Saturday Feb 4 2006,
Bass Marathon! This time it was Kai, Dave Olson from Spindrift.cc and Ian of Ian fame. Ian's got an air freshener and a cocktail monkey dangling from the headstock of his custom 6 string (tuned low A to high Bb!!!). Sooper cool. Dave plays a Modulus Quantum 5 with a pick and sometimes with 2 fingers. Both have great tone and are cool doods. Most bass players are cool people if I don't say so myself : - )
I really dug this marathon, 3 bassists and drums are cool. Forces us to think like a bass, chord and melody player under changing conditions. Kai guided us through some new concepts that allowed us to focus on group listening and interaction which even the best players can learn from. After 4 hours with short breaks I still felt like jamming but had to go and take care of business. A good sign that the creative juices were flowing, and they were.
One technique we used was something Phish (*sniff*) used to do back in the day. One musician starts a groove/pattern, and moving in clockwise motion, the others try to lock in with what he is playing. In the process of trying to find their parts, the groove originator listens carefully to the entire band and when he feels the time is right, will yell out "Hey!". Fishman calls it the "Insane Midget Factory" (with absolutely no offense or malice toward little people, in fact Fishman is quite short himself). I have heard it called "Finding Your Own Hey" in an interview with Trey in Guitar Player magazine published last year. The ultimate goal is that the groove is so happening that all the musicians say "Hey!" at the same time. It seems to develop listening skills beyond the self.
Some other techniques were to listen to dynamics and follow along with loud and soft passages as well as triple threat endings. The leader would play a lick and then repeat it twice to indicate the end of a jam. Better listen up!
Another was to come up with a little bass pattern over 2 or more chords while the others played chords, or improvised.
We also tried to make phrases over 2 bar, 1 bar and half bar (a whole bar in 2/4 time) on demand which I had trouble with. I kept wanting to make multibar phrases, although not a bad thing. All of this while Kai played drums and critiqued our work. Always a great challenge and a blast.