The Ron Carter Interview

hey everyone i'm rick biato what you're about to see is my interview with legendary jazz bassist ron carter ron is the most important bassist in the history of jazz he's also the most recorded with over 2 200 recordings ron was part of miles davis's 1960s quintet which featured miles on the trumpet george coleman at first and then wayne shorter on the tenor sax herbie hancock on the piano and tony williams on the drums he's on the records esp four and more my fuddy valentine nefertiti miles smiles he's on records like maiden voyage by herbie hancock or speak no evil by wayne shorter or the real mccoy by mccoy tyner he's on pretty much every one of my favorite jazz recordings he has about 30 some odd solo records and he's 84 years old what you're about to hear from ron is history it's really the history of music of the 20th century and 21st century to say it's an honor to interview him is an understatement here's my interview ron i actually met you one time in 1999 at avatar studios you and elvin jones in two different rooms playing two different sessions i was in studio d he was playing with mike brecker on the um time is of the essence record you were in studio a i want to say and i met michael brecker the day before he introduced me to elvin i walked downstairs and you walked out of studio a i believe it was and i said oh my god ron carter and you were the nicest person i introduced myself i'm like i'm rick piatto uh i'm just such a massive fan and you were so nice i talked to you for about five minutes okay i'm still a nice guy i know i know that um my first question to you is it's 1961. rock and roll has not been invented the beatles were not out the rolling stones jimi hendrix nothing jazz is king you're in new york city you're already you've already started your recording career what does a saturday night look like in new york city in 1961 who's playing at what clubs was it just tell me about that it was just music music music one of the things that you remember back then rick is that there were three sets a night nine eleven and one approximately and depending on where the club was in harlem the clubs would play friday and saturday four sets for the two o'clock drinkers who were coming off the street that was 1961. in 1961 a group could work at the club three or four weeks in a row uptown's bed clubs would work four sets friday and saturday because the lake drinks would come in like 1 30 and they were really bending their elbow and spend a lot of money so there was four sets friday and saturday what that led to rick it was a the younger players got a sense of how to plan the night and how the band leader whoever he or she was would plan the sets according to not just the size of the room the size of the crowd but who was there like the late nights it was kind of a real blues kind of set early sets were really the complicated forms and a lot of changes because they were there like the earliest session the evening and those people weren't drinking yet they were lit there to listen yeah that was a taste but they had to have something to drink but they were basically listeners yeah everybody wore suits and ties everyone got dressed for the gig and uh the pay was what was the right word minimal or nominal for example what would so would you move from club to club during sets or you play the four sets at one club okay one club one club yeah yeah uh at the time you could work in new york forever and i would i would do like a in the six months in new york i'd work in about nine different rooms because there were the dual rooms uh bobby thammons and duke pearson started at duo rooms at that time so there were a lot of dual rooms happened in new york they were the half the blue note the half note the vanguard uptown wells comp bases the big apple uh breakers there were a lot of rooms to work in new york all the time there was also jazz on the radio 24 hours riverside church had a great station wrvr with a great voice the guy had a great library and a great sense of uh commentary about the musicians and who they were and what they were with the last record of them i would say will moyle that's rochester new york he had a great show uh ed beach he was new york you know daniel daley in chicago there's west coast guys so jazz was every everywhere man it was not on tv yet it was everywhere else i was working around i worked at the place called the five spot when it was across from cooper union third avenue and fifth street i worked there for like five weeks with randy weston and they had two bands the version of benny golson the jazz ted with addison and art the first onnet corbin band in new york with charlie hayden don cherry and billy higgins kenya durham had a jam session band with peg morrison plant base who was one of randy's earlier bass players you know this is all in like a six month period of time this is unbelievable it's 1961. this is this is amazing okay let's just go back a little bit so i'm from rochester originally okay um i was born in 62. my dad uh was a bartender at a place called squeezers a jazz club that that was open between 46 and 50 56 and then beatbox i think was the name of the club that opened after that the same same place yes and you were the eastman um in the late 50s correct 55 through 59. 