You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Comping for Bass Solos - #25

Episode Date: February 1, 2019

Today, Peter and Adam discuss techniques that other players can use when the bassist is soloing.Let us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel and leave a comment for this episode.Interested in more jazz advice? Go here to browse our catalog of jazz lessons and courses available for purchase.Follow us on Facebook, Twitter & Instagram at:https://www.facebook.com/heyopenstudiohttps://twitter.com/heyopenstudiohttps://www.instagram.com/heyopenstudio See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Hey, Adam. No. Okay. I'm Adam Anus. And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear at podcast. Daily Jazz advice coming at you. I've always wanted to do that.

Oh, man, you shut me down. Put me in my place. I didn't mean anything by it, man. I was just testing. Oh, I wanted you to meet somebody. Our new co-host, Mr. Andrew Kitchen, too. Starting tomorrow. Oh, I knew I was going to get fired from this eventually.

All right. How you doing? I'm doing well. How are you? Good, good. It is Friday. It is Friday. It's a...

I love a Friday. Yeah, what is Friday? Like, there's hump day, there's Monday, there's Friday, Friday's just... Friday, Friday's when you get down. Freaky Friday. It's freaky Friday. It's freaky Friday. Thank goodness it's Friday. Yeah, it's when the gigs start paying real money. That's right. Right, the warm-up ones for the week. Been listening to anything interesting lately?

Yeah, man, I've been going deep on the podcast. How about you? Oh, like, do you'll hear a podcast or other ones? I don't listen to our own podcast. Oh, you don't? No, it's terrible. Actually, yeah, no, I have been too. I've been listed you the switched on pop. I have been checking out Switch on Pop, man. That's super good.

That's a nice one. Super good. So it's like a pop-themed podcast where they break down the production of pop songs. Right. Yeah. Yeah. It's been super. I mean, it's not as good as ours.

Yeah. Well, I mean, it's longer and more depth. It's different. Yeah. Let's fun to check different things out. So today we have, I believe, a question from one of our loyal listeners or part-time listeners. We don't know which. Yeah, this is from Anthony.

Anthony says, hi Peter and Adam. This is Anthony coming at you from Brighton, UK. All right. Man, we're big in the UK. Can we just, are we going to have to go on location to the UK? I think we might have to do, yeah, maybe a, maybe a four-hands gig at Pizza Express. That would be nice. Have you been to Brighton?

That's down by the coast. You know, Brighton? Yeah, yeah. Nice little seaside town there. Awesome. Yeah. He says, I play upright and electric bass and I'm friendly with the piano. Not the, I like the way you put that, Anthony.

I'm friendly. You didn't say friendly with the pianist. with the piano. I love the podcast and all the tips and info you provide. Maybe you could do a podcast on comping for bass solos. A lot of pianists and guitarists, who I know, just stop playing in the bass solo. The drummer is picking up brushes and the tune can lose intensity, all the past. Keep up the good work, Anthony.

You know what? This is a great point. Yes, this is something we spend time, you know, hopefully doing well, but as pianists, thinking about deciding and kind of trying to make decisions about what you do. And I think Anthony actually hit on some things that's always fun to start with, like, not to do, like, you know, picking up your brushes and you're not paying attention and losing intensity. And that's too often done by the pianist, guitarist, and drummer, right? Absolutely. You've been building up this great rapport, this interaction on the piano

solo, or if you're playing trio, you know, and you have all this energy, and then you end it, and then it just everybody stops playing. Right. You know. And it's really unfair because usually the basis is the main driver of all the interesting things that have been happening up until that point. But there's a lot of great opportunity for interaction in the bass solo between the bass and the drums, the bass and the piano, the piano and the drums. I personally, I love comping for the bass solos. In my trio, we have a great bass player named Bob DeBoo. Yeah. Excellent soloist.

He is. And like, I look forward to his solos, which I never thought I'd say about it. No, I do. I love comping for Bob because it's like comping for a horn player, right? I know he's going to be there with us. Right. And he's going to help build and we can all do this together. And also Bob, I like conflict for Bob because he's not afraid of like, like I can get low on Bob.

