- Woo! Shit, that is so fire, come on. (blues music) - He ripped out his frets
of a Fender jazz bass, epoxied the fret board. - He made his own fretless bass? - Yes, yeah. - From a Fender jazz bass? - Yeah. - The forecast is jazz. (laughing) - 1, 2, 3-. Da duh duh duh duh duh duh duh. - That's why people dance. - Yeah. - It was because of the bass
not because of the kick drum. - Welcome to Professional Musicians React. We got a very special episode today. We are going to dig into
some of the greatest basslines of all time. Usually on Professional Musicians React, we talk about the whole song. We talk about production
and vocal performance and instrumentation, orchestration. Today we are going to dive in on bass, and what better people to do that with, then Nick Campbell and Sean Hurley? Also, Ryan's pretty great. And has played bass with
folks like Ben Folds. Nick has played bass with
Pomplamoose, my band, Scary Pockets, my other band, but also with Charlie Puth and Michael Mayo and Megan Trainer. Sean has played bass with
John Mayer and Alicia keys. Rob Thomas, Annie Lennox,
Selena Gomez, Alanis Morissette. The list is long, so we-. - Darren Chris. - Darren Chris, we got-. - Ryan Lerman (laughs). - We got some awesome bass
players doing this with us today to review Nick's favorite
basslines of all time, all that and more today on
Professional Musicians React. (bassline) - (singing) Musicians React. - Okay, before we jump in, we need a song. We sometimes do albums or artists. I want a recommendation for a song. - Oooh. - Before we jump in. - A single song? - A single song, that
you think people at home might not know, but you've
checked out the song recently. And it's just, it's an ear worm. They got to know this song. - I just listened to the new Halsey album That Trent Rezner and
Atticus Ross produced. And it is really cool. (girl is a gun by halsey) - Our good friend, Rob Humphreys, called me the other day and said, did you know there's a
new Beach Boys record out? (surf rock music) Did you know that? - Really? - There- it's like unreleased, I mean, a lot of them were probably
recorded here actually, because I know 20/20 was recorded here. (bluebirds over the
mountain by the beach boys) Friends I think was recorded here. (meant for you by the beach boys) - And Valentine? - And Valentine. - Wow. - But there's a bunch of like never before released Beach Boys
recordings from like the late sixties, early seventies. And I just listened to, I
haven't had time to check it out, but I listened to the
first song and it's great. - There's an artist that I
think is incredible that maybe people don't really know about,
her name is Gracie Abrams. (21 by gracie abrams) - Cool. - Gracie Abrams. Okay, I'm going to give you
Sunday Morning by Margo-. - Maroon Five. (laughing) - No. No, Sunday Morning. (laughing) - Sorry. - Sunday Morning by Margo,
I think her name is Guryan? (sunday morning by margo guryan) Sixties singer-songwriter. - Cool. - In the style of like Beatles, kinda Carol King kind of stuff, but wrote these great little pop songs. - Cool. - That a lot of people don't know about. And the songs called Sunday Morning. It's a great song. I mean really good compositions. She's a special singer-songwriter, but kind of just disappeared. - And it's from the era? Like it was recorded-. - Oh yeah, yeah, no. It's like a sixties record. - Wow. - With that said, let's
jump into these tracks here. We're going to start with Darling Dear, James Jamerson playing with Jackson 5. Here we go. (darling dear by jackson 5) - Oh my God. - Yeah. - So crazy, so sick. - Can you imagine that song
without Jamerson on it? - No. - I mean, it makes-. - It's not the same tune. - Yeah. - It's just so groovy. - It's mixed so loud. The bass is at the front of the mix. - There's an alternate mix
too, of that recording. I think it's called the
stripped mix, where it's ba- they take out everything except the bass, like tambourine and lead
vocal and it's so cool. - This? (stripped down version of
darling dear by jackson 5) - Yeah. - Woo! - You know what's amazing, is the- you still hear the full rhythm. - Yeah. - It's the pulse of the song. I mean, he can carry the
whole thing by himself. - It's so bouncy. - And it's all, it's all structured
around his voice, I get- and also I prefer cats
