As a member of Bob Marley and the Wailers, he was one of reggae’s original creators.
Bass is about connection—within the music, among the players, and between the musicians and the listener. Even if you can only hear a song’s bass line, say, in a noisy, crowded room, or through an adjoining wall, you might be able to recognize the song—and conjure up all the memories and emotions of how that song speaks to you. Simply through bass. In the musical conversation between rhythm and harmony, bass bridges the gap, gluing everything together. And chances are, as the bass player in your band, you’re not only providing that musical groove glue, but you may also be holding the band together practically and interpersonally. And the whole time, you’re making everyone and everything feel and sound good.
It’s hard to think of any player who embodied this idea of bass as connection more than Aston “Family Man” Barrett. Though (like most bass players) he’s not exactly a household name, he truly should be: As the long-time bassist, arranger, and coproducer of Bob Marley and the Wailers, his musical innovations and memorable lines are exceedingly familiar to anyone who has ever heard reggae music. “Fams,” as he was known, died in February of this year at 77, leaving a long legacy of reggae mastery.
Indeed, as Family Man was one of reggae’s original creators, he helped birth the bass-heavy Jamaican genre into existence from its stylistic precursors, ska and rocksteady. Together with his younger brother, drummer Carlton “Carly” Barrett, Fams created and established much of the hypnotic pulse and infectious vibe that characterizes reggae rhythms. Family Man’s feel was firm yet relaxed, his tone deep, dark, and plush. It was with these bottom-heavy colors, coaxed from a Höfner “Beatle” bass in his early years, then from his flatwound-strung Fender Jazz bass, that Aston Barrett crafted snaky, syncopated hooks and short melodic phrases that bolstered the vocal melodies while playing against the bouncing backbeats of the rhythm guitar and organ.
Before building his first bass from plywood and a length of 2“x4”, Barrett’s first musical love was singing along to American soul artists on Jamaican radio. “When I’m playing the bass, it’s like I’m singing,” Fams told music journalist Bill Murphy in a 2007 Bass Player magazine interview. “I compose a melodic line and see myself like I’m singing baritone.” You can hear his vocal-like bass stylings in songs like “Is This Love” and “Waiting in Vain.” These and many other Barrett bass lines serve as countermelodies, animated motifs that play against each song’s main vocal melody. Family Man’s parts are often easy to sing along to, so it’s easy to imagine Fams singing them in his head.
“Fams not only kept that intragroup connection strong, but he also went beyond the bass, creating and composing many of the intricate, interconnecting parts you can hear in any Bob Marley and the Wailers recording.”
The Barrett brothers played in several early reggae bands before joining the Wailers full-time in 1972, including famed producer Lee “Scratch” Perry’s house band, the Upsetters. In 1969, when the original Upsetters lineup couldn’t make a U.K. tour due to a scheduling conflict, Aston and Carlton’s band the Hippy Boys became the new Upsetters. In this group, they backed a pantheon of early reggae artists, including the Wailers, a vocal trio with Marley, Peter Tosh, and Bunny Wailer. The Upsetters eventually became the core of the Wailers’ rhythm section. Tosh and Bunny Wailer left the band in 1974.
It was years before, though, well before he had children (and he had a lot of children) that Aston Barrett began calling himself “Family Man.” This reflected how he saw it as his role to keep the band together. As the Wailers’ bandleader, arranger, and co-producer, Fams not only kept that intragroup connection strong, but he also went beyond the bass, creating and composing many of the intricate, interconnecting parts you can hear in any Bob Marley and the Wailers recording. But his primary musical connection was with his brother, Carly. Among other reggae conventions, the Barrett brothers pioneered the “one drop” rhythmic style, in which the bass and drums skip the downbeat—dropping the one—as you can hear in the bass and drum parts of songs like “Trenchtown Rock” and “One Drop.”