Like I can, you know what I mean? I can provide some base and he's like cool with that. Right. So you bust out a Michelle Obama trip. When they go high, we go low. Actually. Oh no, it's the other way around. Actually.

But no, it is true. When the base player goes high, I'll go low. Yeah. Sometimes if I don't know the base player, I'm like, is kind of like, is it okay? Right. Because some cats will get whatever. But, you know, we don't have the kind of. of, especially if they have an amp or they're through the system, whatever.

We don't have the kind of timbre they have down there. Exactly. We're a lot thinner down there. We are. So you're not going to, especially if they're up in thumb position or something like that, you're not going to really, like, blow them out. So this would come, I think, to the first kind of practice tactic or technique I can recommend. We can recommend, and that is learn the range of the bass.

Learn the range of the piano. Absolutely. Understand which E it is and learn what the different strings are. And kind of learn, like when they're up on the fingerboard, on the D and the G string, where is that on the piano? Yeah. So that you, because you, oftentimes, first of all, you don't have to always avoid it, but you want to know where it is. Right.

And if you go low or if you go higher, sometimes even outside of them. I do outside all the time. Yeah. You don't have to be that far away from where they are. Yeah. You know, I've done a fair amount of comping behind Christian McBride, which can be a challenge because he can get from the bottom to top very quickly. I know, right? You know, but you start to kind of learn, like, different, like, things they like to do and how they like to move around and you can almost anticipate.

And look, sometimes you're a little bit in there, but I think it's better to be, to your point of like, let's be interactive and supportive as opposed to sometimes everybody wants to be so respectful that you pull the rug out from under. Yeah, I just won't play at all. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think it's definitely, that's a good point, that it's definitely good to be aware of where the base

player is. You don't always have to avoid them, as you said. Yeah. I mean, in real life, like on the street, of course, avoid the bass player, obviously. But the whole myth that like you can never go down below, especially during their solo, especially if they're playing melodically up high, like some punchy chords

down there can really add a lot to there. Although the great Ron Carter, a pretty good bass player, famously told Stephen Scott when he first played with him, he said, see that piano, what's it called? He's like Steinway and Sons. And he said, see that S there? He said, you don't play below that.

Yeah. I mean, if Ron Carter says it, do it for sure, especially says it to you. But this is what I'm saying. Like, you get to know the player. And if they're cool with things, I mean, there are some drummers who like want you to comp during their solos.

You know what I mean? And some drummers who I think would throw their symbol at you if you did. Right, right, right. Yeah, it's not necessarily right or wrong, but you have to be supportive in some way. Even if that's playing very little, if that's the support they need.

When I got a chance to play one time with Ray Brown, when it came to his solo, I was terrified what to do, because I was already terrified what to do on any bass solo, especially it's Ray Brown. And he's like, walk, walk, walk. I was like, walk off stage? What do you mean? I've heard this before.

He encouraged his pianist to walk a bass line for him. Yeah, he loves baselines that much. Like, he wants that kind of support. How much pressure were you under then? I know. Because you're like, oh, great, I got to walk a baseline in front of the greatest walking baseline player ever. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Didn't go well. Didn't go well. But I think that's a special circumstance. If the base player says walk, walk. That's right. But in general, I'm not comfortable with that. Talk about mixed signals. Ron Carter's like, don't go blow the ass.

You know, Ray Brown's like, walk. Well, but this is just, just proves the point again that, like, you know, getting to know the player first. what they prefer. You know what I have done? And I think I might have even, I might have done this with Christian McBride because I don't think we ever talked about it. I'll sneak in a little, like you can kind of start to walk a little bit and see how they react. You know, if it's, I mean, first of all, if you're going to walk, definitely get out of their range

and like really think about like the texture, whatever. But what I try to do now, I used to never do it unless Ray Brown said do it. Yeah. But I do it sometimes with any base player if, like, I'm hearing it. Like, if it feels like the moment needs it. Because I really believe that the moment. is the most important thing. Totally true.