55 359 and then you went to then you went to grad school at manhattan school in 61 but you were playing on records already i mean you're on ron i mean to say that you're on my favorite records of all time i can't even begin from so much guitar west montgomery to the the the eric dolphy records that that uh were i think really early records of yours in the early 60s three miles all these all these famous records two two records to the miles records to the real mccoy one of my all-time favorite records let's go back let's go back about two years yep uh when i got to new york i joined charlie percip he had a van it's called the jazz statesman and that band had freddie hubbard ronnie matthews rowan alexander a really good tenor player from brooklyn charlie percip and me and my first director was a small group was with uh teddy charles who was producing bethlehem records it's called charlie persip and the jazz statesman and that same time they had a thing called nat wright his record was called the biggest voice in jazz and i made one with howard mcgee called dusty blue a couple of records they were all before before 1962. yeah in bethlehem yeah so i stumbled on that scene back then and i got better i think as we speak five minutes before i got on i went and i grabbed this record okay and and and i remembered that that record was actually recorded two records was recorded that and four and more were the same night and they were just released at different times yes i guess four or more were the uptempo songs and these were the down tempo songs uh i guess that's correct i don't know i know there were two different records but two different records and so i want to talk about recording in this in the 60s of live gigs and studio okay just because this is something i've always wondered about when you're talking about you know live the plug nickel or or were any live club that you're recording did they just have recording machines with uh you know tape machines with everything miked up all the time well uh rick i don't know about many records recorded live but when the ones we did live we never knew they were recording live that's what i wondered so we had no idea that the mics would be any different than what they would do for the clubs i think if we had looked carefully we would have seen that the bass player had his own mic and it was not wrapped around the towel between the body and the tail piece or the piano better have it may have had a better quality mic on the towel you know but again it was dark in there we get there just some time to go to work there was no sound check the control room was maybe the next block or in the basement so to answer your question we had no idea they were recording until we bought the record that the jnr or wherever the strawberries or wherever the next liquor store was so ron they wouldn't even give you the records if you're on a miles record if it's four or more or my friends i bought them all i went to i bought each one of them i'm fat if you said that wait wait having said that yes i ultimately took the record down to the union and asked so they got this is what we just made that this record came out last week it was recorded at this time according to the back of the record and we never got paid for it of course right well at the time of course let me just ask you about studio recordings at the time so you're at did you live at rudy van gelder's studio pretty much all the records you did did you have a base over there i mean you did all these well rudy and i became good friends because i was out there at a pretty frequent times for about six months rick i would go out to rudy's on saturday i take my sons with me and they had with the books i read in the corner we would work on microphones and placement of microphones and at the time they were just developing pickups for bass no one knew how they worked their quality was not very good they didn't know where to put the amp they didn't know whether to put the pickup on the bridge or on the tail piece or on the fingerboard they were just kind of a flounding floundering industry and rudy being the technician he was he wanted to get the best sound he could so he had all the latest equipment the best microphones the latest microphones the best control board and we will spend two or three hours every saturday for about six months just trying to find where in the room the base should be should it be enclosed should it be behind its own on a box you know ultimately create said really why don't you try to put him in the booth and see how that works and uh to this day that's the best sound of the room okay so if i listen to the records the miles records that you were on with the quintet versus for example speak no evil or maiden voyage those records okay with different leaders obviously with wayne or herbie how would those recording dates differ from a miles date that would be recorded in the same place for you know if if they were recorded in the same place would they differ in the setups uh they were different a couple of real major ways one was that the weighing records and here we were rehearsed at some point before the date okay there's a place called lynn oliver on 87th and broadway uh alfred lyons would meet us there we get the music from where the band leader was we'd rehearse a couple of hours he gave us like 75 for the rehearsal day something like that and we'd meet at rudy's the next day or so for the studio i mean we would not leave that studio until we finished the record there was no comeback day after tomorrow or a series of records for liam morgan's record or herbie we would leave the studio with a record and the understanding was rudy would also mix the record he would