who don't know about like how they've recorded a lot of this stuff. Like Jamerson's improvising
all of this stuff on the spot. So like the chords are
written out in advance. Like normally the ba- role
of the bass player in a band is to like play the roots of the chord. But that serves this secondary
role also to be kind of like a low-end counterpoint to the melody, almost like you'd see in like
a Bach view or Cabal Corral or something like that. But instead of it being
all written out in advance, what Jamerson does is he's
listening to what's going on around him and making it up on the spot. So this is all just like
a single live take of him playing bass and he also
played bass with one finger. So he would go-. (imitates bass) - 'Cause he played upright, it was jazz, I mean this was a new
instrument when he was doing it. - Yeah, so he would be like, I know- I'm gonna see if I remember
how to play the part, but instead of like, normally most bass players would be like. (bassline) But he would do it like. (bassline) - Pick up cover. - Yeah. - Up top. So you're playing in a different spot. - Wow. - And if you listen really closely, you can hear the little spaces
in between each note because he has to go, he has to-. - He always played with
the pickup cover on? - Oh yeah. - Wow. - And he also had the-. - That's how it was sold. The mute in that. - Right, right. - Because he had a mute
at the edge of the guitar? - Under beneath the cover
there, there would be- like you had, it's coming
from the fifties car designs. So you got a cover of the stuff
that doesn't look so cool. The pickup and the bridge. And they were putting in
stuff to make it not sustain because upright basses were
what they were trying to sound like and if you let a string ring, it doesn't sound like an upright bass. There's too much sustain. Sounds more like a piano. So they put the foam in there. It would be glued, you
would stick it to the top of the bridge cover. - When did the kick
drum bass lock-in start? Like, it's-. - I don't know. It was so wild, wild west, you know, from Buddy Holly to Motown. (that'll be the day by buddy
holly and the crickets) The drums were not the
dominant thing until who knows? I don't know, later sixties? - I feel- well, and even then it's like, if you listen to like
early Led Zeppelin records, like they, it still sounds like that. (how many more times by led zeppelin) - John Paul Jones was emulating like, if you listen to Ramble On? - Yeah. - He's trying to do that. - Yeah. - In Ramble On. - Honorable mention, that didn't make the list
out of 10 songs for me. - But even-. (laughing) - But Jamerson's carrying like that- he's still doubling the kick drum on the first two beats, right? He's doing-. (imitates drum) - Not always. - But most of the time. - Then everything else. - Like, here-. (darling dear by jackson 5) There. There again. - Yeah. - There again. There again. (imitates drum) - He did a 16th there. - He's often doing the
16ths, but he's definitely, a lot of the time, locking
with that kick on one, two. - But, here's what is all
so important about music. Like, the kick is consistent. So now Jamerson could have-. - Exactly. - The thing, it's not a free for all. - Mmhmm. - If the drummer was
going to behave that way, then Jamerson would have
to be that the static guy. - And the thing that's interesting that-. - Someone's gotta be the straight man. - It's not just- exactly. But in the Motown sound, everyone was the straight man except-. - Except Jamerson. - Yeah. Which is why it worked. So there's very little improvising. And unless there's like
a solo or something, but like there's usually,
there were like three guitars, two drummers, percussion. That's all super-. - Scrip heart. - Yeah. - What is a- fricking Nigel
Hall, he was a part police, full on part police blast. - I'm part police in Pockets. - Yeah. - I'm, I'm a-. - Except for the bass,
that comes from Motown. - Wait, so who is part police? - Nigel Hall, that's
just what he calls it. - Was- did Barry Gordy like
know what he had on his- did he know that Jamerson
was like his secret weapon? - Well, he kind of like,
Jamerson fell out of like fashion in the 70's, like he, I-. - Right, but even when guys, because at some point they ran out of gas. Like they'd have to have shifts
