Hartke Bass Clinic with Victor Wooten

hello everyone i'm victor wooten i'm happy to be here at sweetwater representing hartke and i'm going to be sharing my thoughts about music so [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] so [Music] do [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Laughter] [Music] do [Music] [Music] [Music] do [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so thanks for listening i want to thank hartke as well as sweetwater for giving us this time together i'm going to talk a little bit first about what i just did i won't say that it was the most incredible piece of music ever written it's not even the best i've ever played but what it was was free it was freedom i just started playing i didn't plan anything from beginning to end it was pure freedom in other words most of us are afraid to play like that right because we're judging it we're prejudging it we're afraid that we're going to mess up and for me when i play i already know i'm gonna mess up that's a part of who i am it's a part of life i make mistakes but that's how i grow so every time i play every time i practice i make sure that i maintain my musical freedom so let's think about it this way if we were to meet each other and sit down and have a conversation together at the coffee table or wherever meeting at a show we would not have to pre-plan our conversation i wouldn't have to call you up and say hey man i learned these new words so when we get together make sure you say this to me so i can use my new words or hey who's going to start talking first today what are we going to talk about we never pre-plan it but guess what it works every time every time you get together with your friends without planning you have a wonderful conversation it works every time not some of the times every time yes there are some conversations that are better than others but they're all free meaning freedom and they work so why can't we do the same thing with our instrument the answer is that you can we just don't and i want to make sure that every time i play i have the same freedom that i have every time i talk and all you have to do is start doing it now i just happened to use a looping pedal so i had something to bounce off of and it actually got more fun when it bounced off of it differently than i expected because for me when everything goes exactly right it's a little bit boring if you imagine living your life and everything went right you'd think you'd like it but you'd be bored because life is fascinating when we dare to be courageous when things go wrong but we're still here to talk about it i like to say no one talks about the time that we drove through the arizona desert for eight hours and and we didn't run out of gas nobody talks about that we talk about the times that we almost died we almost crashed and we almost ran out of gas but we made it that's what fuels us so i treat music the same way i'm not afraid of messing up because i know that every time i make a mistake if i treat it correctly i will be better after that i will grow right we learn to walk because we fall we fell many times and now it's difficult to fall right so i'm not afraid of it so what i urge you to do i'm not even going to tell you how to do it is just to remember like a child how to be free how to play freely you can take your instrument hit a note and what does that know really listen to it what does that note tell me i might hear a tenth on the top but now what do i hear [Music] [Laughter] so [Music] right freedom doesn't have to be good i'm not trying to be good i'm trying to be free when you do it enough it gets better and even even on your worst day it'll be good enough so in many cases we're trying to be so right that we're not embracing our mistakes and it's the mistakes that make us better but because we're trying to avoid them and not embracing them we're not growing as fast as we can think about driving right if you want to learn directions get lost go places you haven't made if you usually take a right turn take a left today see where it takes you you will learn more that way so if you notice if you've ever followed any of my career i take a lot of left turns where i was usually taking a right because i love the exploration right and i'm free am i the best no who can say that but am i free maybe even freer than most that's possible but you can be this free today and the more you do it the better it'll get so i urge you to just play and see what happens but when you play make sure that you listen okay make sure you listen so taking it from the bottom end the bass player's standpoint here's some things that we can work on that's very very simple with music so let's say we have a piano player or guitar player playing i'm going to loop that so i'm the bass player on this [Music] so [Music] so you'll notice that if we keep doing this it will get boring rather quickly so yes we can put a melody on top of it add chord changes but what if there aren't chord changes from the bottom end the bass player or really anyone in the group but i'm gonna uh look at it from the base end and if you play piano or guitar uh you can figure out how to do this from your end also but i need to add a dynamic to this and i don't mean loud or soft what i mean is i need to add a change if we just stay in this area as good as it might be if we only stay there it won't remain as good we need variety so i'm in the key of c major so uh ask yourself answer this question in your head how many notes are there diatonically in the key of c major don't think too hard it's simple answer it's the same as what any key they all have the same amount of notes and that's seven c major we know that there's a c a d a e f and a g an a and a b if we know that how come i'm not using them i'm only thinking c c but if all the notes are really in the key why not use them e f g [Music] back to c and all of a sudden i realized wow now this song is getting interesting let's go down to a nice f i like the f d that's the two of the good now to the five the five tells you where we're headed [Music] right so that's just to say that if you know that all of these notes are in the key don't be afraid to use them and i'm using a looping pedal here that will not change so that lets you know that even if the keyboard player or the guitar player doesn't change it's still going to work all right so now you have to you have to do it musically okay you got to use all of your musical senses to really make it work but if you know the notes that are in the key don't be afraid to use all of them if you're used to going to the two try going to the sixth and see what happens again like i said before sometimes when you're used to making a right make a laugh just to see what happens and if the band leader looks at you with that wrinkle in the forehead then don't do it again but if you do it musically they'll look at you with raised eyebrows like what nice nice so let's say that there's a melodic player that is soloing or playing a melody and they're running out of ideas so they're playing [Music] right and you can tell that they're running out of ideas but what you can do to help them [Music] is