make the master that night there was no outside guy would walk in and take the tape and go to the studio you know i really wanted it done by him and his facility with miles record we would go in there not knowing the music basically and the first trial was to make sure the parts were correct and they were legible and with the various penmanships and all that kind of stuff how did it look right with the form the bar lines you know we take two takes and go to the next stone we only have two or three days maybe two days depending on how much library there was okay you know but generally it's all one day but no more than the day and a half the the nine nine nine to nine to one two to five and maybe the next day nine to five nine to one and that was it would you ever hear the record again until it came out would you guys sit and listen to playbacks ever no i'll sell them do that now okay and who would make the decisions on the versions if you'd have multiple takes would miles decide i have no idea i'm sure miles and tia at the time who was doing the most major producing they would make the decisions and then at the time it didn't matter to me i thought that they were all equal and i didn't know what they were looking for with the general record concept i i wasn't ever part of that process i was never asked my opinion they said here's this music guys let's make a record and to to this day that's still okay with me you know unless i'm gonna be intimately involved with the results other than trying to play my brains out every night is it a record of balance this is a kurt wild song book is a george gershwin song book i mean those those concepts they were not a part of my process because it had nothing to do with how well i played i had control over that as i still tried to you know but the idea who was going to mix and and the producer and the artwork and the line of notes i seldom had a little contact with those people you make a wreck and you go to the next one yeah so i would say the project is like wow we were aiming for that well maybe i would have thought differently but i would have played the same notes [Laughter] for example on maiden voyage versus speak no evil you have tony playing on one and then you have alvin playing and another what is the difference can you talk about some of the different drummers you that you played with and how you would play differently i kind of you put me on the spot now because i kind of to that kind of specificity regarding those two drummers if you leave out max and you leave out candy clark at a kind of k and you johnson if you don't discuss those guys that means that they weren't so important to me and that's not the case why would you wait wait wait wait wait wait okay sorry that's that's the foreground for this answer i'm trying to give you okay okay uh i think alvin had had a much more weighty bass drum sound i mean it was really i i tried to avoid the word pounding because it wasn't that but it was really in your face kind of based on because that was part of this tom tom sound tony had a more uh feathering kind of touch that better blended in with my placement on the quarter note you know antonio was aware of well probably my fault of how to tune the drums for the bass player i said tony that that floor time to uncle tom is killing me can you make it a different pitch or something or don't hit it so hard because it's wiping out every note below a and i like those notes man i'm getting pretty good at that [ __ ] don't do that to me oh right to tony please uh he said okay you know and uh ultimately he understood the better he tuned the drums it was easier for him right because he could hear every note that i played whether he liked it or not they were right on his forehead right there okay okay so so we're back then in 64 65 and you're making records how far apart are you guys are you in an iso booth then or are you in the same room they were still trying to figure that stuff out what i would do rick is i tell her i'd get to the date early to see the music and get set up and i tell engineer just come out here for me and stand maybe three feet away from the base this is how the bass sounds in this room right now how close can you get the same sound on your gear you see well it has no no no i got that this equalizer right here trust me i know what to do with that you know and i'll try to explain to them rick that the bass tracks the bass sound tries to fill the whole environment the whole room whatever size that is when guys say the room sounds too big for the bass that generally means that by the time the sound gets back to them from wherever it is in this room with the carpet and the people and the seats and the brick and the glass it's always late because the sun has already decayed that much that the impact of that beat it disappears by the time it gets back to you but in a small duo-sized room that's really more compact the bass sound doesn't have so far to go and by the time it gets back to it still has that impact of the sound that be the meter that note so i always tell these guys we have to find a way to not let the bass sound go so far from the instrument where your microphone is located five feet away if you move them if you move the sound and move the microphone to the base maybe two feet away depending on how much boring i'm doing how complicated i don't need one stand the three stands those kind of thing if we can kind of do that and kind of force the bass to sound great because it's not closer to