Within such alternative courses, the precise mixture and placement of chord tones and non-chord tones reflect musicians’ different interests in interpreting chords literally or more allusively—at times, even elusively. They can portray a new harmonic area allusively with chord tones other than the tonic and establish the tones’ presence at some point other than the downbeat. Moreover, they may emphasize non-chord tones in their formulations, creating harmonic color and suspense. Such operations simply prolong and intensify the resolutions that typically follow, as artists arrive at harmonic goals within subsequent chord areas.
In this regard, if bass players select some pitches to represent the underlying harmony, they select other pitches with the intention of making smooth and interesting connections between chord tones and bringing about effective resolutions, as they maneuver between adjacent segments of a progression. Neighbor pitches commonly serve this function, as do pitches derived from chord substitutions. According to convention, strong resolutions approach the tonic of a new chord by a chromatic step or by a skip of a fifth. Weaker resolutions result from motion that signals the arrival at a chord less definitively. Every option produces a distinct effect, the appropriateness of which the bass player assesses according to the part’s changing requirements, choosing one, or a sequence, that moves to the desired resolution.
The lengths of phrases and their relationship to the progression’s harmonic-rhythmic scheme are also variable features of bass lines, creating additional interest. Phrases whose components fit neatly within the boundaries of measures or within the progression’s larger harmonic segments reaffirm the composition’s form. Phrases whose melodic accents cause distinct components to emerge over the barlines, or phrases that span unusual groupings of measures, provide a rhythmic counterpoint to the form.
The tonal materials featured by bass players within their ongoing lines also have rhythmic ramifications, producing different impressions of the flow of time. If players formulate a phrase by repeating ascending scale degrees, for example, changing pitches every two beats, they place a stress on the first and third beats of measures to produce a certain kind of drive. Pitch change on every beat, achieved, perhaps, through an ascending stream of nonrepeating pitches, creates the impression of greater acceleration and drive toward the downbeat. Producing the sensation of even greater acceleration are movements among the short intervallic steps of chromatic patterns. The “dancy rhythmic feeling” produced when players change melodic direction with especially wide intervallic leaps is also distinctive (LG).
Managing such movements from phrase to phrase and from chorus to chorus, bass players concern themselves throughout with matters of continuity and development. They may devote particular segments of their lines to exploring scalar patterns, and other line segments to creating unique melodic shapes. Like soloists carrying on their internal conversation, bass players sometimes generate ideas through repetition, stressing a particular idea as a theme, or through motivic development, expanding upon the features of previous patterns. After exploiting this approach, they may experiment with wide-ranging dynamic and timbral effects. Alternatively, they concentrate on rhythmic invention, featuring diverse rhythmic subdivisions of the beat or alternating between different metric frames, for example, between four-beat and two-beat playing.
Over the larger performance’s course, bass players make comparable determinations about the harmonic features of their lines. They may consistently bring the character of certain chords within the progression into clear profile as structural markers, whereas they take great liberties in the interpretation of other chords. Players may introduce emphatic markers in varying degrees of density in different parts of the form. Some may emphasize root and fifth playing on the first chord of major harmonic segments; others may feature this approach whenever chords change. Still others may favor, generally, a greater emphasis on “outside” harmonic invention than on “inside” playing.
Exploring different registers also adds dynamism to the bass part, casting it in slightly different roles. In the lowest register, it provides the foundation of the group’s music, whereas in the highest register, it intertwines with the parts of other instruments or, on occasion, emerges with a soloistic voice. Bass players may change registers in relation to the composition’s major formal sections as a way of shaping the performance overall. The precise events taking place within the other parts have a constant influence on the bass line’s improvisation throughout the piece. Ultimately, the goal of many players is to create a part that has value in its own right, as well as fulfilling its foundational and interactional roles within the group.
Players describe the art of bass accompaniment and artists’ individual styles in historical perspective. “At one time, the bass just provided a thump, thump, thump, thump accompaniment, and you recognized it by its absence.” Buster Williams observes. “Now, the bass is a voice to be reckoned with, a voice that helps form the music.” This is also Red Rodney’s experience as a soloist. “Today, even when the bass player’s keeping the basic time going, he’s creating different rhythmic patterns behind you.” Rufus Reid, interpreting these developments in one historic band, reports that in Bill Evans’s trio, it was as if Evans advised LaFaro not simply “to walk,” but to become a “voice.” Through the innovations of LaFaro and others, “the whole thing evolved.” Reid explains, leading bass players to take the same kinds of liberties melodically and rhythmically that a horn player would. The bass continues to develop within the jazz idiom in direct relationship to the skills and creativity of its master artists (exx. 12.la–b).
