Keira WitherKay wrote:
? someone should just give him a guitar .......he's not playing bass, but playing guitar technique on a bass....... ket me say he's awesome but i prefer the bass virtuosa's who still play OTT but still the fundamentals of the bass is there
Well, the problem is that first of all - the Bass is one of <if not THE> newest instruments in contemporary music... it's still evolving, and you can't say that it has just one purpose. If it is able to do more, why not let it?
Music isn't meant to be about your instrument, it's about the tones/sounds you create, and in that setting he's doing good work for the song.
That could have been done on guitar, but he preferred the tones achieved on his Bass over a Guitar - his right as the composer of the song
If you look at the history of the Bass Guitar, it was pretty much blend in with the background till Jaco and Co., but since then solos are "ok"? We've seen Stanley Clarke use simple chordal work in School Days, to good effect.
Basically, it's not about the instrument - it's about the sounds you create. Yes he may have achieved them easierly on a guitar <although, tonally not exactly the same>, but that was his chosen method. It's the same as playing a Bass line on a Synth... often they're interchangeable between instruments, but the average listener doesn't know there's a difference
And in that "The fundamentals" would not be about being a Bassist, but being a Musician surely?
You can talk about our fundamentals of our role in your regular contemporary setup (Guitar/Drums/Bass/Keys) - but that still boils down to the same thing as serving the song not the instrument, and that's only 1 factor of our playing/instrument