the microphone my job is not so hard and it is yours you know and some guys who didn't believe me they said i don't believe that i said well let's early let's just try a couple of notes and they would be amazed that i was telling them the fact of the matter i said hey man that's what i do my job is to make this as fun for me as it is for you and if you have scuffling my sound no one's going to be happy least of all the guy was paying to hear me you know so that was a general process and ultimately they decided to give everybody their own booth which makes the mixing easier everyone's got their own track they have no bleeding the other factors that were involved with the recording itself not specifically the bass player and would miles be in an iso booth or would somebody be in the room would you have the drums out in the in the main room and people would be in iso booths well you know we weren't playing that loud in those con unfortunately those rooms are all gone so you can't go see them but that's like the third history what a great studio man it was just built for recording and i think back in the day musicians never played that loud in the room itself right you know now they're kind of all over the place and because there is so much force involved and amplifiers are really loud and all that stuff that goes along with the current wave of music presentation to kind of need that separation so that engineers dials don't stand the red stand the red over here don't like this you know uh so now they have those things out of necessity to get the kind of clarity they need given the volume and the instrumentation and stuff like that that makes that kind of separation critical given and now that vine was coming back it's really important to get a good sign because the gear that we had at their houses man that's it's really the top shelf man yeah they hear everything man and now that the companies have decided to make them actually go to the house and see the band in their living room did you see the miles first the 50s quintet did you go out and see them play you must have seen them play i saw them uh maybe twice before that before the band i saw silly joe jones uh red garland band twice and maybe they went and kelly paul chamber jimmy cobb live maybe once but not really seeing them much i was working they were really working a lot too did you play with train no at the time his band got hot miles's band was working all the time and of course train passed away really early 65 something like that and mazda's band was just not getting some ink so we really stayed working now i never got a chance i saw him play live several times at the place called the half note down on spring and hudson down on the waterfront with jimmy and nikoi and elvin but i never got to play with him i've always looked to see to try and find if you played with train um yet you've played with his bandmates so many times and with his wife and with his wife yes yeah when you would do a date in the same room i referred to the real mccoy record which i love mccoy's record that has passion dance on it and yeah so it's alvin and you and mccoy and joe henderson when mccoy is playing the piano in the room and then herbie's playing the piano in the room what does it sound like as a bass player with different players playing in the same rooms uh versus i mean is it just a different sound when you're recording well mccoy is a much louder louder player than herbie yeah even though herbie's most forceful volume he's not playing this as as physically hard which is not a disparaging thing to say because just a more physical piano player when i first made a record with red garland i was surprised how how heavy he wasn't i played with dave rubick on the white house things when they had jets at the white house maybe jamie carter or something like that i was surprised how how how light his touch was based on the records that seemed to be much heavier sounding than a live performance you know but getting back to herbie and mccoy mccoy is a much more forceful player you know and herbie is a lot less forceful physically but of course they're both musically important so yes and they fill the room differently of course uh sometimes they would put at the top open from the core and put a cover so that so that the microphones for the sound from the piano wouldn't get into everyone else's microphones you know or they would just kind of put herbies piano lid down on the short stick to control not just how much sound got out of the piano but how much sound was going back into that microphone so the engineers are learning that we're flying by the city of japan too you know we're all kind of learning how to make these records because those records were selling good there was a big market for these jazz records and people were getting more more more sensitive to what they what they were buying the price of the wrecks were reasonable people could afford some really at home kind of stuff and they wanted the audience to be able to get the same kind of sound in the studio for them they could go home with the record you know i want to say it's seven steps to heaven record that you have three co-writes on or you have a is it that record um miles miles something like miles smiles miles smiles you have you have the song rj i think it was uh moon 81 yes and 81. so you have two co-writes and then one of your own songs on there were those the only times you had writing uh where you had your own music on miles records yes and