I met Family Man at the photo shoot for that 2007 Bass Player cover story, and again in 2012 when Phil Chen and I interviewed him onstage during the weekend he received his Bass Player Lifetime Achievement Award. During the photo shoot, we also shot a short video interview, which you can find on YouTube, where he demonstrates the “One Drop” bass line, plucking with his thumb between the end of the neck and the neck pickup. Even barely amplified, you can feel the depth that comes from Family Man’s bass approach. In the Marley years, that huge “earth sound” came from two Acoustic 18" speaker cabinets and two 4x15 cabinets. “You need them that big to get that sound,” Barrett told Murphy, “because reggae music is the heartbeat of the people. It’s the universal language what carry that heavy message of roots, culture, and reality. So the bass have to be heavy and the drums have to be steady.”Aston "Family Man" Barrett, Bob Marley & the Wailers bassist - 2007 Bass Player mag. interview 1/2
Here's the first part of Bill Leigh’s 2007 interview with Bob Marley & the Wailers' bassist Aston "Family Man" Barrett.
The jazz bassist returns to share the four fundamental things that every bassist should work on.
Last month, I had the immense pleasure of speaking with New York upright-bass extraordinaire Scott Colley. Over the last 40 years, Scott has played in all kinds of amazing situations led by some of the most celebrated names in jazz, including Herbie Hancock, Abbey Lincoln, Pat Metheny, Michael Brecker, Andrew Hill, Chris Potter, Roy Hargrove, Dave Binney, Carmen McRae, Joshua Redman, and so many others. Naturally, we had so much to discuss that one article just wasn’t enough (see last month for the first part of this interview). This portion focuses on more bass-specific questions from that same interview.
PG: Scott, you’ve had some really incredible bass teachers, and you’ve also been teaching for many years: What are four things that you think every bassist should work on?
Scott Colley: These four things apply to every instrument. I want to stress that the things that are important for bassists to work on are also important for every other instrument. As a bassist, you definitely know when you play with somebody who hasn’t mastered these four things. All of the instrumentalists that I love to hear as bass players, and the people that I love to hear on any other instrument, have these very solid components in common. Lastly, none of the things that I’m about to mention are things that you achieve and are yours for life. They’re a process and need to be nurtured constantly. I still regularly work on these myself.
One—consistent time. This will serve you in any genre of music. Whether you’re required to maintain consistent time or not in the music you’re currently playing, your ability to do it when it’s necessary, or in other words, maintain the same tempo from point A to B, is vital. You have to nurture this skill constantly because as you play with different people, even great drummers, they’ll influence what we’ll broadly refer to as “your absolute time.” For sure, as a bassist, this is a skill that you need.
Two—feel. Your relationship to time in the moment, like: “What does this feel like? Am I playing a funk groove, is it swinging, is it straight eighths?” Whatever the feel—and this is true of classical music; this is true of everything—does it feel good? Does it feel the way that I intend?
“I still practice each one of these things that I’m mentioning to you every day, even if it’s for 10 minutes before I go to a soundcheck, while I’m on the road playing every night.”
PG: So, how do you go about working on these?
Colley: The way I practice these is with a metronome or some form of “absolute,” knowing that playing with individuals is not that. But I’ll practice with a metronome for a while, and then, after a certain time, turn the metronome off and turn the recorder on. I’ll analyze the recording for:
A—Is my time consistent? Am I able to maintain a consist tempo from point A to B? And B—Does it feel good in the moment? If not, then why? What am I not making in the groove, or what was I doing when the tempo drifted from 60 bpm to 65 bpm? What was I doing in that moment—triplets, quintuplets? Did I not know where to shift?
PG: How long are these recordings you make?
Colley: They’re all just really short. Just one to two minutes.
Three—tone. When I went to California Institute for the Arts, I was very fortunate to work with a bass player named Fred Tinsley, who was in the Los Angeles Phil [Philharmonic] and, before that, the New York Phil. He also played with Dexter Gordon and a bunch of other great jazz musicians. He sounded a lot like Wilbur Ware when he played jazz and was an amazing classical bassist. The whole physical approach that I have to the instrument is distilled from things that I learned with Fred. Fred was all about using the weight of your body to play the instrument and the things that are challenging on acoustic bass. So, when I started working with Fred weekly, he was like, “Whoa, whoa, whoa…. Slow down all that stuff. Here’s the bow. Use the bow.” He slowed everything down and had me play long tones all the time, focusing on finding a center on the instrument. He would say, “There’s no hurry to learning this. There’s no shortcut to learning this.”
Four—intonation. Lastly, working on intonation on acoustic bass is a constant. Again, it’s not some trophy that you obtain where you say, “I now have great intonation.” It takes constant work and maintenance. Yes, it’s about “Where does my hand go,” but also, “Once my hand is in that right position, am I really listening to the note?”
