Victor Wooten Interview | Thomann

hey guys i hope you're doing well today is a very special day for me a all-time hero of mine is next to me or we are going to have an interview mr victor woodman thank you so much for spending some time with us and for being here so the first question is how are you doing i'm doing well i'm doing well and and i want to say thank you for having me here um i'm i'm very honored to get to speak with you all thank you very much but i'm doing very well life is good where are you at the moment i'm at my house in night in nashville tennessee yeah yeah and what keeps you busy at the moment i mean a lot of things are going on so what are you doing right now yeah well i'm trying not to be busy but i still i still am busy i'm doing lots of interviews like this yeah because you know now that we are not touring not playing live shows a lot of people are doing interviews a lot of people are recording many people are doing podcasts and shows um so i've been participating in some of those i've also been recording some music for different people yeah uh and i've also uh finished writing a book a new book that will come out early next year right the spirit of music that's correct yeah and so there are a lot of things you know life just life keeps you busy and plus i have a family four children so that and my wife so you know busy at home also okay so it must maybe it's really cool to stay at home because i guess you're on tour a lot and now staying at home by your family must be also a very cool thing now a positive thing i would say very positive i haven't been able to spend this much time with my family in my in my whole career so over over 30 years um so you know since my children have been born i haven't been able to spend a complete month at a time with them wow so now being home uh is a wonderful thing yeah really wonderful thing so was it hard sometimes to be so far away from your family and drawing a lot i mean it is also very cool to tour and to meet new people and get to know cultures and stuff like that but these are like it's separated your family and the touring life it must be hard to combine well not hard to combine but i do miss them i tour i tour a lot so that they can live the good life that they live yeah my my wife doesn't have to work outside of the house unless she wants to i have two uh two one kid in college i have another child who graduated college already and is living in new york my career helped pay for that yeah but everything nothing is free in life so i paid for that by being away from them maybe too much and that's time i can't get back and in my older years i won't wish that i had toured more i will wish that i had spent time with my family more yeah yeah so i'm making sure that i do that now yeah cool but someone has to i mean they've got the opportunity to go to college that's also something that is really valuable and what's important which brings me to the next question um music education i mean i've read your book and it just opened my mind in all i don't know this book is like genius every time i read it i get new points where i say wow okay i didn't get that at the first part when i read it so i love your approach that you see music as a language and you started at the age of two and learned how to speak music and so how do you think music education or schools or universities should look like because now we're just there's a curriculum and sometimes it's like i don't know it feels a little bit strange not natural natural i don't know how do you feel about these things when people don't learn a language naturally it's difficult to teach it naturally in other words if i wanted to learn to speak german now is that your native language julia so you learned it naturally you didn't learn it academically you didn't you were never told to practice right no one sat you down and said learn these words first you learned the words you wanted to learn first and even if you said them wrong no one corrected you they just kept saying them to you knowing you'll get it right so that's the natural process and you start young you're immersed in it everyone around you is speaking you're not only talking as a baby you're not talking to other babies to learn you're talking or like i like to say you're jamming with the professionals yes all the time you're never treated as a beginner that's the natural process but if i want to learn to speak german i don't really have the time or the opportunity to learn it the way you did so the the curriculum probably won't be natural not like as natural as yours um but it can be more natural it can be so i think curriculum is good but i do see where at least i think there should be changes and additions um and in in many cases people teach the as us teachers teach the way we teach [Music] where it would be more natural to teach the way the student needs to learn right in many cases teaching is about the teacher yeah right i've got degrees i know everything i listen to me take my tests where teaching should be about the student and so teachers need to learn how to assess the student quickly how does this student learn but in most cases at least it may be all cases academically if you don't learn the way i'm teaching you fail okay and for me for me if a student fails i failed yeah so maybe that's also the thing why a lot of people quit maybe a lot of people quit music because you're over corrected in the beginning okay think about the natural way when you were learning to talk no let's say when you learn anything you're going to do it wrong more than you do it right so imagine hearing every time you're wrong oh that was wrong no that was bad do it again no that was who who would continue why would you continue just to be told