because Motown got so big. So Bob Babbitt learned how to
play in the style of Jamerson. The arrangers and composers
started writing basslines in the style of Jamerson. 'Cause they were studying it too. Like what makes this stuff great? So there are some songs where-. - It sounds like that, yeah. - The Jamerson part was written for him. 'Cause like, hey, this is
what we like about you. This, all this chromaticism,
all this dancing. It's, the reason it's a great
study to learn his stuff is like every permutation of a
16th note with an eighth note or whatever, it's like, it happens
in pretty much every song where like-. - Yeah. - What are, what's, it's
just a mathematic equation. How can you divvy up four
beats with 16th notes? And he's going to play that
rhythm somewhere in there. - And I think one of the reasons
he's so foundational, too, is like that occurred at a moment, talking about walking
in with the kick drum. Like there's a big difference when tuning and locking in with a
backbeat groove and a straight ahead swing groove. Like a lot of the stuff that
Jamerson played happened in jazz music, but there's
like a swing pulse, which is more of a triplet pulse, so all of that vocabulary is in that world and you're locking with
the ride cymbal time, not the kick drum. - No 2/4, no kick. - Exactly, yeah. Like in swing music, the kick
drum's an accenting tool. The time is in the ride cymbal. (cymbal gently clinks) Since this is coming
directly from jazz music, we now, because people
like make beats and stuff and music has changed a lot. People lock into the kick drum. That's like the fundamental low tone, but that's not what modern mu- that's not what music was
like a hundred years ago. - Yeah. - People would primarily lock
into like the quarter note and the cymbal interaction. But really the quarter note,
that was like the low end that was keeping the time. - Right. - And lot of it, the kick drum, the tuning was higher than the bass. - Right. - So the bass had the space
of, and that's what people, that's why people danced. - Yeah. - It was because of the bass,
not because of the kick drum. - Yeah. - Only in the fidelity of
everything, it was like AM radio. There was no, you weren't
getting full fidelity. So the bass, you could
even hear, that's not- like you play a low E now
through any modern amp and you get even more,
I don't know, 40 hertz, 30 hertz where that stuff,
everything's squeezed and it bops, it kind of makes you. It does what the kick drum would do. - When you think about a band
in the 20's and what's going to project in a club without,
you know, amplification. It's like the bass is it. That's what people are
going to feel and move to. - And it's also interesting, I mean, this is like a, probably an aside, but upright bass' we're set
up really differently at that point in history than they are
now because people had to set up the action super high, so
they can project high volume. And now most jazz bass players there, they played through amps on gigs still. - Right. - It's not totally acoustic. That's not always true. And there are some people
who are like, no, man, you got to set up your action
high and get your projection. I don't really play upright bass. So I don't do any of that stuff. But there are a lot of cats
who play with like lower action and play through amps
and, but that was like, it didn't exist at the time, so-. - Even Jamerson played with higher action then is the modern equivalent. - Yeah. - And he was just-. - Definitely. - Because he had upright muscles
that he could just apply to this new instrument. - Mmhmm. - And also, I remember
once I let Drew Taubenfeld borrow one of my Milan P bass that had the period correct Labella Jamer-. - 50 to 110. - Yeah, like the super heavy ones. And it's hard to, it's a lot harder to play, but the action wasn't crazy
high, but it was difficult. And I gave it to him to let him borrow it. And he was like, I don't
think I can play that bass. It hurts my hands. - The tension. - Yeah, it's so much tension on the neck. - Let's fast forward a little
bit and go to Tower of Power. - Cool. - And we're gonna go to,
who are we going to, Nick? - Rocco Prestia. - We're going to Rocco
