bass playing

Bassist Scott Thunes first started with Frank Zappa’s band when he was 21 years old.

The idiosyncratic musician has gone from Zappa to the classroom, even though he says “I can’t write a bass line to save my life.”

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Left to right: Joe Lally. Brandan Canty, and Anthony Pirog

The bassist, now with the Messthetics, has had a long learning journey. Thanks to the online-lesson boom, you can study directly from Lally.

Although it’s been years since the beginning of the pandemic, many monumental things can still be explained in a single phrase: It all started because of Covid. One of those is that you can take online bass lessons from Joe Lally, bassist and co-founder of Fugazi, the unyieldingly indie post-hardcore band that raged out of Washington, DC’s ever-vibrant punk scene. From 1987 to 2003, over the band’s six studio albums, assorted EPs, and hundreds of live shows, Lally demonstrated his utter mastery of intense, full-throttle bass playing and writing.

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Within this low E lies a world of expression.

As bass players, let’s slow down for a moment and think about what makes every note so special.

As bass players, we spend most of our time building lines and phrases one note at a time, each one followed by the next—or by strategically placed silence. The notes we play don’t live in a vacuum, though; they define the shifting harmony in the context of the other instruments, establish the rhythmic pulse with the drummer, and work together with other notes to create the emotional heft and physical feel of the music.

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