got to have stuff to play. Like it's all for not if you've got independence of your hands, but you don't have the right stuff to play with either one of them. Totally. Totally. And so normally your baseline would be with your left hand. But, you know, whatever. It's in that base region, right?

So we should probably start there. Absolutely. Yeah, so the thing at the beginning, what was it? I've already forgotten it, but it was something kind of, it was a little faster maybe. And I'm just making this up, right? But the idea is like, like you find the groove, right? And then where's the 16th nose? Back a juk, back a chika, back a chika, boom.

Gang, gang, catang. So even when you're not when you're not saying that, playing that, you feeling that 16th note all the time. Because then you can subdivide a accent. Back, teck it, back, bat. Yeah, boo, deck it, get. And then normally you're going to need to have that independence, right, to be able to get that in the other hand. But even within the bass part,

so like I'm going to play a couple bars of this, and I'm not going to play anything on one, but I think it's going to still stay together. It's going to all be like syncopations on that 16th note, right? One, two, three, four. And you probably thought I was going to do one because it was like, take, de, get, check. Yeah, yeah.

So it's like the preceptions. Precision within that, you've got a lot of different choices, but I think it's all based on that 16th note subdivision. Absolutely. Let's talk a little bit about maybe some of the hand independent stuff that you can work on. I feel like one of the easiest ways to get going on this is to do a bit of like, like a bit of ghosting in your right hand and ghosting in your left hand. So like if you can't pick the key of E flat minor, right, like a nice like. But you didn't have to do that groove. but this idea in your right hand you basically have the claw, right?

So your thumb and the rest of you, your thumb is one part and then the rest of your hand is kind of the other. And you can make chords with the top four fingers and then that thumb

kind of is like a ghost note in there. Yeah, I like that. So I've got here and then there's kind of two parts to your left hand here. You've got your pinky which is sort of a low note and then these other

the pinky is kind of its own part and then everything else. So here, I'm just in four, right? We're in one, two, three, four. You just do this little clave here. Oh, a little flave. So I'm literally just kind of like between, that's all my right hand.

Three notes in the top part of my right hand, my thumb. And then I've got my first finger and second finger of my left hand. Varing it up within that 60 notes like a patient. So I got B flat, D flat, G flat on the top, A flat on my thumb on my right hand. on my thumb on my right hand, E flat on the thumb of my left hand, D flat on the second finger of my left hand. Then you can drop down to that low E flat. That's like a drop two. It's like a thing, isn't it? Nope. It's like it's kind of like a clap of that thing, right? That's when you're like slapping the clab, right? Like, exactly. That's how it came about and higher

ground is the same way. It's a honging between the left and right hand. So that's kind of like the entrance. But I just, I encourage you to just try that. Yeah. Like in three-note groups, use sort of the thumbs are independent from the rest of the hand kind of idea. I'll get you going. Yeah, that's great. And look, a lot of this, you know, we're not really,

we're looking at stationary harmonic situations, which is a great way to practice this. Yeah. But, I mean, you've always got even like, so that's all in there. But I think, too, we can look at, you're going to hear a lot of these, especially the Stevie Wonder ones,

your note choices are anything, of course, but those minor pentatonic areas are really interesting. Either the actual minor pentatonic, like in this case, but then you've got all those other trias. You can throw it. Totally. But really, you can go anywhere because hitting that rhythm,

making sure that that's precisely, and there's so much more important than any wrong notes or whatever. Like if you miss, and you know, if you play with really good funk players and sometimes we as jazz players are guilty as charged. But like if there isn't that precision with where you're laying in the beat, you get some funky looks, as one would say.

Not good. It's not good. Yeah. Absolutely. And then, okay, so in terms of bass on, what's some tips that would be good for specifically practicing that as a pianist? I think, man, there's no shame in transcribing basis, first and foremost. Like, it's a language like anything else.

Yeah. And you don't even have to transcribe bass players. transcribe Stevie Wonder playing some... How about that? Yeah, I mean, that is great too, yeah. And you got to get that precision in that. The precision is so key. But yeah, Paul Jackson, obviously,

if you want some funky bass lines, Paul Jackson is your man. Stevie Wonder playing synth bass is great, as well as Bernie Worrell playing synth base on things like Flashlight from Parliament. Great stuff. Yep. To be able to kind of, like, translate that.

And there's a ton of other, I mean, organist as well, like, for baseline stuff. Jimmy Smith for like swinging stuff. Yeah, for sure. Transcribe all that because it fits our hand. A lot of the boogaloo stuff. A lot of the boogaloo stuff. Yeah, totally.

And then I think too, like a lot of this is about getting inside of each one of the grooves, both for, you know, when you get to the point where you can, feeling good about the independence of the hands, but using those different elements to accentuate that groove, getting, before you even get there, getting the feel for that groove with your hands either linked together or doing the, separate things, but not at the same time, is something that you can always be working out. So, like, if you think about the groove of like, you know, like,

beg, tick, and you know, again, six, I really encourage you of all the different great funk grooves. If you can get that 16th, get inside of that 16th note group, I think that's, you know, key. Exactly. Simple, right? And then you can add some stuff, but how, like, how precise can you get that before you add anything?

I see, that was a little off. Got a little disco there. Yeah, yeah. Man, check out, you know who's great at this stuff? Yeah. Remember Samuel and all that stuff he did with Joshua Redmond? Samuel, yeah, yeah. Back in the day.

Also, Brad Meldow and Mark Giuliana made that record together where Brad's playing all the synth bass, but the king. For synth bass, for funky key bass. Even that zipper sound is funky. So check out the 16-note groove. You know what I mean? This is Stevie Wonder, by the way. Pugie on Riggin.

woman if you didn't know I'm great a bit. You got poodles, poodles in the house. And the way the phrase and accent is like It's not very relaxed But right in the cut, right in the

Oh, that's fun. I mean all of those, it's all about the ghost notes. Yeah. Here's another key base, iconic key bass line. Flashlight. Is it burning where else?

I believe it is. But listen to how these ghostings a 60-note feel. You know what I mean? What's the other one that you do? There's that 60. Is that the Giuliani? No, this is Samuel. Oh, Samuel.

Joshua Ribbon. But you're totally right. It's about getting that 16-n0 pocket, you know? Lonely women from the same record. Just all killing. Do you remember this album? Yeah, I mean, I don't know this record well, though. I remember seeing them live.

I don't remember this track at all. You like you, though. Huh. Anyway, it's a great example. Yeah. This whole album. Samuel. Is that Elastic?

Is that Elastic? Alastic band, momentum. Yeah, Moly. That's Ornett Coleman's Lonely Woman. Nice. First track was sweet and nasty. Yeah, that's pretty much it, man. Get that 16th no thing in the pocket.

That's what I'll try to remember. Oh, yeah. Another birdie world. Buh, boy. Wrong stuff. Oh, this is the digital underground version. Oh, I was going to say. Still funky.

The Clinton administration. So many versions of this. I don't see the original, though. Oh, not just easy. Are we still recording a podcast? I don't even know. Yeah, no, now we're just hanging. Look at the record play.

We're going to put the head set up the turntables. Let's do this. We're going to have the turntables soon. We are going to have the turntable soon. Maybe today. You know what? We're about to turn the turntables on them. Until next time.

You'll hear it.