Learning the Musical Role of the Bass
Experienced performers guide younger bass players by instructing them in the subtleties of bass lines. Don Pate’s father occasionally brought home written bass parts from recording session arrangements and played through them with his son. He also composed exemplary bass lines for Don and demonstrated their application within the blues progression. Similarly, Buster Williams’s father
would talk about how to keep a bass line moving forward, like the right choice of notes. Certain times, he would indicate which were the best notes to use in certain places. Often, he wouldn’t tell me which were the best, and that allowed me to try to find them for myself. Also, other musicians would hear me play, and they’d say, “Better go listen to your father a little more,” Or they’d give me specific advice like, “When you go from C7 to F7, try to play the line this way, with this idea.” The guys in the band gave me suggestions about different ideas, different melodic shapes to keep the movement of the bass lines interesting. All those things helped to shape my concept.
Bass players develop their understanding on the bandstand, as well. Al Stringer, the organist, was the leader in a duo with Rufus Reid, one of Reid’s earliest professional collaborations. Stringer used to play bass lines on the organ for Reid to imitate. At the time, Reid knew generally what was expected of a bass in the situation, but Stringer showed him “many specific kinds of things. Some of the lines he taught me were more jagged rhythmically, like in the rock style. Others were more like walking bass lines with a swing feel. He also showed me how to use scales in certain places, playing different shapes, not just staying in the chords all the time. He didn’t give me much slack,” Reid says good-humoredly, “but stayed right on me. I just did what I could and tried different things. If they didn’t work, Al let me know it right away.”
Chuck Israels also acquired some of his musical sophistication from working with groups.
I picked up a lot by ear on the bandstand, and I learned mainly by osmosis. Steve Kuhn had perfect pitch, and he was sometimes very short with me when I played a wrong note or got lost in a series of progressions. Kuhn might call the tune, and I’d know the melody in a general way and would be able to hear a reasonable facsimile of a correct bass line for the first twelve measures, but then I’d turn right when the music turned left. When that would happen, I was told the correct changes, and I ma
de it a point never to forget them.
Later, when I played with Bill Evans, Bill wrote out his chord progression for his own compositions and for the standard pieces that we would play. Sometimes he’d just write them on the inside of a match-book cover, and I’d have to read them on the bandstand. He’d write the changes, and I’d play the bass lines. Bill wrote such detailed chord progressions with different chord changes every two beats, there wasn’t too much for me to fill in. The bass line was implicit.
While absorbing what musicians offered through peer instruction, Israels found his bandstand experience invaluable in developing broad improvisation skills through an increased understanding of the interrelationship between arranged patterns and those he could amplify from his own imagination. “Of course, I could change melodic directions when I played,” he declares.
Also, I would occasionally take other liberties. If a line of chords were going from D to G, I might play D–E–F–G or D–E–F–F#–G. Or I would decorate it, sneaking in D–A–G or D–A–A–G. But actually, most of the decorations, like passing chords, were already in there. One of the things I got from Bill was an appreciation for his enormously detailed set-up and organization of the bass line as a counterpoint to the original melody. Bill’s bass lines always felt good to play, because they went so strongly with the melody which you were carrying in your head. The line itself evoked the main melody because the bass line was such a perfect counterpoint.
Students develop their understanding further from recordings, copying appealing bass patterns that complement particular harmonic movements. One of the “little tricks” that Calvin Hill learned was the use of a descending chromatic line over a iii–vi–ii–V progression or turnback as an alternative to playing chord arpeggiations. “If you’re in the key of C, you can go E–E–D–D and repeat the sequence,” he discovered. Ultimately, youngsters’ discovery of identical or closely related versions of bass vocabulary in the performances of other players provides models for their own evolving store of patterns (exx. 12.2a–b). For aspiring bass players, as for drummers and pianists, method books providing composed accompaniment models or actual transcriptions of an expert’s improvised accompaniments are also instructive.7
In the case of some learners, Chuck Israels says, their “non-jazz” musical backgrounds inadvertently prepared them to appreciate the qualities of effective bass parts. He explains in detail:
When you come right down to it and start analyzing great jazz bass lines, as long as they remain tied to normal tonal harmony, they’re like Bach. . . . Except for a few situations, a good bass player will play roots rather than fifths of chords. . . . Some other rules: a scalewise passage can change direction at any time. After a leap, that is, an interval of more than a second, one returns by a step in the opposite direction, except when that leap is followed by another leap, in which case you have an arpeggiated figure, and you’re free to continue or change direction. But as soon as you go from a leap back to a stepwise, conjunct motion, you invariably do that in the opposite direction from the last leap you took. Unless, as in Bach, you continue in the same direction only to come back immediately and then turn back in the opposite direction so that the continuation in the same direction becomes an embellishment. If you look at satisfying jazz bass lines, almost all of them follow these rules.
In addition to learning the common musical gestures shared by jazz bass players, performers study the personal concepts of accompaniment and the precise signature patterns that distinguish leading experts. Ray Brown’s walking lines impressed Buster Williams for their “sheer strength and happy feeling,” as well as for their distinctive melodic contours. When Brown performed, every pitch was “strong, clear, and perfectly in tune,” Williams explains. He finds an alternative model in Paul Chambers, who “played a little softer, more gently and maybe more compassionately than Brown. He also had a way of walking and playing chord changes that was different from any other bass player.” That is, whereas Brown’s lines established a strong sense of melodic direction, Chambers’s lines were “a little more subtle” and more difficult to anticipate. “It was as if they’d meet at the same place, but Brown would come in the front door, and Chambers would enter through the back doorhorn Williams concludes.