You know what I mean? Totally true. And I mean, that can piss off some bass players, but my experience has been really good bass players are trying to hear the same thing. So they don't go in to the experience with like rules, hard and fast rules or anything. Yeah, and I think if you are true to the spirit of the moment,

they understand that. Even if maybe not what they would normally prefer, they'd be like, okay, it was a thing that was happening. Now, you touched on a little bit at the beginning about interaction between the piano and drums during a base. So I was thinking of one way the pianist and drummer can interact

in a very effective way while getting out of the way. of the bass player is just to share a drink at the bar away from the bandstand while the bass is soloing. Would that work out good? That's a great way of comedy somewhat. I mean, you could bring the bass player something back. Exactly. No, but I've seen piano players and drummers

that pretty much do that, get up off stage or get up off their chairs or like he's talking about the brushes. That's disrespectful, first of all. Yeah. It's like you're saying that... Unless you're friends. Then it's funny. Then it's funny.

But I mean, the other thing is like the bass players, you know, there's all these jokes of like, you know, what happens there in the bass solo? whatever, everybody leaves. But I think that that often is the fault of the rest of the rhythm section, not supporting them. Because the thing is, like, the bass is that engine

that really drives, you know, oftentimes, obviously bass and drums, but that baseline's always going. So as soon as they go away from that, it's not that you can't have the intensity, but you're not going to have the intensity from the actual baseline anymore. That's right.

So with the pianist and drummer gets so sparse and playing so quietly and without intensity, that makes it even worse. So you have to still. play with intensity, even if you're not walking the baseline or anything. You have to, even softly, different range. You're thinking about all this. But rhythmically intense, just like the bass was playing before for you. That has to be maintained. And you can't expect the bass player to have to do it with their solo. They should be able to play with space and all these things.

Absolutely. And you need to listen to the bass solo. Number one. Number one, listen to the no, but you know what I mean? Like sometimes we just finished our solo. We reached down. Get a glass of red wine, as I often do. And then you kind of space out for a minute, maybe check your phone. Don't do any of that. You do that? No, I don't do that. But you have to be,

just as you were, as they were listening to you, you have to listen to the soul. You have to interact in that way. Some practical things as a pianist and probably as a guitarist too is, you know, don't sleep on the different colors you have.

Like, I often employ some of my solo piano voicings or techniques during the bass solo in a way that's maybe not low or maybe a little softer than I would. Kind of sustaining a little bit. Exactly. Creating some movement. giving him a groove because that's what they so often don't have.

Make this shit sound good. What's the wrong with that? It's not that hard. It's a basal. Let's make it sound good. Yeah. Well, good. Yeah.

Thanks, Anthony, for the question. That's a great question. I can't believe we haven't covered that here yet, but I don't think we have. I know what we talked about, I remember talking about bassists and guitarists, you know, some techniques for being able to manipulate that, not manipulate, to maneuver in that situation, I think is one thing. Yeah. Cool. Well, do we have any?

I think we've had some ratings and reviews lately. We haven't hit on that all week. So I feel like we should. I don't know. Should I go to my alert that hits all of my devices immediately as soon as anyone says anything about me? I think you have that one of those, those, what do they call them, macro tools that as soon as we get a rating and review, it posts it to all your social media accounts. Yeah, good or bad. Good or bad.

It's me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, us. Okay. So this is a review from Mike Murphy. Wait, did we read this one already? I don't know. I look forward to hearing from Peter and Adam each day, seven stars, one for each day of the week. Now, that's new. That's great.

Yeah, from January 23rd. That's Mick Murphy from the good old USA. And that's all we have. But we would encourage you if you're enjoying what you're hearing and you glean a little bit of knowledge or entertainment or just, you know, useless banter in the background, whatever. To leave us a review and a rating at the location that you are listening to or watching this. That's a great word, glean. Glean. What are you glean from that?

What are you gleaned from that? It's like learning, but somehow more important. Well, you know what I like. It kind of sounds like clean. So it's like clean, but you're getting it clean too. I love it, man. Yeah, cool. That's how we do it.

All right. Well, until next time, you'll hear it. Glein.