Welcome to the website of future super centenarian Ray C. Parrish, aka "The Tucson Bass Player". A great place to find my current schedule. Catch me playing around the southwestern U.S.
I seem to run across a lot of bass players in Forums talking about being frustrated with being able to create there own original bass lines or their own "Musical Voice". My inspiration for this blog post came from thumbing through the Tony Levin book "Beyond The Bass Clef". He talks about not just practicing notes, but hearing every note you play. Sounds simple right? You say "hell I hear every note I play". Do you though? I think a lot of players think if they just spend time practicing of any kind they are getting better, but that couldn't be further from the truth. Ever find yourself practicing in front of the TV? That could be the worst thing you could do to create your musical voice. You are really only making playing scales a "visual" motion. You are not really programming the sounds of the intervals into your personal "music program". Another practice habit that accomplishes the same thing is not playing through an amp. I know we have all done it, practicing late at night and not wanting to wake other people in the house. Well, that is what headphones are for. Especially the low volume of the low B and E strings make this a bad habit. Now lets go to the other extreme. What kind of practice technique is it that creates a real musical voice. I won't try to explain it I will just say check out the video I have included with this post. This is Richard Bona. Forget that he is an bass player, he is an amazing musician with an amazing "Musical Voice".
The revolution is on! Do you notice that bass playing in the world [and I do mean the world] has taking on a whole new life. The instrument has become a solo instrument! Much to the chagrin of guitar players everywhere LOL. We are now more then support players for keyboard and guitar players. 10 years ago did you ever think that we would be leading bands and doing solo performances. This is just amazing to me and obviously it has raised the bar for all of us. I knew this was coming when I bought my first 6 string bass, having had experience learning Classical guitar music as a child I knew right away that your standard six string guitars pailed in comparison to the tone and versatility of our subcontra basses. That is why the video I want to share today is such a great example of the revolution. This is the gentleman that won the 2007 Euro Bass Day Competition. He takes us from Classical to Baroque to Ragtime in just one song. The revolution is on and you have to ask yourself are you part of it!
