Low Life
Welcome to our new live skills page, where Antonio Angotti, Tax The Heat bassist and tutor in Live Performance at BIMM in Birmingham, makes you the best live bassist you can be. Let’s hit the stage!
Bassist Antonio Angotti of Tax The Heat kicks off a new page on how to shine when playing live
Hello, fellow bassists, and welcome! We bass players are not commonly known for our stage presence. I appreciate that this statement is a sweeping generalisation – Flea, Victor Wooten, Robert Trujillo, Verdine White and Billy Sheehan are just some bassists who buck the trend. But there’s some truth to the idea that bass performers aren’t the most outgoing musicians, so what I want to focus on with this new page is how we can become more effective performers on stage.
The first question to consider is whether we’re trying to find our own authentic way of performing, or whether we’re simply aiming to be more visually in keeping with an existing band of musicians. You can extend this to include stylistic considerations for performance, and whether what we’re doing on stage is appropriate for the genre. For example, windmilling your luscious locks during the most sensitive moment of an Adele ballad might not be an effective way of keeping a gig. Regardless of the situation, there are some basic concepts that we can experiment with in order to start working towards a more engaging visual performance.
Something that I start a lot of my students off with is a ‘choreography’ of sorts. Don’t worry – this isn’t the all-singing, all-dancing sort of choreography that you might expect from a production of Cats, say. Instead, we focus on your position on stage and align it to certain sections of the song being played. This sort of planning will result in a better visual dynamic, even though it’s as simple as moving backwards and forwards.
As an example, a verse section is the perfect opportunity for you to move towards the back of the stage, or over to the drummer, where you can lock in together. Musically, verse sections tend to be a little more exposed or vocally focused than other song sections, so there is no need for us to be lunging over the monitor wedge or scaling the security barrier. In contrast, when a chorus kicks in, moving to the front of the stage will mirror the build in intensity from the music. If several members of the band synchronise with these movements, it can really make a difference when it comes to creating an engaging overall performance. With this one simple tip, you can begin to beat the bassist stereotypes and avoid being rooted to the spot.
At BIMM Birmingham, we’ve been expanding on this concept with our degreelevel bass students over the last term. They’ve been learning about the nuances of their visual performance, and how subtle elements such as facial expression or posture can communicate different messages to an audience. Our live shows are an ideal first opportunity for them to implement improvements to their stagecraft. Make sure to look out for the next gig – and come and support the next generation of performing musicians.