to give them a different canvas to paint over meaning change the bottom layer of the music so if it's normally c that line will always sound the same that they're playing if i keep the same bass note i can help this person by changing the bottom note and i'm just going to go to a different place that's in the key doesn't it sound like they're changing [Music] when i go to the five chord [Music] when i come back home it feels wonderful [Music] makes sense really easy none of this is difficult right so these are things that you can work into your playing right away right of course you want to practice them but they will work the first time when you practice them and get better they'll work even better so i just used the notes that are in the key right and there's always seven but there's five notes that aren't in the key and those five notes that aren't in the key will make the seven notes that are in the key sound better okay let me say that again just so you make sure you you get that we have 12 notes total seven of the notes are in the key that means there are five that aren't in the key the five that aren't in the key make the seven that are in the key sound better so if i only play the right notes it'll sound good but if i play the wrong notes also and lead into the right notes they'll sound better so let me give you an example start over here here's g minor so i'm really here so now i'm in g minor if i know what notes are in g minor g a b flat and if it's a funky minor it's probably going to be dorian which means we're going to raise the sixth note right so instead of a right instead of that e flat we're gonna go one two three four five e natural and then f and g right that's gonna make it funky just raising the six making it darn makes people wanna dance right so we know that i can use those notes so i can play the bass line here [Music] four minus the six that's the minor six to the five [Music] walk down [Music] so that's using the notes that are in the key but watch what happens when i use all 12 of the notes listen i'm going to work myself into it groove [Music] i'm gonna go to four [Music] two five back to the one [Music] if you notice the guitar player is not changing but all the notes still work because i'm in the key four minor six to the five now watch this here's a chromatic scale half step listen flat five listen to this here's a weird one that was all the notes all 12 and you notice they all work all 12 notes work not just seven if you do it right you'll notice when people go oh yeah that's because you're hitting a wrong note so you're adding dynamics and i don't mean loud and soft i mean contrast you're adding and changing the feel changing the intensity in music whatever is good about it if it stays good it becomes less good whatever's good about the song if it just stays good it loses its power so if we love this key [Music] this is g minor but if we stay here it's gonna get boring i gotta change something [Music] it's those changes that make you state interested so now if my baseline is rhythmic i might do change now i'm changing rhythm more space that will re-interest you into my song [Music] then for fun chromatic i love that note [Music] flat five back to up to the five so when i come back home to my regular bass part sounds good again so if you think about it like you live at home it doesn't matter what kind of home you live in you get tired of it you need to take a vacation right it doesn't mean that the vacation has to be long you can go away for a weekend but when you come back home it's like wow my own bed this feels good again music is the same way that's why the song gets away from the verse it gets away from the chorus we add a bridge just to take a vacation so that when we come back to the course it feels and sounds new again whatever instrument you play you can bring in that dynamic that new dynamic that new change that vacation that the song needs and sometimes the best way to do it is by adding space just lay out for a minute and that space will invite the listener in they will fill the space by inserting their energy they will listen more when you say less yeah so these are just a few things that you can do with music to recap practice being free yeah you want to know how to read you want to know how to repeat bass lines that'll keep people dancing all of that stuff but you want to maintain your freedom so when you practice play anything be free the same way we talk we have freedom and if you have a band just create somebody start talking like a conversation somebody just say something and everybody respond and create on the spot don't judge it right if you try to create something good you'll be judging it and you'll probably stop but do it anyway because the thing there is you're getting better every time you do it and after a while like walking it'll become hard to fall okay maintain that freedom when you know what key you're in learn how to use every note at first you may want to do this on your own you can use a looping pedal or you can practice with records or or whatever you want but learn what all the seven diatonic notes meaning the seven notes that are in the key and then use them all right if i'm in the key of g i treat g as the base note but all of a sudden i might treat an e as the bass note for a while and create my bass line off of e i'm still in the same key i'm just using notes that are in that key have fun with that explore and really listen and be musical but then i'll go further i'll use all the 12 tones i use chromatic scale and if you really want to sound jazzy the chromatic scale is the way to do it the chromatic scale is a good start by just using all the notes because seven of the notes out of the twelve seven of them will always be right and even if you hit a note that's not in the key you're only there for a second because the notes on either side are in the key again so don't be afraid it's just music this is meant to have fun you understand it's meant to have fun music is not notes scales music is not even an instrument music is expression music is life music is how we connect music makes people happy and smile that's what music really is so when i play that's what i think about i think about making people smile connecting with people i don't want to think about this no more than i want to think about my mouth when i talk my mouth is the instrument but i don't say hey i speak mouth that doesn't make sense does it then why does it make sense to say i play bass i should be playing music i hope that makes some sense to you most of all go and have fun explore this thing we call music make friends with music all right i hope you enjoyed yourselves today i sure did thanks a lot thanks to sweetwater thanks to harkee for letting me be here and spend some time with you and most of all thank you for listening be musical my friends you

Channel: Sweetwater

Views: 44,792

Rating: 4.9791899 out of 5

Keywords: Sweetwater, cat:bass, man:Hartke, victor_wooten, how_to, demo, review, tutorial, lesson, guide, clinic, bass_clinic, bass_masterclass

Id: EwvbrCZn4NQ

Length: 28min 32sec (1712 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 31 2021