that you're wrong over and over but in the natural process we don't criticize someone's mistakes we complement their effort right when you're a child and you try to do something the parent is happy not because of the outcome but because of your input because you tried we celebrate so you like that and so you keep trying you keep trying and through the repetition of you trying of course you're eventually going to get it right yeah and when learning to talk you learn to get it right without ever hearing that you were wrong exactly yeah my parents never said that this was wrong they just said it in the right way and then i understand oh it sounds like that okay me right and in many cases your parents would say it the wrong way as long as your way is close enough yeah like like in america we babies like to hold a blanket but they can't say blanket they say blankie and your pant but that's close enough so your parents will say hey here's your blankie yeah right they don't correct you see the parents adapt to your way of learning right so you're always made to feel good accepted appreciated you feel proud of yourself because you don't even know you're a beginner yeah right you don't even know you're wrong that's freedom and the joy of learning so we don't have that in a lot of curriculums and i understand why but i do think we can put more of that in to keep the student happy and inspired and wanting to learn yeah yeah wow that's so important also in an interview i think it was with scott's divine you said that one of your favorite speakers is dr martin luther king yes and you said if you want to learn his speech you would listen and then repeat yes you may not even know what the words mean but you repeat it and my question is like it feels like when i'm transcribing that's the same way i transcribe it and can play it and it feels like a little bit like a classical piece why i repeat something that is already written but it's my interpretation but i think i want to understand also what i play so how do i get from the part where are just playing what is written and interpret something to the point why where i make it my own well here's the thing it's already your own because as soon as i hear you play a bach piece i know it's not bach okay it sounds just like julia [Laughter] so it's your own the first day mistakes and all right you don't have to make it your own you're not bach so when you were learning to speak german how much time did you spend on all the words you learned from your parents and your friends how much time did you focus on making these words my own i i just play around with it i'll answer zero you didn't make you didn't spend any time making all these german words my own i have to sound like me that came through repetition you find yourself by being yourself and who else can you be right we make the mistake of trying to be someone else we try to play it just like bach then we have to go back and try to play it just like us but when you learn to talk you're always being like you you're saying what you want to say even if you're repeating someone else so the truth julia is that you cannot speak without your own voice even when you're trying to sound like someone else you sound like julia trying to sound like someone else okay yeah yeah right so in my in my opinion and i'm just one person and i it doesn't mean i'm right but i do believe what i say you don't have to find yourself you're already yourself when you realize that then you can find out what makes you beautiful i am myself but what is it about me that makes me different right doesn't mean i'm better doesn't mean i'm worse but i am an individual i just thought about when i learned um harmonics on bass and it was because i heard your version of amazing grace i think that's the piece i played or a song that i played the most on the bass oh i mean you have to let me hear that julia i will send you the link thank you please please and that opened my universe and i didn't know when i started i didn't know chaco i just know you i i think you also studied portrait of tracy because there are a lot of harmonics in it i mean oh yes it's like genius and i i knew i i just wanted to learn amazing grace i heard it and i didn't stop till i figured out all the parts so that was really an eye-opener for me what can be done on the base and i think electric-based history is very young very where do you see the base in the future or how is it going on i'm i'm always thinking about also a classical instrument that has so much more history how do you think it will be with the electric phase well the electric bass is right around 70 years old so uh two days ago i think i was speaking with my good friend chuck rainey now chuck rainey is a legendary basis he's played on so much music but he's older than the electric bass so he's one of the very first people to ever play it so imagine being alive when someone invented the double bass or the violin the first ones were different right no one knew what it was going to become it's like a child when you have a little child an infant maybe a year old maybe two years old maybe 10. that's what the electric bass is it's an infant now the infant has a parent has it has a a a mommy or a daddy the double bass the contrabass but you don't look at an infant and decide what it's going to be while it's an infant the electric base for for me is too young to decide what it's going to be okay in the future so one example many many years ago maybe 15 years ago i was asked to p to be a part of a team to come up with the definitive how to play the electric based book yeah okay right i said no it's too soon to determine how to play it yeah we use a pick fingers thumping like larry graham tapping harmonics right now 15 years