Let me put it this way: I can sing a hell of an ‘Old Man River,’ way down in the bass.
Amon Tobin has been producing electronic music since the mid-’90s, and was a key figure in the rise of drum-and-bass. He’s also written some of the genre’s most compelling tracks, in the process delving into jazzy breakbeats and bass lines.
With bass, especially bottom end, the vibration has to happen on stage otherwise the feel is wrong. This is why you can’t scale the equipment down too far.
I’ve got a Fender Concert amp from the ’60s, the one Joe Osborn used. He played his bass through it.
I started taking the bass more seriously when I heard Jaco Pastorius.
I can sing, but I consider myself a bass player. I’m, you know, a musician first.
I always got great respect as a bass player.
I think my first experience of art, or the joy in making art, was playing the horn at some high-school dance or bar mitzvah or wedding, looking at a roomful of people moving their bodies around in time to what I was doing. There was a piano player, a bass player, a drummer, and my breath making the melody.
I formed Humble Pie when I was only 18. We were one of the first ‘supergroups,’ with Steve Marriott of The Small Faces on guitar and Greg Ridley of Spooky Tooth on bass. With Humble Pie, I tasted American success for the first time.
Music is like a conversation. One person says one thing that speaks with a harmonica, with a bass, with a drum. They’re all conversating, and we’re just trying to find a way to make conversation rather than blah, blah, blah. But it’s not really so hard a thing to do if you know the way to approach it.
My drummer, bass player, and guitar player sing backgrounds. They play and sing. I can sing all the harmonies, but I can’t do it alone.
I like Jaco Pastorius’ ‘Portrait of Tracy.’ He was this bass player who played jazz fusion. He was the dopest bass player who ever lived.
Occasionally, when I run into a great bass backstage at a festival I’ll play a few notes on the low E string, just to feel the instrument vibrate against my belly.
I tour a lot and interview a lot. I’m on the Internet and doing stuff. I go out and promote. I’ve got a bass drum and a sandwich sign and a washboard. You just have to shout louder and louder that you’re still alive.
A bass player has to think and play like a bass player. A drummer has to play and think like a drummer, and stay out of the way of the vocalist. The guitar player has to respect everybody else.
Jack Bruce really showed me that you could go anywhere with a bass part, and as long as you stayed in time, as long as you held down the groove, the door was wide open.
Actually freestyle really comes from ‘Planet Rock’. If you listen to all the freestyle records you’ll hear that they are based on ‘Planet Rock’. All the Miami Bass records are based upon Planet Rock.
My heroes are guys like Frank Capra and Elia Kazan and Coen brothers and Terry Gilliam, more so than a lot of bass players at this point in my life. So I’ve always been an old-film nut and have very much enjoyed doing videos over the years.
The range of the cello is so big, it can play as low as the double bass and as high as the violin. It has the perfect shape, and its sound is the closest to the human voice.
We decided to do some of Merle’s things with modern instrumentation. We used a flute, a bass clarinet, a trumpet, a clarinet, drums, a guitar, vibes and a piano.
I tell you the groans of the damned in hell are the deep bass of the universal anthem of praise that shall ascend to the throne of my God for ever and ever.
Some of the best logos are the simplest. One of the oldest is the mark used by the Bass brewery: a red triangle. Target has made a red circle with a red dot in the middle seem the very essence of affordable, hip practicality.
‘Take My Breath Away’ had that interesting bass line, which I hear quite often. It had that terrible change of key, which Terri Nunn hated, but I loved.
I don’t want to wreck my voice. I love to concentrate on playing the bass and keeping it very rock-solid. If I were singing, I would have blown out my voice.
If you look at a record under a microscope, the high frequencies are short jagged edges… and the low frequencies are long swinging ones are deep bass sounds. When it cut it at half speed, you’re getting more of those on the record.
I like the guitar better these days. I like the bass, too, but it’s hard to fit a bass amp in a small car.
I decided to build a studio in my house. We built it in my basement kitchen. I had the drummer up by the fish tank. I was in the toilet singing. The bass player was out by the shelves in the living room, and the guitarist was on the couch by the telly.
