Episode 16 — Double bass, planetary resonance and jam
This episode ties together cosmic resonance and one very large wooden box. Steve shares a live clip from Wilton’s Music Hall with astronomer Chris Lintott, Filament Choir, members of Hackney Colliery Band and others, sonifying an exoplanetary system locked in perfect-fifth resonances.
From there he’s joined in the studio by bassist and singer Charlie Pyne for an in-depth look at the double bass: sizes, setups, sound production, walking lines, groove, and why the bass quietly decides how everything feels. The episode ends with an improvised trio jam that pulls the theory back into body.
What we cover
Planetary resonance: Turning orbital ratios into harmony without faking the science.
Double bass anatomy: Scale lengths, body size, strings and why instrument choice changes the music.
Role of the bass: Time, harmony and feel; what to listen for in any style.
Hearing low end: How speakers, rooms and touch make or break bass clarity.
Improvised trio: Trumpet, trombone and bass demonstrating all of the above in real time.
Further listening & links
Full Transcript
Verbatim transcript, reflowed for readability only. No wording edits.
Hello, my name is Steve Pretty. I'm a musician, performer, and composer from London. This is my podcast, Steve Pretty On The Origin of the Pieces. This is the show that helps you to listen to, understand, and most importantly, enjoy music in new ways. So here we are, episode 16. Thank you so much for tuning in again. It's lovely to be back in your ears. And I always say that I know, but it is true because I'm really enjoying making this show. Thank you for the feedback. It sounds like lots of you are enjoying this as well. We've got a few new members of the Patreon community, so thank you very much to those people. Once again, early plug, it's getting an early plug. You can go over to Patreon and sign up for lots of extra goodies. You can sign up for free and just sort of be kept abreast about what I'm putting up there, or you can pay a little bit of money and help support the show, but more about that later. Meanwhile, yeah, keep all of the feedback coming. Last episode, episode 15, was typically mixed in terms of what we covered. I had a really, I think, interesting chat with Jay Chakravorty about modular synthesis, modular synths. In my entertaining noises section, he demonstrated his modular synthesizer setup and sort of talked me through that and talked through the power of synthesizers and how they can be much more aligned by people thinking that, you know, you can't really make soulful music with it. And I think he made a really good case for proving that you very much can. Yeah, so thanks again to Jay. I also had a bit of a rant about the state of things for musicians at the moment, things that are really tricky for musicians. And I was talking about that. And specifically, I guess, four different ways that we are finding life tricky as musicians in 2024. Yeah, so I think that resonated with quite a few of you. And of course, also Spirited Away, the incredible stage show that is in London at the moment that's come over from Japan. And I spoke to some of the creative team behind that. And wow, that show is, I mean, it's quite something if you haven't had a chance to see it yet. Do try and get tickets. There are very limited tickets left, which is quite an achievement in itself, given how big the theater is. Two and a half thousand seats nearly. And they're doing, you know, running till mid August. But yeah, it's really fantastic. Do go and check that show out. And do check out the extended interview I did with John Caird, Brad Huck, and of course, Maoko Imae, giving some insight into the music behind the production and composer, Joe Hisaishi's incredible score for that film and show. Now, coming up in today's episode, we've got a kind of extended entertaining noises section, which is combined with a section that I do sometimes called music theory. I'm talking to the brilliant Charlie Pyne, who is an incredible jazz double bass player and singer. And we cover a lot of ground, which she talks me through, her beautiful instrument, and also a little bit about the function of a bass line, how to kind of get more out of listening to a bass line as you listen to music of any style, particularly jazz, which is what Charlie works in.
