What really made James Jamerson so great?

[Music] hey how's it going scotty from spl and today we're going to be talking about one of the most legendary bass players of all time the amazing james jameson now most of you will be probably familiar with jameson's work you know like he recorded with guy he recorded with everybody like stevie wonder martin the vandela's marvin gaye edwin starr jackie wilson the four tops the supremes the temptations smokey robinson and diana ross and a ton of other people if you listen to tracks such as like my girl heard it through the grapevine you can't really love sciences delivered pepperwood's rolling stone tears of a clown ain't no mountain high enough all of that was james jameson and obviously the session band the funk brothers in fact it is claimed that the funk brothers have played on more hit records in fact more number one hits than the beatles elvis presley the rolling stones the beach boys combined but what was it about james jameson that ended up making him legendary what was it about his baselines and his baseline construction that made record companies postpone recording dates until they could get him on it because they believed that his baselines had a really high contribut contributing factor to that record being a hit okay if you think about it it's a really unique thing to happen first and foremost i think that we need to consider that james jameson was a piano player when he was a kid and he really understood chord structure and we can hear that in his bass lines he was a piano player but secondly he was a jazz player he'd been playing in his jazz high school band he'd been playing with jazz stars around detroit on the upright bass and then he began to get those skills and apply them to the electric bass and for me he was one of the first guys that did that and it is really easy to overlook how amazing he was at baseline construction and outlining the chords he had complete mastery of it in fact we're going to take the first eight bars of for once in my life that was recorded in 1968 by stevie wonder obviously jameson and bates we're going to break down the first eight bars of the baseline and i'm going to point out some things that not only goes missed but every time i see somebody playing at a gig or playing it on youtube they don't get these specific things because it's everything's in the cracks right if you're a jamison nerd if you're into bass lines and wanting to get your bass line creation to the next level stick around because this is going to be super interesting for you [Music] so just in those first eight bars there is a massive amount of stuff going on and not only you know a massive amount of stuff going on because yeah it's really busy and that was one of jameson's things he could play really busy but provide this amazing foundation and just keep out the way of everybody like there's not many bass players around that can do that and i think that that is one of the things that the labels must have picked up on is that hey we've got this guy and he can play these crazy busy and melodic phrases underneath the track that almost become like a second melody and not get in the way of anybody like doing that is really really it's a really talented thing to do it's really hard to do it if you take just the first measure or the first two measures okay i'm gonna play it slowly for you so you can check it out okay now this is just like an f major moving to a g minor with a uh with an f sharp diminished in the middle but he's not playing like roots and fifths what he's doing is he's going [Music] okay so he plays root third sixth third fifth and that becomes like andy uses open strings a lot he was an upright bass player and upright bass players use open strings all of the time to check their intonation because the open string never changes right there play you know they use those open strings all the time jameson used the same thing in his lines [Music] okay so just here there's a ton of open strings going on um third sixth third fifth and then to the root root fifth third fifth he'll have been seeing that f sharp as a d7 let's not even go there now if we move on to measure three where he gets to the g minor okay it goes like this okay so that's measure three again [Music] this is a great example of linking up your chord tones using chromaticism okay so he's got this [Music] and he plays up to that d up to the fifth actually he plays it as an open [Music] up d the g using these chromatic runs and then from the f down to the d again [Music] and then when it hits that d again he's using d fifth third fifth of that d7 again he's doing a just an outstanding job of outlining the chords but doing it in a way that is like super ninja now the next two bars we've got that's that's kind of simple you know roots on that g minor this next bar [Music] again is like this super ninja thing that he does and this is straight this is directly from jazz language [Music] that's how a jazz player will play it [Music] it's over two five one g minor to c7 and he's playing root minor third major third fifth and then hits that d so he's he's dropping that uh dropping the major third in there as a chromatic note but he's not going he's actually jumping [Music] it bounces up to that that d [Music] and then coming back down and resolving on that c like this is just out and out jazz language but in a pop scenario [Music] okay that takes us to the next bar and it's really just he's using root third five six and octave right it's like like a pentatonic based vibe but jameson won't have been thinking about pentatonix he really will have been thinking about chord tones we could have come directly from that jazz upright background then we've got [Music] now that last