later people are doing different things on the base all kinds of techniques right now we have like you know double thumbing yeah we have people playing with three fingers some playing with all four so we'd have to add a new chapter to that book at least every year if not every six months if we had written it so i just suggest let the base be maybe in 200 years we'll write that book but right now it's too young but what i do see is amazing it is really amazing how rapidly the instrument is growing from the playing style and the manufacturing style yeah there are so many things that are being adapted i have a base on my wall right now where as i move my hand down the neck normally as i get down low i have this big bend in my well this neck changes it twists i don't know how they do it but it twists ever so slightly so when i get down here i'm not like this i'm like this oh wow and it's an experimental thing so we'd have to maybe add that to the book if we had written it so overall i see wonderful changes but there's another thing that we have to watch out for as new bass players the fact that we are learning uh the the flashy the the the really fancy things about the bass people are learning fast and licks and how to tap and they can't even play a blues bass line i hear people learning jocko's bass solos but they don't know jocko's baselines i i was talking to a group the other night and a young kid in this camp with berkeley a berkeley class was telling me he was working on the melody to donna lee jocko played it and i asked him did he know the bass part to donnelly and he said no i said no one's going to call you to play the melody no one's going to hire you just to play the melody if you learn the bassline and the structure when you learn the melody you will understand that it's a road map through the chord changes yeah so hopefully he will do that but and i see a lot of us doing that these days it's like we're learning how to ice a cake but we don't even know how to make a cake and i want to play in a band so i want to play with other musicians so for me it's very important to i have fun playing just g over 16 bars and i really had to learn this to i don't know now it really it is fun to play just g it builds me to give a fundament to the whole band that's all you need to do as a basis larry graham one of my heroes who's still alive known as the first guy to use his thumb what we now call slapping we called it thumping growing up because larry graham caught it thumping he played a few songs one of them being um everyday people yeah i know that song he played g for the whole song yeah much more than 16 bars but it was so groovy now now you're talking julia it's not about the g it's not about the note nobody's dancing to a note right nobody says oh this is this song's in g let me check oh that's g that's my key i got to get up and dance right nobody does that your job julia as a basis is to groove is to make make uh people's bodies feel the beat now the melody will make you hear and remember like my brother said reggie says melody makes you remember but rhythm makes you your bones want to move yeah that's your job but here's the problem with that julia that's not a part of any base curriculum it's not a part of any curriculum if someone was going to teach you the song they would start by teaching you the notes yeah that's right wow that is so backwards yeah you're you're in the rhythm section you're not in the note section that's right right and my brother and i follow my brother reggie who's in my mind the best teacher ever i follow his method we get people playing the first day yeah because the note's easy and as a bass player you only need one note one right we don't teach you a bunch of notes and there's only 12 so it only takes you a minute to learn them but groove you got to feel and everyone can feel it everyone has rhythm if you didn't have rhythm you wouldn't be able to walk right nobody's right leg is moving faster than their left everybody has rhythm we just need to apply that rhythm to the instrument but you won't do it as well if i have you focused on the note so we just say put your finger right here right and then we put on a drum machine or we get a drummer to start playing my brother reggie starts playing some chords and you you have to start doing this and then we go ah yes julia that's what music is yeah yeah what you're feeling in your body is what music is we have to put what you're feeling on the instrument there's no music in the instrument music's in you and you already have it so just squeeze a little bit with this hand not much squeeze with this hand and now forget about it let this hand dance on the string yeah you immediately have not just the bass player you have a good one because their focus on what the bass does which is groove but they teach us as if we're in the note section they tell us we're in the rhythm section but no one tells you ever how to be in the rhythm section there's no curriculum for how to be in the rhythm section yeah it's really easy but no one teaches it yeah you said your brother and reggie told reggie yeah when he was he was i 12 or 13 you said well if i was two reggie's only eight years older than me so when he was teaching me when he started teaching me when i was two he was only 10. that's incredible it's very incredible wow and when i was five yes three years later after he started teaching me we were on tour opening for a great soul singer named curtis mayfield right during his superfly tour reggie said it was the superfly tour so think about this i get credit when i tell that story but the credit goes to my brothers how does a 10 year old boy teach his two-year-old brother at the same time julia he's teaching my five-year-old brother joseph