Yeah, I think it's a really in depth and interesting exploration of that beautiful instrument. And we even have a little jam at the end. So yeah, do stay tuned for that. And of course, I've been listening to a lot of corrido, the Mexican music style that was assigned to me by the random genre picker, the genre tombola on the last episode. So I've been listening to loads of that, really, really enjoying that, exploring that, researching that and sort of dabbling, making some music in that. So I'm not though gonna be presenting my findings today. So we're not gonna do that in the genre tombola today, partly because I've been incredibly busy in the last couple of weeks. My diary is really getting pretty chocker with one thing and another, many of which are related to this show. So I'll talk about some of those a little bit more shortly. But also because the thing about the genre tombola is obviously I've only been giving myself two weeks to explore the music, try and sometimes talk to some people who make that music or know about the music that I'm randomly assigned. Turns out that's quite ambitious over two weeks. So I'm still gonna try and keep to that schedule of the two week turnaround where I can. But with this one, for example, I think I've got a really great guest lined up, but I just can't quite talk about it yet because we haven't locked down a date for a potential chat yet. All being well, I'm gonna have a great guest lined up to talk about corrido very soon. Meanwhile though, the genre tombola will very much continue. And in fact, if you stay tuned at the end of this episode, I'm gonna pick the next genre that I'm gonna look at as well. So while I'm simultaneously working away on corrido, I'm gonna be looking at the next genre. So stay tuned for that. First, as I mentioned, I've had a pretty busy couple of weeks with one thing and another, including doing some work for a brilliant festival that I am the artist in residence at this year. It's called First Light Festival. It's over in Lowestoft on the East Coast, and I played it last year. It's a really fantastic festival, almost entirely free. There are a couple of little ticketed events in the evenings, but mainly entirely free. Mainly on the beach in Lowestoft on the far East Coast of England. So lovely, lovely festival. Last year, I slept on the beach and went to the Dawn set. That's right, it's a Dawn set, because the idea is it's called First Light, because it gets the first light in the UK, because it's the most easterly point in the UK. And in fact, this year, I'm doing the Dawn set. I'm playing the Dawn set. I'm playing a set mainly focused around shells to kind of welcome in the day. For those of you who are new to the podcast, you may not be aware that I'm a little bit obsessed with playing conch shells and associated instruments and their link to our musical past. Again, obviously the name of the show is Origin of the Pieces. I'm really interested in tracing the links that we have from now to our very distant musical past. What that says about us as a species, what it tells us about music's functions. So I'm gonna be doing a Dawn shell set. I'm doing all sorts of things as part of my role this year.
I'm playing with Valeria, who's been on the podcast. I think she's on episode two or three, the brilliant harpist. We have an ensemble called Soundbox Ensemble. We're gonna be playing late night on the Saturday night. To kick the festival off on the Saturday morning, I am leading a parade with Hackney Colliery Band, my band, and loads of other great local artists. We're gonna be playing on the main stage later, but the parade, the opening parade, is what I was setting up this week, because I've been into some primary schools in the area around Suffolk. And yeah, it's been absolutely fascinating. I took some shells in, took a trumpet in, I made some horns out of hose pipes, all sorts of things. But part of the reason for doing that, and part of the reason for the shells and everything else that I've been doing, is that one of the themes of the festival this year is resonance. Now obviously resonance is something I've talked quite a lot about in this show. It's incredibly integral to what music is, whether it's how a sound resonates out in a space, like a church or a concert hall or a little rock club or whatever it might be. The sound of a space, that's really important. But also the way the instruments are designed and particularly things like shells, flutes and obviously trumpets, which is what I've been doing for most of my career playing trumpet. So that's one of the themes of the festival that I'm really kind of engaging with this year. So what I thought I would do at the beginning of this episode is just to play a little excerpt of a show that I did earlier in the year. I did my very first live podcast recording at Wilton's Music Hall back in January. It's gonna be some more announcements about future live shows coming soon. But I'm really excited to say that I'm gonna be doing quite a few live podcast recordings at festivals over the summer. And of course, First Light is one of them. So I'm gonna be doing a live podcast recording there. But the other thing I'm gonna be doing there, amongst all of the other things I've already mentioned, is working with my friend Chris Lintott, who's an incredible astronomer. He is professor of astronomy at Oxford University. He's one of the founders of an amazing project called the Zooniverse, which is sort of crowd sourcing amateur scientists to help professional scientists solve really difficult problems. Chris and I have been doing this show called Universe of Music on and off for the last few years. And Chris is gonna be appearing with me at First Light and some other festivals over the summer as well. But I thought what I would do is play a little excerpt of a section that Chris and I did in the Wilton show back in January, because it's about resonance. And also, I'm talking to you in sort of mid-May 2024, and we've just had big solar storms. So we've had Northern Lights, we've had Aurora Borealis in the UK, which is pretty rare occurrence, especially down in the south of the UK, but they've been pretty spectacular here. So I think a lot of people are thinking about space, a lot of people are thinking about our place in the universe. So I thought this would be a good opportunity to play a little section of the show that Chris and I
