Really enjoying your quest Question Why do other peoples sound always sound better than yours Kind Regards Richard. I am not sure if I understand you correctly, but I am guessing that you refer to when you hear other bass players live? Anyway, I have sometimes felt that when I have heard fellow bass players at venues I know well and play at sometimes. The sound is definitely different in the room and on the stage.
I have noticed this a few times as well at jam sessions where the same rig and bass has been used by several players. There has been a tonal variation caused by each bass player, but the biggest change in tone has been between when I was on the stage myself and when I was in the audience — regardless of who was playing the bass at the time. Hope it does.
Your email address will not be published. Sign me up for the newsletter! Subscribe Now. Sign Up Now. Or does he? Chatting from his home in Los Angeles, the New York City native sounds anything but complacent as he discusses the process behind his new album, Renaissance —his fifth solo effort.
Throughout, his cherished Fender Jazz bass pumps out a fat but intensely detailed tone that perfectly complements his unrivaled thumb technique. But even after 35 years on the scene—and with his place in music history long since secured—Miller remains creatively restless and determined to push himself even further.
Is the new album title, Renaissance , intended to suggest a musical rebirth of sorts? During the Tutu Revisited tour, I started working with some younger musicians. I hoped that would bring a new energy to some of that Tutu material, which at that time was already 25 years old. I really enjoyed playing with them, and we developed a very interesting sound.
I thought it would be nice to write music specifically for this group and do an album that focused on great performances and compositions, not focusing so much on the production, like I had on my last few records. Yeah, I mean it used to be that if you were working with samplers, you really had to know your way around a studio to make music. For me, what makes what we as musicians do special is our ability to perform it right there in real time. I had octaves going, A to A, on the bottom, and man, it was pretty tubby sounding.
How is approaching a bass solo different than approaching a guitar solo—does it come down to harmonic support? I have a couple of different ways to approach it: A lot of my solos are basically glorified, involved bass lines. Has your plucking-hand technique changed much over the years? Some guys do it more on the neck, which creates more false harmonics. When slapping, I used to only pluck with my index finger, but I started incorporating my middle finger, as well.
When I started making solo records, though, I began to address the fact that I never liked the transition from fingerstyle to slap and plucking style. So I started doing my fingerstyle strokes really close to the neck, using a really heavy attack, so that it almost sounded like a full pluck even though it was a finger stroke.
That way, when I switched over to a thumb and a pluck, the sound was more consistent. What sorts of ways? You can play way back by the bridge, and another great spot is just about an inch and a half to the left of the back pickup. Note the Bionic Man Photo by Andrea Scognamillo. What do you practice these days—is it still mostly scales and arpeggios? I start by just warming up, which is really important. For example, I might play the notes Bb, Db, A, and G using a 4—2—3—1 finger pattern on the E and A strings, and then move that pattern—and variations on it—up and down the neck.
Other times, I may be superimposing harmony over a single chord, like I was talking about earlier, to really get a sense of working the melody, harmony, and rhythm all at the same time. Marcus Miller's Gear. What were those early days as a session cat like? As a studio musician in New York, there are two types of players.
I was somewhere in the middle. They got it straight away! They were amazing. Stu Hamm's top 5 tips for bassists. Mark King's top 5 tips for bassists and other musicians. Jeff Berlin's top 5 tips for bassists.
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