how to play the keyboards so reggie's learning his own instrument teaching joseph teaching me so when three short years we're on a major tour major and so he's what we call the teacher but here's the thing if you're not speaking german by five your parents know that there's a problem we need to get outside help yeah why is music any different it's because of how we think about it it's because of how we teach it that we slow you down so people at five looked at me as a prodigy but because i speak english at five i i'm looked at as normal my brothers and my family looked at me as normal my parents said well as much as they do it they should be good all you gotta do is do it over and over yeah they understood it then why don't we and it's because of how we're taught that's wow yeah with what base did you or what base did you play i mean when you're like the bass must be huge when you're like five or four well think about it instruments like really that are that tiny right have you ever seen a child playing like a like a a prodigy pianist playing you know maybe they're five or six and they're playing you know really well bach or whatever it is you ever seen that before what size is the piano that they're playing okay it's a piano like normal normal we never ask when it comes to piano well what size was your piano how do you do it the piano is much bigger than the bass yes you're right yeah how do they do it they don't know any better they just do it right yeah so but my first base not not because well basically we couldn't afford a base so my brother had an extra guitar so he took the high two strings off of it and that became my base wow my first real bass was a guitar guitar strings and everything okay but i played one note at a time and i played the bass parts when i was um i i'm gonna guess seven or eight because that's what the the pictures i have are when i was eight i got uh you've seen paul mccartney's hoffner yes yes i have a copy which is a univox okay and it's you know violin shape like like paul mccartney's soft and it's really small but even still the bass was about as tall as i was so it was really big but that was my first base okay my first real base my first the first real instrument that we gigged with that was a good was actually a guitar i have also seen um i think you posted it on instagram um and you wrote under the picture hanging with the winnie at fodera guitars and it looks like a base but a little bit like a cello yes like what is it all about because i i just discovered that you also play cello oil section so i was wondering i think i've seen one base where you try to with a bow yes and is it something like that that's exactly what it is it's a base that i can bow uh my idea was to be able to play it this way like a normal bass but then not have to change like this to bow okay yeah right so we we think of boeing this way or this way violin i wanted to not have to change so i figured out that if i use uh a base a acoustic base bow but i hold it german style underhand yeah i can hold the bow here play with these fingers i'm still holding the bow with my third finger and then i bow vertically up and down ah okay wow yeah i wish i had the bass right here but i don't but it's a i did it as a five string a high c okay so i can get higher like a cello but i still have the low note of a regular bass and it's fretless arch fingerboard so you can bow every string and i play it normal but then i can either pick up the bow and bow down each string so it's a it's a different technique well it's the same technique just adapt it a little where we're used to bowing you know this way now i'm going this way but it came from my years of playing cello i i love the sound of the legato of a bow i love it too yes and i've always wanted my electric bass to have that sound i'm also coming from the cello so i started with the cello and then switched to the bass and i always wish to like like bow something and then with a vibrato that's something that that's so special also when you have like maybe when you're playing a solo and play a tone for five bars and just that one note i get goosebumps just um thinking about it so i'm just waiting for this instrument yeah right now there's only one yeah it made like this um and uh vinnie and i talked about that base for at least 15 years and then i got asked to co-write a base concerto for electric bass and orchestra and so i went to vinnie i said vinnie you know i'm being asked to write this concerto and we have a year i have to debut this in a year i mean i have to play it and i said do you think we can build that base now because if you if you say yes we're going to write parts for the base for the bow base and vinnie said let's do it so we started working on the bass and we started writing the music and now i've just finished writing my second concerto okay that i was supposed to debut in chicago la uh may that just passed but because of uh quarantine and the virus we postponed it and i'm i'm happy because it gives me more time to work on it okay so we'll do it next year but yeah the instrument is is there wow i'm looking forward to this because there must be so many opportunities and you have to i don't know experiment with it there are so many options right right or to play wow so again julia to go back if we had written the how to play basebook [Laughter] right again now are we going to introduce the bow to the electric bass it's very possible you know so who knows where the electric bass is going and for me it's going to be up to the next generation i've helped take it this far yeah we'll see where it goes i think he also said once um what does the world need with just another good musician and we have plenty the world needs good people yeah