But people are now realising why I was playing bass with Hendrix.
With the bass it's another thing. I don't need to use alternate thumb-picking as much. Even though Jack says he loves it. My thought is that it might irritate him somewhat.
That first bass I had was an Eko, a very old thing with a thin neck, I had that for quite a while.
I like to combine the dramatic emotional warmth of strings with the grooves and body business of drums and bass.
When we listen to improvisational jazz, or solo classical violinists, the way they phrase and inflect melodies feels vocal, like they're talking to us. When I was figuring out how to perform solo, I wanted to move back and forth between bass riffs, melody, and harmony, so I often used sounds instead of - or alongside - the words of a song. I found that if I sang a line using the consonants, vowels, shadings, and inflection we recognize as human language sounds, people responded as if I were talking to them.
I wouldn't want to hear Beethoven without beautiful bass, the cellos, the tuba. It's very important. Hip-hop has thunderous bass. And so does Beethoven. If you don't have the bass, it's like being amputated. It's like you have no legs.
I don't regard myself as a great classical or jazz pianist. I like country music, but I'm not a great player. I just like music. Drums 'n' bass is pretty exciting and I'd love to explore it.
I started playing bass for the same reason everyone else does – I’m a lousy guitarist.
I think the most note-worthy part is that Stella [Mozgawa] had joined the band two weeks before we started recording, so that really influenced the way that the album was recorded. It was really important for Stella and Jen[ny Lee Lindberg] to lay down the drums and bass first for most songs, because they were determining how they needed to lock in together, and Stella was still kind of learning and figuring out her parts.
I really pay attention to the bass in the music I listen to, and that's what I tend to write toward.
You can't play bass in a vacuum.
I didn't follow the standard rules of bass playing, and many musicians on many different instruments who became noteworthy for their unique or particular style did a very similar thing.
As a genre, rockabilly's post-Elvis profile has seldom been lower in the United States. Many labels that produced fresh bass-slappin' sides during the '90's are now out of business.
I realized pretty soon that I have to do more than just play bass in the background way. So, I developed a kind of playing which only a handful of musicians accepted.
When I started to pick up the bass, it was purely by random chance.
Guitar is for the head, drums are for the chest, but bass gets you in the groin
I don't really have a favorite bass player. I listen to a lot of bluegrass. But then again, I'm not a typical bluegrass bass player. I was really into the Grateful Dead, and I still am - I don't listen to them too much, but for me they are a big influence.
I was in George Martin's studio in Amsterdam and he was telling me, 'They come in here and it takes them three days to do a bass line. ' Well I'm not from that era.
Poetry is music though, unfortunately, not all music is poetry. Because music has other carriers to take its message - beats, lyrics, singers, bass players - anyone in music can rise to make a major statement but in poetry there are only words to do the work. And they do sometimes have to sweat.
Most rappers taste level ain't at my waist level. Turn up the bass 'til it's up in your face level.