I feel safe and comfortable to do that once I know that the song structure around the bass part is very interesting and it satisfies me in a compositional sense.
I still don’t really feel like a bass player.
I’m doing bass trap; I’m doing EDM songs.
I like guitar. It just turned out that it’s the instrument I learned to play. I have a lot of respect for it, and I’m learning more and more every day. For me, the classic band setup – guitars, drums, bass – will stay fresh forever. I don’t know. I’m still into it.
I’m not going to do the Ben Harper house record or the Ben Harper drum ‘n’ bass record.
I demo all of my songs on Garage Band, where I pretty much play everything – not very well, but I manage to hammer out a drum beat and a bass idea.
Unless you’re singing something that’s kind of in rhythm with the bass, the melodies, it’s just difficult.
None of us wanted to be the bass player. In our minds he was the fat guy who always played at the back.
In the springtime, we have softshell crab from Maryland, which I’d never had until I came to America. In the summer and early fall, we have striped bass, ‘stripeys,’ which come all the way up the Hudson River but mostly gather in the sound at the tip of Long Island, off Montauk.
That’s really important in a producer – a producer that can step up and play a keyboard, play a bass, play a guitar, and help you with things instead of just saying, ‘I think this could be better.’
Back in the day, being a young, inspired bass player, I started to gravitate toward jazz fusion. I almost would have called myself an elitist. I got to the point where, for a little bit there, I was more interested in instrumental music.
For what I can imagine and feel and think and hear, I can hardly do anything on the acoustic bass. It used to be just pure frustration of imagining so much more and being able to get to a certain level of execution.
My guitar-playing always included bass lines, melody lines, and rhythm-guitar grooves.
Prior to ‘Insidious Chapter 3,’ I was happy to write movies for James Wan to direct as I felt very much that I was one half of a duo. I looked at us as a team who works together and I was happy to be part of that, I was happy to effectively be the bass player in The Beatles.
I really pay attention to the bass in the music I listen to, and that’s what I tend to write toward.
I’ve been playing guitar since I was 6 and then drums, bass, and piano since I was 10 years old.
I love the percussion. It’s a right brain, left brain thing. There are different beats, but cooperating together. It’s your whole body doing it, you’re doing the snare drum and the high top with your hands and the bass drum with your foot. You’re this whole motion machine.
Playing someone drum ‘n’ bass for the first time in ‘Pass Out’ – they’re like, ‘Oh my God, what is this?’ I’m having a lot of fun and a good time showcasing the music.
I was a bass fisherman. I liked bass. That was my thing.
Lately Fish and I have been hooking up more, which is a good thing because it’s just been a struggle for me as a bass player to play with someone who’s so creative on the drums, and lately it’s been really good, especially during sound checks.
There’s individual turntable setups devoted to piano, bass, drums and a set for soloing as well. We like to try and explore the gamut of what a turntable can do.
When I was in grade school and high school, I did a lot of chorale singing. And the chorus would be tenor, bass, and alto and soprano.
When you listen to a symphony orchestra, and the basses don’t – there’s no bass part, there’s not that much depth. That’s why I’m attracted to the instrument, the bass. It brings depth. It’s like playing in a rainforest.
If you’re using live bass versus orchestral bass, you’ve got to make sure that you’re not stepping on the toes of the other elements, so you’ve got to balance it out.
Later in high school, I met Hillel Slovak, who was the original guitar player of the Chili Peppers, and we became really close. We had a band, and we didn’t like the bass player, so I started playing bass, and I got a bass two weeks later.
My mom always told me I should have a Plan B. I said that if I’m not going to play guitar I’m going to play drums. And if I’m not going to play drums, I’m going to play bass. I always just wanted to play music. I was completely obsessed.
‘Hear My Heart’ was constructed with the deaf in mind. I wanted a bass line that felt like a heartbeat. I wanted to be able to touch the speakers and feel a clear sense of rhythm.
There are people who think the film ‘This Is Spinal Tap’ is simply a very funny ‘mockumentary.’ Well, with Yes, we lived it. Take the hilarious scene in the film in which the bass player is trapped in a giant pod – that actually happened to Alan one night.