Prestia in Tower of Power. The song is What is Hip, here we go. (what is hip? by tower of power) - Sick. - Oh my God. - Oh! - Yeah. (laughing) Woo! Shit, that is so fire. (music continues) - Oh that. - Yeah. - Coming up right before it starts. - 16th. (groans) (groans) (laughing) (music continues) (laughing) - Yes, yes! Gosh! - Oakland. - Classic. - Oakland. - Game show ending. - Exactly. (laughing) - Wow. - Talk about stamina. - Talk about 16th notes. - Every song is like that. - Is like that. - Yeah, I didn't- that's
like the most iconic one, but yeah, I mean, I can't
imagine doing that for like an entire show, I mean,
it's like the opposite of Jamerson, right? - Right. - He played, Jamerson, with one finger. This is like 16th notes the entire time. - When there's so much detail and like the pushes in the note lengths-. - Yeah. - And where he leaves space. - Going back into the
verses after the choruses? - Right. (imitates cymbal) - There's that, yeah he-. - That little 16th note. - The 16th note. He enters that line again right
before the downbeat and it feels so good, can we listen
to that one more time? (what is hip? by tower of power) There. - Yeah. - All of the sections, the bass goes 16th note,
sometimes low E and then-. - Yeah. - Picks up. (imitates bassline) - Yes. One, two, three-. (imitates bassline) Yes. - I'm curious how you guys think
about placement in terms of like where the center of the
beat is and when you push and when you drag and like, do you think of, even
just these two examples, do you think of Jamerson as
living on a certain place around on or around the beat versus-. - It's certainly in
Darling Dear and probably on a lot of stuff, he's
on the front end of it. - Yeah. - It's definitely like, there's
an urgency, even with Rocco. Like I, it's definitely not laid back. It feels great. - Yeah. - But if you were to
look at it, it's like, this is going this way the whole time. - There's also two- these
basslines are both really busy. And the amount of density you
have in a given bassline will often push it forward or lean it back, so. - Mmhmm. - Like, if you compare this to
somebody like Pino Palladino or something, who's sort
of known for being able to like lay it way back. There's not like constant 16th notes going on the whole time. - But, yeah, it doesn't work
with this style of music-. (indistinct) Because the pulse is the groove. - And I think too, the
other thing about, like, time is it's like really all about like agreement between an ensemble. The thing that starts becoming different, I think, about this era of R&B music, that's building off
what happened in Motown. It's like the horns become a percussion instrument as much as-. - Yeah. - The rest of the band. And it all lines up
with the way the voice, the bass voice leads the harmony. - I think when it comes to
placement of notes on the bass, when people talk about time, they talk a lot about placement. I think the release end of the note-. - Mmmm. - Is just as important. - Yeah. And like, you can often
tell a lot about what a bass player is trying to do
based on how- when they cut off their notes or how long
they're sustaining them. - Yeah, yeah. - And you can't really do,
have one without the other. - Yeah, when you read the
transience, you can kind of, kind of see it like a piece of music. - Yeah. - Oh, okay. That- if it's a dotted quarter
note, that means something versus like, oh, I played
a note and I waited until the next time I had to play a note. - Yeah. - So like, did you stop with the snare? Did you stop with
somebody else's entering? Are you-. - Yeah. - Part of the conversation? Are you speaking or listening? - Cutting off at the snare drum can make something feel so funky. - Mmhmm. - If the snare like chops
the bass note, especially-. - Yeah. - I, yeah. - It also really matters with
16th note subdivision grooves like this, like if like
it's something that I've, I've talked to, like people
have asked me this question a lot about like, how do I
get my 16th note stuff, like funk, together? And a lot of the time, it's not about like where
they're putting the notes. It's about when they're
releasing that they don't- they don't have an awareness about like, if they're playing them long or short. - Right. - Or how they're muting
them or any of that stuff. - Can you play us some
differences of like-. - Yeah. - Like, you know, how you
might play it versus like how some other people might