those were my mother's words okay wow yeah yeah that's something that us i'm the youngest of five brothers so the five of us heard that over and over as kids and that's a powerful statement to grow up with and our mom wasn't telling us not to play music but she was letting us know that if we're going to do it it needs to have meaning meaning for the world meaning it needs to make the world better not just me better yeah not just me famous getting awards making money it needs to it needs to make the world better that's why all my brothers are doing things that make others better a lot of what i do double thumbing and tapping and spinning my base around my neck and all this stuff i get credit i get awards and uh and 99 percent of it started with reggie wow yeah steps back and wow yeah how do you do the spinning thing have you ever broken a base oh yes yes i've broken it many times you know i've hurt myself i i almost passed out on stage one time oh yeah it was it was wet it was i was outdoors sweating so my shirt is wet and i went to spin the base this way like you can do it in both directions but i want to spin it this way and instead of the strap going across my shirt it stuck so the base just kind of wound up and the horn of the base hit me really hard either i can't remember which side i think i had to be here because i went like this or something it just went and and it seemed like a really long time it seemed like a long time but for a while i went black but i didn't fall but it was right in the climax of the show with belafleck and the flecktones where i get a big base feature on this song sinister minister and uh and so through many mistakes i've had my strap break in different places i've had uh the strap locks come out i had just about everything that can go wrong go wrong so now i've learned how to make it go right most of the time and so now the straps that i used all the straps that i use now have no buckles you can't make it longer or shorter okay one piece of thick leather that that will that is smooth wow that's your fudero base this is one of the federas yes with the r strings with dr strings exactly dr pure blues they're nickel strings i like the nickel yeah yeah nice i i think i'm going to try this with the spinning around oh i have to try this first i i did what i did once was a back flip with the base but on a trampoline like you did yeah but with um i put it into a gig bag and then put it on my shoulders and then did to the back from because i wanted to try if it's possible to do it awesome but it's so hard to do it like on stage i i used to do it on stage but i did a back handspring really yeah and i had i did a one-handed i used to do a one-handed backhand spring so i would hold the neck with this hand and and and and just go over and do a one-handed back uh back handspring but yeah you just have to be careful the base wasn't fixed here because i think that's the the problem the first step doesn't have to be okay okay wow doesn't have to be i thought it would have to be when i was a a kid in living in virginia i thought it was going to have to be attached to my waist just like you and i was talking to a friend of mine he doesn't play music but we would do everything together and we learned gymnastics together we did karate and all this kind of stuff and i was talking about it and and we got a broom in the front yard and he just did it with the broom so i did it with the broom then i went inside and i got my univox which is a light base and my friend just did a backhand spring holding the base i went i've been thinking about this for years and he just did it so then i just did it the second time i did it was on stage wow yeah crazy i used to do that when i was young and able but i did it with beta flack and the flag tones a few times i have to i've never seen that i have to look that up yeah yeah so it can be done but i i would be careful you know uh i don't want to break something you have to get it right no now i'm not worried about the base you can replace that no bones oh bones i'm sorry yes you have to be careful because you if you do it you have to get it right yeah yeah and you have to be really curious to do that you have to be like okay i'm doing this right now and i don't have to be scary about it it has to be okay i'm doing this and it's going well yeah i would do it with a broom yeah that's a good idea yeah you can even tie a broom around your neck and practice spinning it thank you so much for all the information um maybe at the very end what are your plans for the next few months or yeah this year do you have any plans i i do uh i am working on a song right now that i'm doing uh through the college of berkeley college of music where i have uh students and faculty all participating so a lot of people so i'm just about finished with that song and hopefully in the next month or so you will hear it and get to see it hopefully we'll be able to put together a video of all the people doing their parts it's really really fun um i i took the the six feet apart thing where they told us we all have to stay six feet apart and i changed it to six beats apart so the song is is about that how we're we're still together even though we're six beats apart so i'm finishing that up i literally just finished uh the final touching and shining of the new book the spirit of music so as soon as i get my digital copy of the final version i will start working on the audio version of the book so um if i don't know if you've heard the first audio book for the music lesson yeah i pray um where i have all the characters reading their parts i will do that again there's some new characters so i'm going to do the al the audiobook with all the voices lots of music so it's a big project a very very