People always ask me about my playing and who I am influenced by. I can spout name after name of people that inspire me to play better or differently. This list however might as well be taught verbatim to a point to all jazz/funk/fusion players; Jaco, Larry, Bootsy, Stanley, Marcus...However, there is a new addition. One that I didn't even really know about 4 months ago.
Can we all please welcome the bass player with the coolest middle name in the world to my list. Fred Thelonious Baker (He just had to become a jazz musician really didn't he!?).
I find it hard to believe that Fred has done so much amazing work in the past (solo and with Incahoots in particular), but he is virtually unknown. Which is a great shame. So, as part of my musical learnings journey over the next four years I hope to bring you many Fred-isms...
To begin here are a couple of brief videos of Fred playing a couple of his namesakes tunes (apologies for the poor quality of sound and video, obviously my sony ericsson doesn't appreciate good music like I do!) I will try and get a few decent recordings from Fred at some point.
These videos were rushed during my lesson today as I hoped that if I had a record of them it would help me learn them. I hope you can appreciate the vast musicianship that these rushed perfomances contain, even though.
PS. thats my bass, but I can't make it sounds just like that yet!
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18 January 2007
17 January 2007
Think of it as a Hammond B3 with strings...
The words bleeted out of most guitarist's mouths I have shown of my future partner in musical crime are: "What the hell is that?"
I thought it's obvious, but it seems not. So I thought I would share it with you guys, as you will no doubt be hearing many tales of joy and woe about my love/hate affair with this beast!
So, the grand unveiling of the custom buitar guitar I have lusted over for many many years, currently packed away tightly in an aircraft fuselage. Most likely along side a collection of moody Luis' (Vuittons) and some parent's suitcase that they've had since the 70's (Tan leather no doubt!):
The guitar is hand made by Wes Lambe in NC, USA. The strings are tuned E-A-D-a-d-g-b-e (Capitals are bass strings, lower-case are electric guitar strings). What does this mean!? Well it means I can play the parts of the guitar and bass simultaneously. Thus taking double the wage at gigs!? I can dream. For the musically retarded, this means I can take the place in a regular band of the person that shows off who gets all the girls and the fat or lanky guy at the back that plays the big guitar who really doesn't look interested in what's going on at all!
So, after probably 8 years of wanting a guitar styled after
Charlie Hunter's 8 string I am finally to get my hands on one!
Never has a week been so excruciatingly long. Not since Miss Lewis was off for a week and we had some awful substitute teacher who insisted in telling us stories of how her son died for being driven over by a steam roller! Oh Miss Lewis, how the boys in the class missed you.
I thought it's obvious, but it seems not. So I thought I would share it with you guys, as you will no doubt be hearing many tales of joy and woe about my love/hate affair with this beast!
So, the grand unveiling of the custom buitar guitar I have lusted over for many many years, currently packed away tightly in an aircraft fuselage. Most likely along side a collection of moody Luis' (Vuittons) and some parent's suitcase that they've had since the 70's (Tan leather no doubt!):
The guitar is hand made by Wes Lambe in NC, USA. The strings are tuned E-A-D-a-d-g-b-e (Capitals are bass strings, lower-case are electric guitar strings). What does this mean!? Well it means I can play the parts of the guitar and bass simultaneously. Thus taking double the wage at gigs!? I can dream. For the musically retarded, this means I can take the place in a regular band of the person that shows off who gets all the girls and the fat or lanky guy at the back that plays the big guitar who really doesn't look interested in what's going on at all!
So, after probably 8 years of wanting a guitar styled after
Charlie Hunter's 8 string I am finally to get my hands on one!
Never has a week been so excruciatingly long. Not since Miss Lewis was off for a week and we had some awful substitute teacher who insisted in telling us stories of how her son died for being driven over by a steam roller! Oh Miss Lewis, how the boys in the class missed you.
15 January 2007
We've only just beguuuuuuuuuuuuun....
Yeah, but what's the point?
Well, you've caught me at the start of a pretty long journey. You don't need to know the history of how I got here (If you do. Born 28/12/79 became 14, was like wow, bass is cool, have 'careers', decide being in lots of debt to be a musician sounds very attractive).
So thats where you have met me in the trip...I am a first year student. Oft referred to as being a 'mature' student. To be precise, a 'mature' student of Jazz focusing primarily on Bass (electric/acoustic) performance.
What are we going to do on this journey?
Who knows. We'll probably listen to lots of astounding music and argue that someone else could have done it better. We may go to foreign country's to see that they call jazz. We'll play music with people that we don't really want to, but end up learning a hell of a lot from them. We'll commit ourselves to becoming highly proficient on the 8-String Guitar/Bass (More on this in the next fortnight...) while passing on tips to newcomers to the beast. We'll ponder if it's worth tallying up £25,000 worth of debt with the soul aim of becoming a 'Jazz Musician'. We'll learn Japanese. We will not be having any fun. We'll find a way of notating sarcasm in written form in an accurate way. We'll speak a lot of rubbish. You'll probably get to hear stories, nay, fables of things that my friends have got up to and be either too scared to tell anyone else, or laughing so hard your shoes will fall off!
Oh yeah, we'll get a degree as well...but that's all the just the start of this trek through life. This part of it is just like packing your bag before going trekking round the world for an undetermined time on a shoestring budget.
So continue that metaphor; I hope I don't pick up the wrong bag at the airport, but end living in Rio being served Daquiris by my monkey butlers!
Well, you've caught me at the start of a pretty long journey. You don't need to know the history of how I got here (If you do. Born 28/12/79 became 14, was like wow, bass is cool, have 'careers', decide being in lots of debt to be a musician sounds very attractive).
So thats where you have met me in the trip...I am a first year student. Oft referred to as being a 'mature' student. To be precise, a 'mature' student of Jazz focusing primarily on Bass (electric/acoustic) performance.
What are we going to do on this journey?
Who knows. We'll probably listen to lots of astounding music and argue that someone else could have done it better. We may go to foreign country's to see that they call jazz. We'll play music with people that we don't really want to, but end up learning a hell of a lot from them. We'll commit ourselves to becoming highly proficient on the 8-String Guitar/Bass (More on this in the next fortnight...) while passing on tips to newcomers to the beast. We'll ponder if it's worth tallying up £25,000 worth of debt with the soul aim of becoming a 'Jazz Musician'. We'll learn Japanese. We will not be having any fun. We'll find a way of notating sarcasm in written form in an accurate way. We'll speak a lot of rubbish. You'll probably get to hear stories, nay, fables of things that my friends have got up to and be either too scared to tell anyone else, or laughing so hard your shoes will fall off!
Oh yeah, we'll get a degree as well...but that's all the just the start of this trek through life. This part of it is just like packing your bag before going trekking round the world for an undetermined time on a shoestring budget.
So continue that metaphor; I hope I don't pick up the wrong bag at the airport, but end living in Rio being served Daquiris by my monkey butlers!
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