As with any other person who is 18, 19, 20 years old, I also wanted everything to “happen now.” But now that I’ve been doing this for decades, I still practice each one of these things that I’m mentioning to you every day, even if it’s for 10 minutes before I go to a soundcheck, while I’m on the road playing every night. These are the fundamentals that I will constantly work on until I stop playing. You know … that’s just the way it is!The upright bassist, whose credits read like a who’s who of jazz greats, shares on his early musical career, which began when he was just 13 years old.
Recently, I was lucky enough to speak with the great Scott Colley—who’s worked with a host of jazz masters, including Herbie Hancock, Pat Metheny, Jim Hall, and Julian Lage—about bass, music, life, and more. I’ll be presenting this interview in two parts: the first dealing with how Scott came to be a bass player and his early experiences, and the second dealing with his specific areas of advice for all bassists. In this column, I’m sharing Part 1.
Colley was presented with a daunting decision at age 11: bass or trumpet? There were only two openings available in his elementary school orchestra. Honestly, it could’ve gone either way, and today, you could be reading my interview with an accomplished jazz trumpeter. Alas, his older brother, Jim—a drummer—said, “I want a rhythm section player in the family. You should play bass!” And so began the successful bass career of one of the soon-to-be-better-known acoustic bassists on the international jazz scene.
“I was learning a lot from these experiences, where older musicians would say, ‘Learn these tunes by Friday—and you’d better learn them!’”
Born and raised in Los Angeles, Colley’s brother exposed him to jazz at a young age. By 13, he was playing biweekly as the resident bassist at a jam session in Pasadena, was fortunate enough to work alongside many much older and more experienced jazz musicians, including Chuck Manning, Larry Koonse, Serge Kasimoff, Teddy Edwards, and Albert “Tootie” Heath. Some would give him advice or stacks of records and help him figure out what to listen to—or listen for. Like many successful musicians, Colley also had an amazing and influential music teacher at Eagle Rock Jr./Sr. High School. Band Director John Rinaldo managed to keep his program going, even when Los Angeles city schools had no funds, by throwing fundraisers.
Today, looking back, Colley describes himself during this early period as “more of a jazz purist,” who learned mostly by ear as he studied some of greats like Paul Chambers and Charles Mingus. He also took regular lessons with bass veteran Monty Budwig (a local legend). Read on to learn more about his musical journey.
PG: So, you grew as a musician that quickly, in just a few years?
Scott Colley: Yeah! In hindsight, I can’t imagine how that all happened in three years! I was learning a lot from these experiences, where older musicians would say, “Learn these tunes by Friday—and you’d better learn them!” That was the vibe! Another significant moment was when my brother offered to take me to see Weather Report in 1978. I didn’t want to go because I thought it was fusion [laughs].
PG: Wow! The era of some of my favorite Weather Report! Black Market, Mr. Gone, Heavy Weather…. You saw them live?!
Colley: Yeah. This was right after Heavy Weather came out. Seeing Jaco at that moment, hearing Wayne [Shorter] and Joe [Zawinul], their amazing orchestration, and the amount of sounds and grooves that could come out of that band—Peter Erskine, whew…. I thought, this is some shit that I’ve never heard! I don’t know where this all comes from, but I want to know! So, that kind of opened the door for me to think, “Oh, there’s a lot of stuff out here that I haven’t been experiencing.” From there, very shortly afterwards, I discovered—or rather, I realized—the amazing music of Ornette Coleman, beginning with Old and New Dreams [a quartet of Coleman’s former side musicians Dewey Redman, Don Cherry, Charlie Haden, and Ed Blackwell] and then going back to all the amazing classic quartet stuff.
PG: How old were you then?
Colley: About 14 or 15. It was a really great way of discovering music by listening, rather than from the page. But then I realized that there’s certain music that I want to be involved in that does require me to learn to read, understand harmony, the functions of melody, the functions of the bass within music, etc.
Then, I finished high school and floated for a year playing around Los Angeles. I was just gonna move to New York but heard that Charlie Haden was teaching at CalArts. So, I auditioned just so I could meet him. I figured he’d give me some pointers or something, and then I’d head off to New York [laughs]. Charlie said, “We’re getting ready to start a jazz program. Do you want to go to school here?”
