Bass Solos Explained

This is what we've all been waiting for: insight to the mysteries of the bass solo.

John Hoffman passed this along from Guam. The insight comes from a bass player in San Fran, Mike Billo. He's pretty well nailed it, IMHO.

Jazz band w/upright

Everybody stops but the piano player vamping lightly, the bassist goes way up the neck with a lot of badly intonated poopity poop poop formless twiddling, with optional grimacing & grunting. Bar chatter goes up.

Hybrid blues-rock w/Rickenbacker

Bassist going off on extended noodling (also in the high register and sounding like pop-pop poopity poopity poop, only much louder, maybe with EFX). Guitar player can't count to 12 and steps in to attempt drunken riff-based call & response pissing match. Drummer rises to the challenge. Organist goes to the bar.

Funk w/exotic wood plank

Band drops out except for drums, bass solo sounds like small-screen version of Normandy Invasion, lots of chattering machine gun poppitypoppitypoppitypoppity SLAP. Not as prone to high register noodling though. Mid-neck assault and slightly back-bent posture, right and/thumb to appear as a flailing blur. Don't attempt to look serene and spiritual doing this unless you are Vic Wooten. Can sound like angry chattering squirrels throwing nuts at a tin roof..... unless you are Vic Wooten.

Classic Blues w/ Fender P

There are no bass solos. Don't. Exception: One real slow showpiece grinder at the end of the set...keep the sludgy bottom groove while the rest of the band backs way off so people can marvel at the thick pelvis pushing thump AND the absolute lack of definition in those 30-yr-old BBQ sauce & nicotine - crusted flatwounds. The audience loves to cheer for the quiet kid on the non-flashy instrument.

Once.

Trad. Bluegrass w/ Kay upright

(say "string bass" or "doghouse")

Only once per night, and the rest of the band just plays lightly the downbeat chords for each section, the bass player keeps playing the same 1-5 pattern finishing up with a slightly flashy and attention-getting three note ascending run back to one. Pentatonic minor is a hanging offense, eighth notes are edgy.

Country w/Peavey

No solos. Ever. Bluegrass is the country version of jazz (chops-focused), if you want a solo go there. Roots are deep, keep them there. Fifths always work in country. Maybe if it's a loose night you can play a solo in "mama don't allow", but it better be the normal boogie-woogie arpeggio. Extended chords invite flying bottles. Keep it Dorian.

Nu-punk-grass

hippie guys with fiddles and mandolins and kilts and dobros and dreadlocks and overalls with no shirts and the bass player is a young college symphony guy who met the banjo player at a party and they shared a hand-rolled cigarette and the most amazing tri-tone arco ragas entered the cosmic flow, maaaaaan.......

Coffee-house w/fretless boutique bass

Sensitive Singer-Songwriter takes break from introspective lyrical navel-gazing and gives bassist an entire spaciously empty verse in a landscape of pastel wanderey DADGAD-tuned acoustic guitar. Bassist - rip thru some pseudo Jaco Manring cliches – furious Phyrgian fretless smeary honks, growls and noodles, sliding chords with pointlessly overdone clusters of harmonics. Sounds like angry cows in a rainstorm.

Himalayan Blues Festival 2008

The Himalayan Blues Festival 2008 will be held from 29th October to 4th November. We will be gathering artists from all around the world to make it an international event. The 2007 festival pictures and live recordings can be downloaded from www.rockmandu.com

For more infor mation please feel free to contact us.

Blues in ...Asia compilation CD

"Blues in ... Asia" contains 19 tracks from all over the region - from Japan to Indonesia, from Singapore to China, from Vietnam to India, and most countries and territories in between! Of course, you'll hear traditional American blues in English, like "Sweet Home Chicago" and "Walking the Dog", but also be ready for some cool Asian interpretations of the Blues, sung in Indonesian ("Ilusi"), Mandarin ("Spring Weather" and "Tianmi Beijing"), and even Japanese ("Yakitori Boogie"). Also, you're sure to be captivated by the sounds of some unique Asian instruments interpreting the blues! Enjoy!!

http://cdbaby.com/cd/bluesinasia

Here’s what some have said about the album.

* CHECK IT OUT!!!! author: rebecca gregory

Really cool CD!! Features really talented blues musicians!! check it out!!

*author: Angela Chen

Awesome Awesome Awesome!! A incredible varity of blues musicians!! its time to see more asian artists being exposed to the world! let the east influence and inspire the west!! Check this CD Out!!

*What a fantastic CD! author: Stormy Masayuki

I'm so happy to joyning this CD. I'm a gutarist of Santa Band from Japan. Each song are so so exciting and bluesy!I want to have The world blues festival with these Asian blues men. Anyway, our song is Yakitori boogie, not Yakatori boogie,

*Kudos for putting together such a great CD - wow! author: Paul Hammerstein

I've been travelling around Asia for 20 years, and have heard plenty of great blues bands that are as good as those that I've heard in the US and Europe. What a surprise to see that someone has made a compilation CD - high quality sound, killer tunes. Fun to listen to the Blues in Mandarin and other languages as well!! Well done!!

An Unfortunate Appellation

The Blues.

What an unfortunate appellation.

Why not the ‘Reds’ as in ‘Got Tamales and They’re Red Hot’?

To most people mention of ‘the Blues’ conjures up an image of an old Black man slumped on a stool, groaning regretfully about a life of mis-treatment and abuse to a sparse guitar accompaniment. The Blues of that stereotype represents just one rather uncomfortable emotional state. But the music which is regretfully called ‘the Blues’ covers the whole spectrum of emotions and life situations.

One of its particular strengths is that the Blues conveys a wide range of human emotions by telling a compelling story. While most pop songs attempt to evoke an emotional response with the music, the lyrics play a secondary role. The lyrics of the Blues, on the other hand, often offer a vignette or a series of narrated scenes that are joined by a common theme. The emotions which the music elicits are put into the context of a descriptive narrative. The most cursory of investigations will bear this out.

The third-person narrative of Billy’s fatal encounter with Stagger-Lee or the first-person visit to the St James Infirmary are well-known examples of the story-telling aspect of Blues lyrics. The topic of Blues lyrics is not restricted to affairs of the heart but deal with many areas of the human experience; biographical, socio-political, philosophical, satirical, spiritual and meta-physical. And when taken all together, the corpus of Blues lyrics relates the story of human society from a most personal perspective.

‘The Blues’ is the name that stuck, however. So it goes. No matter the name, one can hear the broad spectrum of emotions and observations on the human condition conveyed on nearly every Blues recording and in every masterful Blues performance.