play releases on the-. - Sure, well, it's like, you know, like if you just play 16th
notes on the bass, right, like-. (bassline) - It sounds like punk rock. - It sounds like punk rock or-. (bassline) - Yeah, yeah. - But if you mute a little
bit with your left hand. (bassline) - This is using-. - Now you sound like a punk band. - If you're fretting here, right. Then you're going to mute, so it's control of your left hand. - And controlling the articulation
of the note with my left hand and changing the note
length just a little bit. So instead of always bringing out, it feels like a little shorter
and tighter and it's easier to kind of position the
syncopations where I want them. Like, as the string wobbles
really wide, when you're going. (bassline) - Very Flea. (electric bassline) - It's a little harder to play, you know, it's like, it's flat, it's big. It takes up all this space, right? But if you go. (jangly bassline) - Oooh, that's so funky. - And then you leave it
to the end of the phrase to let it open up like you
want that awareness of it. Not just like, as a
steadfast rule of like, funk is short and rock is long, it's all about like developing a constant, like,
awareness of your releases over time for specific music. - The biggest difference
is you know the intention of, like, okay-. - Exactly. - You're not hitting a note and going, oh, I wonder how long this
is going to last for. - Exactly, yeah. - This is what I'll do. That's why you play an
instrument and then learn what it does, but different instruments. This is what was lost on me as a kid is, I had literally an Ibanez
five string with a high C as I was reading my Jamerson book. - Mango fusion. - This was 1990 and I wanted
to play chords and I wanted to learn all that I could, but
also it's was like, oh yeah, Jamerson's the best,
you've got to check it out. Like, that's not the right
bass to emulate that stuff. It was great for a sight reading exercise. It was great to fortify
my musical knowledge, but I was never going to
sound correct playing that. - Okay should we listen to Jaco? - Sure. - Pastorious on Havona? - Yeah. - Yeah, Havona. - This is the best,
most musical fast solo. - Yeah. - Ever recorded. - Yeah, this might be the
best bass solo ever recorded. (havona by weather report) - It sounds like there's a
weather report about to happen. - Exactly. - It's stormy in Philadelphia. - The forecast is jazz. (laughing) - It's going to be raining notes. - It's gonna be raining
parallel major chords, bro. - Wow. (laughing) - Lidian, bro. - I gotta go. (music continues) - That footwork. (laughing) - This could be a shirtless drummer, too. - Oh yeah. - Peter Erskine. - Yeah. - Actually, it's Alex
Acuna on this record. - Oh. (music continues) - Also sitting higher in the mix, like you were saying before. - Totally. - It's that nasally kind of woody bass. - He's from Jamerson and
Rocco, applied to jazz. - Yeah, exactly. (music continues) - That's it, that's the lick. - That's insane! - I mean, that is just a, that is virtuosity at its most virtuosic. - Yeah. - Yeah, totally. - Yeah. - On a fretless. - Mmhmm. - Yeah, he popularized it. Like I, I'm not sure if there, I think there were some fretless basses. - There must have been. - There must have been. - Conceptually, I don't even know if a manufacturer made them. - Yeah. - He ripped out his frets
of a Fender jazz bass, epoxied the fret board so it
has more attack, the transient. - Wait there- he made
his own fretless bass? - Yes. - Yeah. - From a Fender jazz bass? - Yeah. - Yeah, so you take the
bass and he, I mean, this is not at a time
when it was like, oh yeah, I have a vintage sixties jazz
bass so I'm going to honor it. He literally ripped the frets
out with some pliers and then filled it with glue and then put epoxy on the fret board to-. - Yeah. - Make it all glassy. - I remember hearing the story
in the doc- his documentary, that like he had saved up- 'cause he started working
like really young in Florida. He's from Fort Lauderdale I think, before he became like Jaco. So he was doing gigs and he's
like 14 or 15 and he tried to get an upright bass so
he could do jazz gigs and the humidity in Florida destroyed it. - Right. - And he couldn't afford another
one, so instead of getting that, he ripped the frets off his bass. - So that he could have the