So, I went to CalArts! Because of Charlie and David Roitstein, the pianist and heart of the Cal Arts jazz program, I got an amazing education.
They had an incredible program with teachers in jazz, world music, modern classical music, composition…. They’d have visiting artists like John Cage, Morton Feldman, Don Cherry, Pat Metheny, Dave Holland, and artists on faculty from North and South India, Balinese and Javanese gamelan, Nigerian and Ghanaian traditional music, and then Charlie. So, I did four years of CalArts, sold all my stuff, got my bass in a suitcase, and then moved to New York.
By approaching your electric bass like a string player, you’ll find easier ways to get around the fretboard.
When I began playing in ’80s London, there were no electric bass teachers and no programs that recognized it as an instrument. It was like the Wild West, with most making it up as they went. I had to play upright in college in order to get in, and there was no jazz program, so I studied classical. I chose classical guitar as my second instrument, because I thought studying the technique might be useful. Over the years, I developed my approach by taking useful pieces from all these different places, in addition to what I picked up from watching or listening to great players. One of the most important areas I spent time on was fingerings and positions.
Positions are the way that expert string players get around their instruments with grace and ease. They involve lots of little decisions and habits that, when taken together, can either make one’s life much easier or harder. There are established schools of fingerings for upright bass, some of which have been developed over hundreds of years. However, electric bassists tend to have a much more individual approach. Each player may seem to have their own take, but there are some useful commonalities.
For me, the bass is all about shapes. Early on, I made a study of learning every interval and which shapes produce them visually. For instance: What does a fifth look like on one string, across two strings, or three? How about a minor second? Over time this allowed me to visualize any phrase I heard in my head, before ever touching the fretboard. This also allowed me to decide upon the best fingering for any phrase that didn’t just fit under my fingers.
For simplicity, I am going to give all examples on 4-string bass, but these can be applied to 5, 6, or more strings. I categorize every left-hand position as either open, closed, or extended.
Over time this allowed me to visualize any phrase I heard in my head, before ever touching the fretboard.
An open position, one which involves an open string, allows us to cover five half-steps on each string. If we play these in succession, we’ll end up with a chromatic scale starting on the lowest note and continuing up to the highest note we can play without shifting. It’s possible to play in any key while in open position, but sooner or later, the player who considers efficiency, or the desire to play above B on the 1st string, will need to shift.
A closed position is any position that does not involve an open string or shifting. When it comes to keys, two of the most useful and basic shapes to memorize in closed position are those used to play the major or minor scales. Again, observing the rule of one finger per fret, play a one-octave major scale in any key beginning on the second finger. For example: If I play A major beginning on the 5th fret of the 4th string, this fingering is 2-4, 1-2-4, 1-3-4. If I do the same for A minor beginning on the first finger, this fingering is 1-3-4, 1-3-4, 1-3. These two basic shapes across three strings should be memorized. Reproducing these shapes or even a partial fragment anywhere on the fretboard will produce a major or minor scale in any key. More importantly, you’ll eventually be able to visualize any key on the fretboard, based on these shapes or fragments. I also apply this approach to all seven modes.
An extended position is any position that involves shifting temporarily without actually changing position (the left thumb doesn’t really move). In other words, stretching to reach a neighboring note that is not directly beneath the four fingers. For instance, we could use an extended position to play a chromatic scale (without actually using any open strings) by stretching back for the tonic, fourth, and minor seventh, giving us the fingering 1-1-2-3-4, 1-1-2-3-4, 1-1-2. This is way more efficient (and faster) than shifting into multiple positions to play the same thing. We could also play a major scale by stretching back to play the tonic and fourth, giving the fingering 1-2-4, 1-2-4, 1-2.
I find extended positions particularly useful for playing arpeggios, where I can now play the first two notes on a single string, giving the fingering 1-4, 2, 2. On a 5- or 6-string, it’s possible to use (1-4, 2, 2, 1-4, 4) to play a two-octave major arpeggio in one position. You can also apply the same approach for alternative extended fingers for minor or any mode.