tell me about the process of that bringing in a song for to to for consideration to be on a record were these things decided beforehand or would you say hey i have a i have a song and we'll go to the date and bring our music you know there's a a three or four cd said uh freedom jazz dance yes where we walked into the studio and they turned the table on before we had the instruments unpacked so the audience gets a chance to hear this kind of discussion and what i hope they picked up first of all rick is that miles was interested in having everyone's point of view he would say tony you'll play this and don't say are you sure you want that you know or he would say herbie can you watch this court and everyone would say yeah but this may be better or whatever our comments responding to his comment to us we're not not yesterday we'll do this right away it was how about this idea and he was open to those kind of suggestions and unfortunately people don't see him as being that aware of other opinions for whatever reason we were in his band and he understood that he's hired his people to help him do whatever he thinks he wants to hear next to get that to come to fruition he has to allow these guys to do what they do and say what they want so you can find out where they're coming from and how close are they they be on the same page for the his his view of what he thinks he wants and unfortunately there's no common language for jazz right you know there's no no phrase everyone knows oh yeah i mean that what that involves is a lot of trial and error you know i hate the guy say hey can you play a little more orange over here a little more blue over there you know we could get kind of stuck with that kind of analogy because we understand that it's important to communicate verbally we don't have enough common words to do that not really and i think because the music the words are so fragmented and and so after all it's difficult to tell the guy i want this and get it right away so the process seemed to be we bring we bring in music to the date we make sure that we read it through and we decide what can we do to make this sound song sound better whatever that is and the person who wrote it accepted those contrary voices he wanted to hear what the what the band thinks of his doing he wanted to know how could the band make the song sound good with no rehearsal no one that gave plant right in the studio wayne herbie me to my we trusted each other's point of view to comment on something that maybe wasn't exactly what we had in mind but i think we exactly weren't sure either and whatever comments we have from these guys who we trusted with our lives not in the night out please do like help me out here really yeah are there any moments from records that you remember that if you went back and listened to to a record no matter what when it was you're on two three thousand you know over over uh you know i looked it up 2300 records i bet it's 3 000 records you've already played on okay okay are there moments that you actually remember from the studio for you okay live record or even a live record that stuck in your mind wow wow that was amazing something that herbie played something that miles played a phrase that you that just stuck in your mind that if you listen to today you it brings you back to that moment yes wow i mean that you um you you heard it at the time and and you just knew yes yes yes well i heard that after i missed i said how could i not hear that coming yes yes as music progressed as the years progressed would the sessions be different in that some sessions you would rehearse for later on like in the 70s or 80s when you do the cti records for example there were no rehearsals for those things man never okay no so would would you just read or you would know the tunes well the process generally was that the arrangement dancer basically emulated whoever they were they would bring a base a sketch of an arrangement okay of course the the leaders would always talk to don before so they decided in the library that wasn't part of my involvement i would get to the studio me and grady and herbie whoever it was and they would you know what he thought would download and the bandwidth player then if the band didn't thought that there's something better than what don wrote we would play it you wouldn't see anything well no he knew he knew what he knew what he wrote but it was better than what he wrote that's why he hired these three guys and he would take the charts home with the record he would add what our view of his arrangement would be like with him re-orchestrating it for eight violins or whatever he would do yeah that was the process back then that's certain guys insisted on hearing their notes that they wrote no matter how they were not happening you know and and i'm doing this record date with this person who would name who remain anonymous or unnamed nameless yes yeah yeah that too yeah and he presents us with this music you know the trio and voice and after the first two or three tunes with the kind of stock kind of arrangements i decided that i had enough you know so after after we do a four or five tunes more and we do the stuff the way i want to do it i think that's what i'm saying so i'm here for you want that okay i can do this you know you go to the duties studio the second day and this arranger calls me over and says hey hey ron sit down say okay you know so you know i i looked at my music yesterday got home and and i really liked what i wore i really