big project and so i'm going to start that very soon my wife and i have been having fun rafting down the river oh nice that sounds also just peaceful relaxing and depending on what part of the year will determine what birds we see you know bald eagles hawks you know so much fun so a lot of relaxing but for the most part julia i believe this is this is the time where the the planet gets a chance to breathe and and work on ourselves because you and other people know me as a bass player but a bass player is not who i am bass a bass player is what i do and what i do is sitting down over there i can put that down but once the bass players is away what's left me and this is the opportunity to make me better as much as possible so that when i go back to what i do it has to be better right i'm here's what i'm not doing i'm not spending this moment wishing i was somewhere else i know so many musicians and i don't blame them i get it i'm not saying they're wrong i'm just not one of them i'm not sitting here wishing i could tour again i'm not sitting here waiting for the next gig no i am in the moment as much as possible working on what is what do i have not what do i wish i had what do i have and many of us are sitting here complaining about our situations in a nice house i know where my food's coming from i got a bed i'm on the internet all i got to do is stay home and watch netflix talk to my friends on zoom right yeah and we complain now don't get me wrong i understand that many people are struggling i've had cousins first cousins that have died all right i've had a lot of friends who have died from covet i have friends families right around the corner from where i live where the whole family is struggling right now with covey of course musicians friends wallace roney lots of people it's real it's real but the way to fix it is by dealing with where we are right now right we're worrying about schools and all that kind of stuff and that's a good thing but we haven't fixed where we are so going back to school and all those things aren't going to be well or right if we aren't right here and you know i i love where i live i love the country that we live in but our country we call ourselves the greatest country but we're great at being arrogant we're great at like i don't need to wear a mask i'm american i you know we we can be very arrogant not everybody not every but as a whole it seems to be the case and we are in a bad place right now all right and i'm sorry to even bring this up right now but the good thing about it is that we we have a great opportunity right we have a grand opportunity to rise and come out of this better than we were and i can't make everybody do that but i'm gonna do my best to do my part because when people come to hear me play music they come to listen to whatever i have to say so i want to make sure that i'm better and it's really not that hard to do right anything you repeat you get better at so i'm making sure that i form good habits and habits of how i think habits of looking at where i am not only focusing on where i want to be i have to focus on where i want to be if i want to go to the store i can see the store but i need to be able to see the car in front of me more closely right so i'm learning to see that i'm bringing my vision in and looking at where i am making sure i do the simple things like make my bed every morning right i get the things right that are in front of me and then all of a sudden i make a habit out of getting things right yeah and it works and even though there's a lot of turmoil a lot of death around us i can still sit here and be at peace in the midst of it all right because me being unsettled is not going to help anything yeah yeah true right so i'm able to be at peace make my spot better for my family my kids and let it go out from there and here's the opportunity for us all to do that so that we come back not normal because normal got us to this crazy place who wants to return to normal we need to return better than normal it's a great opportunity yes so let's seize the opportunity yeah make the most of it right thank you so much for your words your time your stories um it was great talking to you thank you um thank you guys for watching i hope you enjoyed it and i wish you yeah the best of luck for you and your family and yes i i hope everything will turn out good and yes yes i believe it will yeah me too me too there there's enough good people in the world to make sure yeah and julia i do want to thank uh annika and and mark johns at dr strings yeah thank you for for bringing us together i want to thank them yeah i love their strings and i want people to try them and i thank all of you you do i've been to to uh tolman one time i think and did a did something there yeah and i look i look forward to coming back oh yes we would like to have you here and we are looking forward um to see you again you're always welcome thank you yeah thank you very much you're welcome bye everyone back home stay safe all right thanks for speaking with me yes thank you you're welcome take care bye

Channel: Thomann's Guitars & Basses

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Keywords: thomann, music, thomann's guitars & basses, bass, interview, victor wooten, victor wooten interview, victor wooten 2020, victor wooten bass, victor wooten bass spin, victor wooten amazing grace, fodera bass, fodera, julia hofer, julia hofer bass, julia thomann, thomann bass, dr strings, victor wooten slap bass, victor wooten bass solo, victor wooten solo, victor wooten live, victor wooten double thumb, fodera yin yang, victor wooten thomann, victor wooten isn't she lovely

Id: 48Owmaxh0cM

Length: 49min 11sec (2951 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 31 2020