Characteristic nuances of Chambers’s style also include his use of micro-tones and the liberties he took with pitch inflection, exemplifying the effective ways in which mature artists periodically “break the standard rules” that govern bass lines. “Chambers would sometimes find some notes in between the notes.” Chuck Israels explains, “putting four pitches in a line in which there was only room for three. For example, if he had to get from D to F and he had to play four notes in there and he happened to be going chromatically, he would go from a D to a flattened E to a sharpened E to an E to an F. Maybe he played the D on the downbeat of one measure and wanted the F to be the downbeat of the next measure and didn’t want to break the chromatic nature of the line, so he made the line even more chromatic, microtonally chromatic. It was a very beautiful thing.”
Other subtleties involve articulation. “They nicknamed Milt Hinton ‘Frump’ because he plays his notes short.” Kenny Washington says. “They’re not exactly staccato, but they’re shorter than players from the younger generation like Ron Carter or Ray Drummond. It was a new experience for me to play with him, because the older bass player’s concept is so different. Their time-feel is different.” George Duvivier describes other traits imitated by disciples of contemporary bass players and distinguishes the “Stanley Clarke approach” from “the Ron Carter and Buster Williams approach.” The former utilizes “glissandos,” a “wide vibrato,” and “flurries” of pitches, whereas the latter features “low, sustained notes on the E and A strings” and a “certain way” of formulating lines with “doubling up on the stumble,” the triplet eighth-note device “Ray Brown introduced” to vary his quarter-note bass patterns.
Finally, students expand their understanding through experimentation, gradually cultivating a large storehouse of phrases that serve as optional components for bass lines. Chuck Israels describes how he
learned to play by simply building up my vocabulary of musical devices. For example, there are some points in the harmony of a piece that are very specific in their requirements of the bass notes. One has to be on the root of the dominant chord just before you hit the tonic chord in many situations. Other times, as in the fourth measure of the blues, you’ll be on the root of the tonic chord and the chord is going to change to the dominant chord of the key a fourth above.
If you’re on an F chord in the key of F, it’s going to go to the B chord. So what are you going to play there? F–F–F–F or F–A–C–F are basic possibilities, but what kind of pattern are you going to come up with? I’ve got to stay on the F chord. How am I going to get away from the root and then get back to it? Or am I going to go from that F to an A and approach B from a half step below? Or am I going to go from the F to the B and approach the B from a half step above? Or am I going to make a progression of minor thirds and end up someplace else? Am I going to go F–A–B–D, and then to another F? How am I going to fill the space in such a way that the bass line has integrity against the given melody? . . . There are various patterns that work and various kinds of implied inner voice motions, suspensions, and superimposed chords—all kinds of things which have a greater or lesser satisfaction for me in a given musical situation. It depends, among other things, on what the melody is doing at that point. In working with Bill Evans, I found innumerable examples of extremely satisfying solutions to problems like that . . . and I could use them whenever the problems arose in playing a tune.
From experience fashioning lines in the practice room and during formal events, bass players develop gestures of varying degrees of detail that serve the function of representing particular chords or bridging successive harmonic areas. Like the soloist’s vocabulary patterns, some comprise general contours, partial shapes, or, simply, targ
et pitches within a harmonic area—requiring further pitch selection in each performance of the idea (ex. 12.3a). As bass players experiment with different realizations of such ideas, they continually discover new versions that appeal to them, and enter them into their storehouses as fully detailed figures. Subsequently, they may use them with the same chord as it arises in different parts of progressions, and, where compatible, with different chords. At the same time, within the limitations of their role as accompanists, they alter the figures through transposition, pitch substitution, rhythmic rephrasing, displacement, augmentation, and the like (exx. 12.3b–d).
Moreover, as bass players apply the patterns, they find that particular linear combinations work together especially well. They subsequently absorb them into their stores as larger models for invention. Resemblances among the bass lines found in multiple choruses and different takes of blues performances by Paul Chambers and Percy Heath reveal the repeated use of construction pattern models ranging in length from two measures to eight measures, in the latter instance guiding performance over nearly three-quarters of a chorus (exx. 12.4a–b). Heath’s performance also illuminates the numerous roles that a bass vocabulary pattern can play over its life: at one time, initiating a chorus accompaniment as a discrete idea; at another, eliding with an adjacent pattern to form a gesture that serves as an accompaniment theme; at still another, interacting with substitute patterns to form a large recurring model (ex. 12.4b). In a continuing cycle of generation, application, and renewal, bass players create new shapes by transforming elaborate models according to personal systems of component substitution and by combining vocabulary patterns with unique conceptions during each performance.
Thinking in Jazz Page 48