Dissecting my Playing - Part One

For many years my bass playing was like a bull in a china shop; bombastic, sloppy, all over the place, imprecise, uneven, and just embarrassing.  In the beginning this was a product of both my excitement to play live and my need to be heard in a group setting when playing with drums and two guitarists.  It seemed that back in those days I could never hear myself  in the mix.  Over time I improved that situation but for the longest time my solution was to play harder which translated to a lot of sloppiness.  There were a number of things I did to improve it and I will touch on some of those things here.

After getting fired from a band for asking too many questions and challenging the lies I was encountering I found myself with some time on my hands.  After taking some time off I returned to playing.  I thought it might be a good idea to do some back to the basics practicing as well as learn some standard cover songs while looking for my next gig.  This involved headphones in order to not subject my saintly wife to the audio assault from the basement.  Imagine my shock and dismay when I discovered that what I was hearing in my mind was nothing close to the garbage coming through the headphones.

Step one for me was to slow it all down and analyze every aspect of every note I was playing.  Consistency from one note to another was a serious issue.  This is still an issue I continue to work on but not as glaring an issue as when I started addressing it.  Along with the consistency issue I paid critical attention to the attack, body, and end of each note.  This was HUGE.  Depending on where, how hard, and what method I use to strike a note this could be all over the place.  Striking or hitting the strings hard would be louder but hitting or striking too hard was over driving the pickups and distorting my sound.  I spent months listening to and critiquing my technique both while playing and by listening to recordings of my playing a few days later.  It struck me how I heard (in my mind) one thing and heard entirely another thing a few days later when listening to a recording of it.

I read an article awhile back that really resonated with me and I want to summarize the gist of it here.  It was an interview with a bassist who played with Prince for a number of years.  When asked what she learned from Prince that had the most impact on her as a musician her response was a close to an epiphany as I will ever get.  She said Prince once said at a rehearsal that the most important member of the band was the space between the notes.