liked what i wrote you know and uh today we're gonna do it again but pay what i wrote you know i said look you pin the budget but i tell you what i'm gonna play your [ __ ] until you can't stand it anymore then you give me the wink and i'll do whatever the [ __ ] i want to do we okay with that you know so yeah that's deal you know we shook on it like like grown-ups and so we did the first two tunes as he wanted them and he came out and said remained dear friends to this day so i learned two things you gotta play with the guy wrote until he can't stand it and two be a little more discreet when you think you got something better than he has tell me about i'm still working i'm still working on the last part tell me about a ranger that that you would come in on a session and they would be really immaculate arrangements is there are there records that you played on that you thought wow these are great arrangements oh yeah that's a basket bar friedman yeah rich derosa did a couple of nice arrangements wade marcus from the day of when he was in motown uh benny ghost in this nice arrangements so they're guys who really put down what they want to hear yeah and when you see that i get amazed that they put it down without at the piano or on the way to the gig or to the you know that kind of skill level it always has always amazed me from guys who would hear that stuff and write it in the right key transpose all that stuff you know i can't do that i can hear that but i can't write it out like those guys can so i walked in and said man this guy did have my job all i got to do is play what he wrote and make them happy sometimes so so ron what informed your taste i'm sure that there were bass players that you looked up to oscar petterford who whoever they were sam jones paul chambers maybe i mean who were the people that informed you or that that you or did you just play the notes that you thought were the right ones that worked the basic question you're asking me is what bass players influenced me yeah and the answer is none i was really impressed i worked at a in the house band in rochester when big band big groups had come in at the ridgecrest and which is just red crest new york just outside of rochester yeah and they were i was in the house bands i at the weekends opposite this minute horace silver j.j johnson carmen mcrae slam stewart they all bring in bands and i was in the house band either played with them or was the intermission act yep and i was well jj came in with a band of 2d heath and tommy flanagan a really great band and i was amazed that jj johnson went past the bell maybe twice for two sets understanding how the trombone worked technically yeah i was just amazed that he could find these saxophone-like articulations without going but this far from the bell it was amazing me you know i said well if that's what that's possible it seems to me that clearly the base instrument it seems to me rick that the base should have that same kind of capacity if i want to make this stuff work and if i'm thinking about making the career of this stuff i got to be different than everybody else that's what that is yeah what does it take to do that i need my own sound and my own skill level i hear the notes i'm not sure what they are because i'm just starting this business and earning break working for a little bit there's different bands and different concepts and stuff you know i know what they do can i find them and can i find what the skill level that allows me to play the equivalent of j.j johnson playing across the trombone like this can i do that horizontally rather than vertically all night because that's i think that's playing four sets a night man [ __ ] i need to i need to change search by the end of the second set is over you know no so i can find out how to do this stuff like jj does the equivalent of the trombone like i have the sound that's equivalent to ceaseful pain playing the baritone and here i am [Laughter] ron did you ever get to the end of a night after four sets and say oh i don't know how i'm gonna do this tomorrow i mean where your hands would you're just in such good shape that you can just play all night rick off this side i determined i'm gonna be the last guy standing i don't know how many sets there to this day i'm determined i'm gonna be the last guy i have a special toolbox for the late set what guys like herbie brought harmonically to music and wayne in the mid 60s new types of harmonies you know triads over bass notes and things like that just new types of of sounds did you realize that this that that those were this was kind of a different language and that your bass parts like how would you integrate what you were playing when you were hearing these things well yes a question i really can't answer personally because you have to ask wayne and herbie how they responded to my notes after playing with those guys for five years or so you understood that i think we plural understood the magnetism of my note choices i think they understood clearly that my no choices gave them other options not just for what chord to play but where to play it based on my note choice and where i played my note sonically what kind of sound that note of the octave here down here that kind of stuff i think rick what we were evolving at that time was a class of theory every night i think if i could get a simple explanation we all had our own blackboards and on our blackboards we had our own choice of chords for the night my job rick was to sneak around and