It’s fricking October already and I haven’t played any music with anyone (besides my wife) in 7 months. I see and hear of others doing it and I am very envious of them. I was invited a couple of times a few months back and turned them down as the news was indicating surges of cases in our counties. I haven’t heard from them since and I expect they’re still playing some but with another bass player. Opportunity, apparently for me, has done all its knocking for a while. Maybe going forward.
Off and on, as I have told you in the last few months, music is still a big component of my survival technique. I can go very hot and cold with the motivation I need to get to the woodshed. I go through productive spurts but then playing the same scales and arpeggios tends to get tedious and I get lazy and skip a few days and …then get into recording.
Recording is a huge rabbit hole as far as I’m concerned. I started out wanting to record my bass in GarageBand on my iPad and send the tracks to my friends to play with or to import them into their projects. I ran into two issues (there are always two). First, I found GarageBand iOS very limiting particularly for recording my bass. Secondly, my bass playing sucked particularly when naked without any accompaniment to hide my flaws. There is a degree of difficulty in engineering a sound recording and playing an upright bass at the same time. I’m sure pros can do it but not yours truly, at this point.
My next step was to start drinking, followed quickly by buying lots of gear, including a 16” MacBook Pro equipped with Logic Pro X and then more gear, interfaces, preamps, monitors, etc. I had mics, stands, and cords from my band days, luckily. It ends up that I now have my own mini studio on my dining room table (we’re not expecting to host a dinner party any time soon.) Then, I needed to learn the logistics for playing and recording simultaneously which took some practice. None of which helped my bass playing.
I’m a little better now and have started recording Linda singing and playing her mandolin. I even have added a bass part to a few of her tunes. I’m mixing them now and maybe they will end up on our next record or maybe on Facebook for a few friends. The latter is more likely, wouldn’t you think?
Along with woodshedding and recording, I have also started joining online classes on bass playing in a few genres. These are generally discussions on gear, technique, practices habits and in a lot of cases groove. That elusive groove.
To paraphrase what a SCOTUS judge said a few years back about porn. “I can’t describe it but I know it when I feel it.”
Most of the ZOOM experts I heard talking about the groove were jazz players. There were also some rock players occasionally, as well. and I even tuned into one with Nashville Bluegrass players including Missy Raines, Mike Bub and Mark Fain among others. They got in to talking about the groove too.
So back to the question what is groove? I found this definition on the interweb and I kind of like it.
The “groove” is the pulse of the song and how the instruments dynamically breathe with it.
So, having resolved the definition (but I’m still going with I can’t describe it but know it when I feel it). Let’s bring it to bluegrass. I have been studying the groove concept in bluegrass, lately, in an abstract kind of way using my memory, my ears and a little expert research. When you haven’t played with a group for 7 months. That’s all you get.
Heck, I just want to play with some folks and hear the full bluegrass chords of the guitar, the mandolin chop on the back beat and me playing the down beat. Timely fills and back up on the banjo, fiddle or dobro are also an important part of the groove I’m looking to feel. Breaks, solos and vocals are the gravy, tasty and delicious but the groove is the main course for me.
So, where does all this get me? Well, it looks like we have a few more months of this shit show, so I’m going to keep doing what I’m doing… hit the ‘shed, finish recording and mixing a song or two (for the record release) and keep thinking about the groove.
Catch you next month. Stay sane!