part that last measure there [Music] i dis that like what can i say there was nobody doing this there was no bass players doing this at that time okay so we're going root root third sixth sharp eleven five or sharp four five [Music] and then back down to the fk [Music] two three four [Music] it's hard to get the feel and one thing i really want to point out again is that jameson's the use of open strings really made him like he gave him that feel it's a really big thing when it comes to getting that feel you've got to be using the open strings otherwise you're not going to get the bounce now to give you a visual representation of how jameson was doing this like from a harmonic perspective and from a rhythmical perspective so you can see both of those elements linking together and how complex this really is because it can be lost when you watch me do it it can be like yeah it looks okay but when you see a visual score of this going on it might highlight it a lot better for you so i've grabbed a little 20-second snippet from a great video that jack stratton from wolfpack has released on youtube to watch the full thing i'll put it in the uh i'll put it in the comments so you can click and go through not the comments the description you can click and go through there and check out the full thing it'll show you exactly what i'm trying to encapsulate here the the complexity of his rhythmical focus and also his harmonic side as well so check this out [Music] amazing right and i think like when you see that visual scoring really or for me i was like holy crap this bass line is just genius and how many times have you heard that song probably a ton of times if you've not even realized how complex that bass line is so again i've hooked up the original of that graphic score down below by jack if you want to go check it out it's really really cool now before you go though i want to talk about jameson's gear i just give you an outline of that and also his technique as well because there was a few things about his technique two things about his technique that you really need to know first of all is that he used one finger on his plucking hand okay nicknamed the hook pretty cool uh you can give it a go if you want it's really really hard to play like a bass line such as you know the one they've been working on today with one finger but you can give it a go um i've tried it i can't do it or i can do it but it's like a sloppy job of it where like jameson completely nails it and he you know he used one finger pig he was an upright guy right he came from upright those were bass players for the most part when they're playing walking bass lines they're just playing with one finger so he just got that that technique and brought it over to the uh to the electric bass the next thing about his um his technique and i have mentioned this before is that he uses a lot of open strings okay when he can he'll use an open string so for instance in one of the tracks that he plays on he plays a chromatic run from b flat to a flat ddr and every bass player me included would generally play that but jameson didn't he played b flat open a a flat okay and then on this part of the baseline most people would play it like that jameson [Music] so then the two real things that stick out for me about his his technique and how that influenced his sound and in terms of gear he used a p bass um like a lot of guys back then that was you know there was only a few basses available and the p bass was kind of king so he used a p bass he used foam underneath the bridge i've got this little uh contraption which is pretty cool but you can you know cut up a normal sponge and just shove that under the bridge it's going to do exactly the same job he used flat wounds on his base i think that's it for the base and then in terms of the amp well actually a lack of one he actually went direct into a di and then into the desk it was an acme di that he used for all the motown recordings and when he did go on tour i did play live he used an ampeg b15 but for the most part when you hear any james jameson playing with all of those guys i mentioned earlier it's all done direct into an acme di and then straight into the desk as always guys thank you so much for watching if you have enjoyed this leave a comment and send you know a recommendation of who else you'd like me to do this kind of video on if you're not subscribed to the channel make sure you do that as well and click your notifications on and lastly if you've not been to scott's scotsbasslessons.com which is my thing it's an online base school that i run for bass players like you do so just go straight over there and check it out it's essentially a completely new opportunity for you you know a bass player to study with some of the best bass educators on the planet including myself go check it out we've got a huge course library we do live streams all the time so there's like interactive q a's we've got interviews with some of the best bass players on the on the planet and tons more as well and on top of that we've actually got a 14 day free trial running right now as well so you can go and check it out grab the 14 day free trial give it a test drive and see if it's for you and if it isn't you can cancel at any time i will put the link down below for that as always guys take it easy and i'll see you in the shed

Channel: Scott's Bass Lessons

Views: 310,939

Keywords: scott devine, bass lessons, bass guitar, soloing, funk, cover, groove, jazz, slap, tuition, masterclass, beginner, beginners, clinic, scottsbasslessons, p bass, precision bass, james jamerson, pino palladino, jaco pastorius, victor wooten

Id: YkgbnZlYpEc

Length: 14min 6sec (846 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 03 2018