get their blackboard first and put my no choices up there if they could put theirs up there i mean the bass is the most important thing that's i always tell people i mean you know forget everything else without the bass you don't know what what the harmony is yeah one of my projects because i know download you asked me what am i doing since my time off for 16 and a half months you know besides doing like this yeah i've written a book called chartography t o c-h-a-r-t-o-g r a p h y and what that is i've analyzed my chorus of autumn leaves for five courses for performance and i've taken this song for the next five performances of this song right so that and they're notated so that the person can really hear how my line affects what herbie plays what rhythms tony plays and what stuff that ultimately miles is going to play if he has the nerve to try to get in this stuff not knowing exactly where it's going to go you know and i did this process because i thought that that when when teachers give a bass player a line to transcribe and understand what it works that line contains more information that student has no privilege it's not privileged to that baseline depends on how the piano player voiced the chords what the drummer was doing is this the third take of the tune is this excerpted from the other solutions they fooled around with what what makes this chord chorus so special and this chartography shows you what makes my notes so special and you're here to hear herbie and tony and my responding to my note choices or my rhythm i look at this occasion and i said man these guys were crazy what's wrong with these guys you know and what it shows uh that the song been being used as a model if you will for five different performances maybe two or three years apart yeah it's a perfect storm for us we first of all we knew every night the first tune would be autumn leaves yeah and sometimes when you hear another piano herb is trying to hook up this new gear he just bought and he doesn't get ready till the downbeat of the second chorus you know it says drums bass and miles right or you may not hear any drums because the microphone is not being put in place you know who always had no sound check in the airport right to the bandstand so the conditions were similar enough that this kind of experiment is as as pure as you can get to get the point of how we are responding to information that i'm kind of responsible for for this tune autumn leaves the first i'm trying to set the table i'm saying guys this tonight is my menu then those specials maybe some dessert but this job this guy's it's the main effing course let's go to the table let's have a good time and we have some great moments man everybody that's watching this should follow ron on instagram on you're on youtube you're ever you're everywhere if you had to go back and say okay here's some people that i wish i got to play with just name a couple people elf is gerald and ama mao i'm surprised you never played with with ama jamal no well you know i keep i see him occasionally i keep telling him that at this next game i'm going to sneak down there and tell us basically i'm gonna watch cnn for an hour and i got this he said yeah right what is the most bizarre gig that you ever played and there's gotta be something that stands out ron that was like i can't believe i played that gig let them come to mind rick for this reason you know i'm teaching private students i have been for a long time and occasionally someone should have come in and said mr carter or maestro i had a terrible gig last night and i just stopped that question you know i'm not sure that those terrible gigs really exist now every gig i play whatever the level ultimately is decided by someone else not me by them i get a chance to get better at something that i couldn't get better on on the hipper gig whether it's how to play a two beat whether it's how long to make the quarter note rest now i've done a lot of broadway shows in my career and the first thing i learned is how to make the note from the base shorter they didn't want ah they don't need that they need that okay i can do that i didn't know how to do it because i'm interested in having my beat fill up this whole space of the beat man that's what i try to do they want this you really want that yeah okay here it comes you know or a chance to play the bass part correct every time you play it not just one time and luck it's luck disappears you know so i explained to these kids that the gig is only bad as your talent level is i think i'm pretty talented guys so what the guy gives me is a book you want this my job is to show you i can do this whatever it is out of my comfort zone what you think is my comfort zone i'm telling these guys they're all my comfort zones i know all those zip codes man just give me the envelope i mailed to the mailbox i got this when i was listening to live at the plug nickel i found it fascinating that some of the tunes like you'd hear stella by starlight and when each person was soloing there'd kind of be different things going on like some of it would sound like it was free almost and then herbie would come in and then it would be a more structured kind of thing for a while at that time though that was just another gig right those gigs that you would be playing all those live recordings they were literally just you get to the bandstand you start playing you have no idea that these are going to be records that are going to be put out in the future that's correct that's