same access to, you know, an upright bass where there are no frets. - Yeah and you can like
slide between notes. - So you get all of that kind of-. - And the vibrato, too, that's-. - Yeah. - That's-. - Only achievable on a fretless. - Exactly. - It feels like it's sitting
in the hundred to 300 range? - Yeah. - As opposed to the 30 to 60 range. - Yeah, none of that's there. Like a lot of modern bass
lives in that sub domain. This is all that woody nasally
kind of mid-range bass tone. - And the whole thing
about like playing like, a lot of the time you would play with-. - That's from where he plays
it on the actual instrument. - And he would like kind of have just the bridge pick up on the-. (bassline) You kind of get the nasally like-. (bassline continues) - And if you play by pivoting off a bit, that's when you get it, the string is tauter and
that's the tone you get. (bassline continues) The closer to the neck
you get, it gets woodier-. - So, he played up high on the neck? - That's thicker and it gets thinner and-. - Yeah. - But you can hear it more. It's like in the articulation. - Mmhmm. - It's at its highest when
you're down by the bridge. - When there's that moment where the piano doubles the bass-. - Yeah, the-. (fast bassline) - It's like, yeah, because
it's a melodic part, not a bass part. - And actually Jaco wrote this tune, so he wrote that for himself
and the piano player. - There you go. - But yeah, he wants that stuff to speak. And one of the things about, I mean, a lot of people imitate
Jaco Pastorious and have since he kind of came onto the scene, but something I think that he has
that the people who imitate him tend to lack, is that
like sense of singable clarity in his improvisation, like if
you slow down all his lines, the melody, the way the
melody relates to the harmony is crystal clear. It's like not random fast notes. - He's not just doing finger
exercises on the bass. - Exactly, it's not shapes,
he's singing everything that he's doing and it's just
happening really fast. And he has so much clarity that
he can do it at that tempo. - High tempo. - Yeah. But it's still, if you
slow it down, you can say- a lot of the great jazz
improvisers, they all have this. When they add density,
if you slow it all down, it's singable stuff. It's like real stuff. And that they're actually
hearing in real time. It's not just like a
pattern that they memorize. And in the basslines,
you can hear that, too. - Right, you hear, once you get into it, I realized, oh, he's got a thing
he does on a seventh chord. And he pivots off the six and the five. - Yeah. - And then it's like, oh, I've
heard it in every song that he's played, but when you're
young and you're just being assaulted with this
flurry of notes, you like, you can't make sense of it. And like, oh, but he's
got, he's got a vocabulary just like anybody else. - Yeah. - It's got a range. - The thing that's cool about
his vocabulary is like an improviser, I mean,
this is a great example. 'Cause like the main section
of the tune, it's like, it's like almost all major chords. It's like- (bass chords) then one minor chord, then- (bass chords) and then suss blast. - Yeah. (bass) - A lot of nines in there too. - And so the thing that's
cool about it is like, unlike Charlie Parker, who is, and he comes from this background, but everything is like
super chromatic, actually one of the other really
famous Jaco recordings is him playing Donna Lee, right, like. (bassline) It's like super bebop, super chromatic and Jaco has all that stuff. But the thing that's
cool, especially this tune is you can play pentatonic patterns over all of these chords
and they all work. - And he does a lot of them. - And he does, like-. (bassline) - I'll take just a minute of that. (laughing) Just with the face and everything. - Loop it. (laughing) - Well, dude, it's all
on scottsbasslessons.com, this is basically all, all the
shit I stole from this tune. - Should we take some
questions from the Discord and from patrons here? Specifically for you guys. - Mmhmm. - Specifically about bass- oh,
these are questions from the YouTube community, sorry, not
from our Discord, this is from the Professional Musicians
React YouTube community. - Lovely. - This is the first time we
asked community for questions. We got a bunch of questions
