The Jazz Bassist

Build your skill set, advises jazz ninja Ruth

You need a lot of skills to be a professional bass player, apart from playing the actual instrument well. For example, I play in several regular bands, but I also get asked to do a lot of last-minute gigs, which I find quite stressful. Still, it must mean that people trust me to do a good job, even without much preparation time. On the other hand, it’s frustrating because I feel like I can never really get deeply into the music and enjoy the gig. In those situations, I’m usually reading and very alert to what is going on in the band.

It’s a good idea to acquire a certain number of skills that will allow you to do a good job in an unprepared situation. Half of it is being able to hear things and adjust to changes quickly, and the other half is being able to understand scores well and identify sections that may change. Of course, as bass players we carry a lot of the responsibility when it comes to holding a tune together, so trying not to lose the form is vital – otherwise everyone else might get lost as well.

I recently played a last-minute gig with a choir; as usual, there was nowhere near enough rehearsal time to get the band sounding really good. The scores were mostly wrong, and were still being changed on the actual day of the concert. This is one of those situations where I have learned simply to mark in as much as I can – and even rewrite some of the charts for myself! – as I knew it was going to be impossible to read from some of them. Some charts were 16 pages long, which makes them impossible to handle in a live situation where you’re playing continuously. I quickly rewrote the chart in sections, and marked where the bass-lines changed, simply because those were what I needed to know in the concert.

I know we all hear music very differently – but being able to quickly identify what you can do to handle a disorganised situation is one of our most valuable skills as gigging bass players.