The last part is learning to shift between different positions. The key is to work on shifting without sacrificing tone or duration. Mastering this while combining all three position categories allows us to get around the neck quickly. To practice this, start out with basic open positions, then move on to closed, extended, and then finally finger shifts to tie them all together.
Happy exploring!
Don’t wait ’til mixing to get a great tone. Record your sound as best as you can to make your tracks shine.
Recording bass can be a challenging task. Whether we are talking about a natural, woody upright-bass tone that balances well within a jazz quartet, or a nice, round electric tone with definition and copious amounts of low end for “modern” situations, the science behind how to achieve these sounds has eluded more than a few engineers and players. As both a player and as a recording and mixing engineer, I wanted to pass on a few tips that have served me well over the years.
Get the sound you want out of the instrument and amp first. Before attempting to patch, mic, process, or record anything—listen! Making sure your instrument’s sound/signal chain is free from buzzes, ground loops, unwanted distortion, and that your amp and instrument are placed where they sound best in the room will save you lots of time and headache. Make sure that the player and engineer agree that the tone is what the song or project calls for. If you opt to record electric bass direct only (not my choice), then the above still applies, but the console and speakers are now “the amp.”
Once we have a great sound in the room, let’s look at how to capture it. Speaking with my mix hat on: I hate mixing acoustic or electric bass that is contaminated with “bleed” (leakage from other instruments in the room). Too much bleed makes it difficult to do post EQ, compression, level adjustments, automation, or correctional edits. Yes, yes … Blue Note, Motown, Stax Records, yada, yada—I love them all too! But here, I’m talking about great sounding modern recordings and mixes. In short, try to get as isolated a signal as possible, even if this means putting your amp in a remote location. I have mine set up on the third floor, while my studio is in the basement. If you’re recording acoustic bass, then either use an isolation booth or very good baffles and mic placement to minimize bleed.
A little compression allows for a more even tone throughout the bass’s range, and can even tighten a good performance, without really being noticeable.
With acoustic bass, I use two mics—one over the lower fingerboard (where the player plucks the strings) and one over the soundhole beside the bridge. My favorites are the AKG C12 (fingerboard) and the Neumann U47 (soundhole). There are many generic mic choices. Experiment with smaller diaphragm mics for the fingerboard and larger diaphragm mics for the soundhole, six to eight inches away from the instrument. With electric, I use a single mic (U47 usually) and a good quality DI (direct injection) such as the Avalon V5. If you don’t have a great DI, then use the DI-out on the player’s amp.
Some mic pres are more bass-friendly than others. I’m a fan of ’70s Neves like the 1073, 1081, and others. Neves have phenomenal EQ, mic pres, and DIs. I’ve also had great success with Avalon’s all-tube VT-737sp—a great mic pre with an amazing optical compressor, EQ, and a very nice DI. After the pres, I put both signals (mic+mic or mic+DI) through some sort of light compression or limiting. My favorites are either LA2A- or 1176-type compressors. Untreated, low notes are quite a bit louder than those throughout the rest of the instrument. A little compression allows for a more even tone throughout the bass’s range, and can even tighten a good performance, without really being noticeable. This also allows us to get more signal on each track without overloading.
For recording, my approach to equalization is mostly corrective. I usually don’t “print” EQ unless the instrument tone, the mic choice, mic placement, or room sound are problematic. I like to leave the mix engineer with options by not over-compressing or EQing the bass sound as I record. With that said, if you happen to have a Pultec, then throw it on there. Even with nothing boosted or cut, it does wonders for bass. My goal is a great-sounding bass track that uses the entire dynamic range available without ever clipping. If you don’t have access to vintage gear, check out new stuff by Golden Age, Heritage Audio, or even software plugins by UAD (their emulations are exceptional).
Pay attention to phase. You’ll probably need to reverse phase on either the DI or your second mic to defeat phase cancelation (two very similar signals canceling each other out). I usually match the level of both signals and then reverse the phase on one to see if the sound becomes clearer/more defined. Sometimes (rarely), the mic or DI are dissimilar enough to not need it, but I always check.
Room vs. instrument: For me, a good instrument tone involves some of the sound from a good room. This adds depth and dimension, while the DI (electric) or fingerboard mic (acoustic) adds definition. Play with the mic placement and/or the balance of the two signals until it sounds good. My particular ethos is that whatever I record needs to sound great before the mix.
Happy recording!