from folks watching at home. So thank you for the questions. This is from Monotone, not
MonoNeon, but Monotone. - One singular tone. - Yeah, and it's mixed
in mono, not stereo. - Right. - Asking folks to talk about
how these bassists have drastically different
right-hand positions, between Jaco and-. - Oh, we actually kind
of talked about that. - Yeah. - Over the course of it, but-. - There's like the one finger. - Yeah, and Jamerson,
because of the covers, always played by the neck, pretty much. - It's kind of- those three
are exhibits A, B and C where Jamerson up here
because of the covers here. So he's playing here. I would imagine, I
think Rocco played here. - That's where-. - 'Cause he's pivoting. - And that's where it feels good to play on a P bass in general. - Right, I think when you first
get a bass, it's like, okay, anchor your thumb here and start playing. And then Jaco would have a pickup here. (plucks bass) And he's playing over here. - Jaco always rested on
the bridge pickup, yeah. - He rested on the- rested his
thumb on the bridge pickup? - Yeah, it would be back here. - Yeah. - On the bottom note like that? - Well, Ja- it's easier to show
on a bass with two pickups. So like-. - Even though it's not a real bass. - Even though it's a real
bass, it's just my toy. But he would do it like. (bass) - And that's what gives them that nasally, woody kind of sound. - Only one way to get
it, is to play it there - And it's, his thing
about it was so iconic. Like everybody who plays a P
bass just sounds like they're playing a P bass, like in a good way. And that's why most of this, even though I have this
stupid bass, I'm just kidding. It's the best bass. - I love that bass. - That's why there's
Reddit threads about it. Nobody knows what it is, ha ha ha ha. (gasp) - I know what it is. - Yeah, I told, I mean-. - If you pay me enough I'll tell you. (laughing) - Yeah, John knows. But you guys are my, you
guys are my real friends. I don't want strangers to know. - Okay, here's our next
question from Sahill Madaan. Madaan, Sahill Madaan? These artists songs are
truly great and stood the test of time, would love
to hear artists you believe do a good job of representing
the instrument today. - Ooh. - Man, I mean, there are a lot. (laughing) - There are a lot. - It's mostly the two of us. (laughing) - Present company excluded,
there are still many, many, many, many great bass players. - I mean, you both mentioned
Pino several times. - Pino, I put Tim Lafebvre on that list. (bassline) - Totally. - As someone who's like
expanded the way people play the electric bass, Pino for sure. (bassline) I mean and Pino I think is
up- it's a bummer we're only doing three today because it's like, if there was a fourth, it would definitely be Pino, in terms of the way people play now. - Right. - Let's do our lightning round. - Cool. - And then that'll take us out here. - What's a lightning round? - Lightning round-. - Is that even faster? - It's factoids, fast
factoids and questions. - Okay, sick. - We're going to test your
bass history knowledge. - Wow. - Like I didn't, I didn't
show up for a test. Okay, bro. I was just trying to do some
content with my friends. - Actually, it's not really testing your bass history knowledge, it's just content. Jamerson performed on 23 number
one hits on the pop charts. A record surpassed only
by one other bassist. - Oh, I think it's Abe Laboriel, right? - I'm going to guess Lee Sklar. - So it's a little bit
of a trick question. The bassist is Paul McCartney. - Sting. - [All] Ohhh. - Okay, yeah, that is a trick question. That's bullshit. - Who performed on 56 number one hits? - Well, he doesn't count
if it's your own band. - Right. (laughing) - And if you're a singer. - And if you're a lead singer. - Yeah! - Doesn't count, disqualified. - But what do you think of
McCartney's bass playing? - I love Paul-. - Beautiful. - Yeah, it's great. And, it has all the
counterpoint stuff of Jamerson. It's just- actually, it's funny. I had to play Dear Prudence
on a gig a couple of weeks ago and- crazy that there are gigs again, but, I listened to the original
recording as I hadn't done it in a long time and the way he chooses which notes to start ideas on. (indistinct) It's like totally, yeah,
it starts on the five. - It starts on the five. - Yeah. Which is like, it's- and then it goes to, it's like, it has the