correct yes i just i i want to ask you one other thing ron about your bass sounds as recording progressed there you were able to get more bases on records and presence yeah do you ever listen back to an old record maybe you never listen to your old records and say man i wish the bass was louder on this or um or you just kind of accept it for what it is you know knowing that how well you can hear your base on on modern recordings are recordings from the 80s on yeah well i think that one of the issues back then is that the base wasn't uh how to say this the bass wasn't thought to be critical enough to be recorded at a reasonable level you at that time just look like you had bird that concept you had dizzy you had max roach you had blood paul these instruments were taken over the development of the jazz scene and the music as well and i think the bass players at that time they were replacing either the bass drum bead bead bead the tuba player from the new orleans or the mandolin no one no one it seemed to me were putting forth the interest to help the bass player come along with this development of the music and instrumental i mean bird took the horn somewhere else man and blood powers playing runs that no one could play before you know and max is doing stuff on the instruments were developing along with the music except the bass players and i think rick because they were not recorded loud enough because no one thought they were important i'm getting out of my expertise of someone else's psyche but when the bass start being able to rehearse better the bass start getting better right because those guys and gals including me are able to hear just what this guy's trying to play or this is what he played finally we hear something going on back here i always say that come from behind that palm tree [Laughter] and as the base was able to be better recorded and therefore worthy of commanding some serious attention everything changed the kind of strings guys change use change the height of the strings changed the harmonic concept changed whether to play time or no time that all changed because the bass was now recorded to a level that everybody could hear especially fellow bass players well ron i have a million more questions for you that i'd love to to to ask you but i don't want to take up your time you have a master class that you do or zoom um yeah anything that you do can you tell me about it subscribers to my my newsletter uh once a month or once every other week i try to sit down with people who send in questions and i try to answer them all i can i try to assure them that there's not enough time to answer all of them if they submit them in written form i assure you that i will be the guy who's saying yes and no to those questions and i will get to answer them and if that's an interesting question some some a little embarrassing you know and and some were a lot less embarrassing so my answer was kind of a little more grace you know but we do it every other week and i invite the subscribers to feel free to ask a question but think it through first and then we'll try to find some loose and some kind of amenable resolve in your question tonight almost answered well i'll put the i'll put the link in the description for how for how to do that and i'm going to put i'm going to put links for your instagram for youtube for all your for for everything another point if i ever get a chance to interview you again i want to talk about your solo records and we didn't we didn't even get to that round you have so many great records we're sitting down right now let's kind of take a a a pen and somewhere on your calendar right now and we'll do this again when you're needle wherever it stops on that date perfect i'll email you and we're going to we're going to get this schedule because because i have i have literally just so many questions that i want to ask you that we didn't know well that's all but three excellent well you've been so gracious ron thank you spend your time with me today thank you so much i'm i'm to say it's an honor is it's that's not even a word that's that's not i can't even tell you how much this means to me thank you and i've had fun for nine o'clock in the morning and i'll have fun at nine o'clock the next morning so don't give me that excuse that's too early for you excellent all right ron we'll have a great day we'll we'll thank you all right love you bye you too bye-bye that's all for now don't forget to subscribe ring the bell and leave a comment check out my new quick lessons pro guitar course that just came out also the beato book if you want to learn about music theory that's how you do it and check out my biato ear training course at beautiertraining.com and don't forget if you want to support the channel even more think about becoming a member of the biato club thanks so much for watching [Music] you

Channel: Rick Beato

Views: 281,856

Keywords: rick beato, everything music, rick, beato, music, music theory, music production, education, Bass, Bassist, Miles Davis, Miles Davis Quintet, Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Tony Williams, Elvin Jones, McCoy Tyner, Rudy Van Gelder, Blue Note Records, A tribe Called Quest, Jazz, Jazz Bass, Upright Bass, NYC, George Benson, Wes Montgomery, John Coltrane, Recording Techniques, Live At The Plugged Nickel, Four and More, Bass Recording, Recording History, How to record bass

Id: k2vqJ78VA4g

Length: 47min 22sec (2842 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 04 2021