same chord in kind of like counterpoint box style. (bassline) - Let me adjust my question slightly. - Yeah. - Because we all love McCartney melodies. - Mmhmm. - You're saying vocal
melodies or bass melodies? - Any melody that comes
out of McCartney's brain-. - Yeah. - Is going to be genius. So let's take the
melodies out for a second. I'm talking about his execution
on the bass instrument. - I don't think you can. I don't think you can do that for him. - No? - No. His melodic voice on the
instrument, the way he generates melodies is a big part of why
he's such a great bass player. - So you're answering the question. He is a great bass player. - Uh-huh. - Yeah. - A hundred percent, yeah. - Even in the early days where
he was literally walking, (singing) close your eyes
and ill kiss you, like, that feels great. He's playing great bass
and there's a melody, even though it's all quarter notes. So you're limiting yourself,
but it's just, it's beautiful. - And what we love about the
bass, even subconsciously, is it's the logic at the ground floor of all of these compositions. It is like, they're all melodies. You know what I mean? Like Jamerson's melodic
thing is insanely melodic. - Exactly. - Like it's just like a
patchwork quilt being woven as the song is going. - And the thing that's cool
about being a bass player is you do sit in that nexus
of like your fundamental to harmony and rhythm, which is obvious. But a lot of people don't realize that the bass is actually a
melodic instrument primarily. And that's why all these
great basslines kind of, they provide counterpoints to
the melody and without them, the songs aren't as good anymore. And so for Paul McCartney specifically, like I think his bass playing
was like a counterpoint to himself and taking out the
melodic element from him is, you can't really look at
his bass playing without it. - Rocco Prestia credits one
band member in particular with helping him achieve his sound. Who was it? - I do not know the
answer to this question. - Drummer Dave Garibaldi. - Oh, that makes sense. - I said the wrong drummer before, but David Garibaldi and him
were like brothers, you know. - Who are some honorable mentions before we close it up here? Some honorable mentions who
we didn't listen to today, but made your list of top
10 basslines of all time. And then I want to hear
some from Sean too, before we close it out. - Sure, I mean, there's a lot. I mean, I don't remember
what I put on my list. I was just like, fuck, I
can't pick 10 so I'll just do random ones but I'll
just say things I like. I'm pretty sure Talking
Heads were on my list. I love Tina Weymouth a lot. (life during wartime by talking heads) I think her basslines are super
creative and really funky. Colin Greenwood from
Radiohead was on my list. (creep by radiohead) - Everything is Everything, the live- (indistinct) Donny Hathaway record. - Oh. - That is a case study
of how a bass solo can be given to just a R&B
audience as a marathon. (everything is everything
by donny hathaway) - He outplays everyone
else that takes a solo. Like his solo was better
than the guitar player. - Yeah. - Better than everybody,
it's just more musical. - I will say it in terms
of honorable mention, both you guys are such legends. Two of my favorite- let's
not undersell the talent that we have here, seriously. - Sure. - Legendary voice on the instrument. Sean's pillowy thing that
he does, it's just like, it's just like sitting on
the most comfortable couch. (bassline) You know what I mean? When you're like, I've
been blessed to play, as we both have with,
you know, these two guys. I feel like Nick, you're
thing that you do. - Sick, mate, sick. (laughing) - His modal is fucked. - [All] His modal is fucked. (bassline) - Sussed out, bro. - When in doubt, suss it out. - I truly think each of you
guys have such a special, unique voice on the instrument. - It's very cool, buddy. - To have you here. (blues music) And with that heartwarming
note, we'll close it out today for Professional Musicians React. Thank you for watching. We come out with new episodes every week. So don't forget to like, and
subscribe if you want more, just like this. We will see you next week on
Professional Musicians React. Thank you. See you later.