did back at Wilton's Music Hall. Now, this also features the brilliant Filament Choir and also Ed from Hackney Colliery Band. So yeah, this is a tuba, choir, astronomer and trumpet player mashup talking about a planetary system hundreds of light years away. I mean, what better way to kick off episode 16? So here's Chris at Wilton's Music Hall. One of the things we've realized is that our galaxy is full of worlds. Almost every star you see, as I mentioned earlier, if you go outside and look up tonight in the clear London air, the stars that you see all have planets going around them. And this is new news. We didn't know this until a few years ago. And one of the consequences is that I think, let's see, there's 100 billion stars in the galaxy. Probably most of them have at least three or four planets. So we basically all get a set of planets each. So you should pick yours quickly. So I want to tell you briefly about my favorite, which is a system called K2138, which is a system of five planets. They're called B, C, D, E, and F. And we're not very good at naming things, but at least they're in the right order. But this is a special system, because they're what's called a resonant chain. So there's a pattern to their orbits. So every three times B goes around its star, C goes around exactly twice. For every three times C goes around, D goes around exactly twice. For every three times D goes around, E goes around exactly twice. For every three times E goes around, F goes around exactly twice. This tells us something about how they formed and moved in the system, but it also makes them a musical instrument. It does, because this three to two ratio, what that reminds musicians of, of course, is an interval in music called the perfect fifth, and that is that exact same relationship in the perfect fifth. Now, we won't go into that now exactly what that is, but we'll cover some more about things like intervals and harmony and stuff in later episodes of the podcast and live shows, but basically, what you need to know is that all of these planets, if you know anything about music, all of these planets are in perfect fifths with one another in terms of their orbits. There is a fantastic scientist who's a colleague of Chris's who works in Toronto called Matt Russo, who's also a musician and, of course, works on this exoplanetary data and has made music out of these things. There's a kind of whole argument about whether you should sonify science, often it's done in slightly sort of not very proper ways, I would say, but this relationship is very much a valid, true thing. So we are, I think, in some sense, hearing the sound of it when we do this. Now, what we're gonna do is we're gonna, you can see the outer planet there, we're gonna allocate that, every time that flashes, Ed on the tuba is gonna play a note, okay? You're gonna play a B and then, yeah? Yeah, so that's one orbit, right, of that outer planet. And we're gonna go round again, you'll hear me do it again. This is sped up, by the way, they don't go this fast. Yes, they don't go this fast, exactly. And then, I think we've got some basses who are gonna join Ed on that, yeah? So, basses, if you
join Ed when that comes round. If you wanna join in the audience, please feel free to as well. The next one up is a fifth ounce, which is of course an F sharp. And then the next one up is a fifth up from that. Okay, and then as we go round in the penultimate one in, that's the fifth up from that, which is this. And the final one is for the Sopranos, and that's this name. But it is a real beginning. So that was Chris Lintott back at Wilton's Music Hall in January, and of course we also had the Filament Choir and the Hackney Colliery Band rhythm section, Ed, Luke and Ollie, and also Valeria Clarke joining on harp at the end there. Now you can hear Chris and I referring to some visuals there. If you wanna see those visuals and lots more, it's on the Patreon. There's a full video of the entire show from Wilton's Music Hall, so you can dip in and out as you choose. All two hours of it, it's all professionally shot and recorded. I think it sounds and looks really nice. Loads of really fun performances there. Loads of really interesting discussions. All the usual stuff you would expect from the podcast, but in live form. So head over to the Patreon, so originofthepieces.com will take you to the right place. Head over there and check that out. I'll also put a little snippet of that clip up on social media and on the free tier of Patreon so you can see that for yourself if you like. I find it fascinating, this idea that there's this musically harmonious solar system all of these light years away. So thanks again to Chris for introducing me to that idea and to all the musicians for helping me to sonify it. Okay, now it's time for Entertaining Noises, which is the section of the show where I introduce you to an instrument that you may know something about, but maybe you don't know exactly how it's played, maybe you don't know the function, maybe you don't know the background behind it, or maybe you don't know how it sounds. Now today is the turn of the double bass. Love the double bass, and I had the privilege to have the great Charlie Pyne in my studio. Fantastic double bass player and singer. We also dip into what I affectionately call music theory. We talk a little bit about harmony. We talk about the role of bass lines, but also there's just lots of lovely bass playing. So if you don't want the theory bit, that's fine. You can let that wash over you and just wait for the lovely bass playing. And at the end, I have a really fun little jam with Charlie and Joel Knee, who is a friend of mine who's been very kindly helping out with the podcast a little bit, and who is a fantastic trombone player. So we have a little impromptu trio jam. So yeah, make sure you stick around to the end for that. Anyway, over to the studio, here's Charlie. Hi, my name's Charlie Pyne, and I am a double bass player and singer, sometimes. And this is, as I say, not quite the biggest instrument we've had in here, we've had the harp in here, but pretty big, pretty sizable. It's pretty big, it's actually quite big for a double bass as well,
especially for jazz. In big orchestras, you have full-sized double basses, but for jazz, most people would go for a three-quarters size bass. This bass is a seven-eighths body with a three-quarters neck on it, so it's just a bit extra wide and extra fat, which means that it's extra loud and deep. And is that something that is desirable playing jazz in it particularly? I do quite a lot of completely acoustic shows, and it's fantastic for that because it means that the sound really carries a lot, and it sounds gorgeous on recordings because it's got low end that some of the smaller instruments just don't have. So I think that, yeah, something that people don't necessarily realise is, as you say, there are different sizes of double bass, because double bass, everyone just thinks of it as this massive wooden instrument, which it is, but as you say, the orchestral ones are even bigger. It's degrees of huge. And what's the reason for that, just going back to the differences between the orchestral bass and the jazz bass? Why are those differences there? So for an orchestral double bass, because it's being part of a massive orchestra, it really needs to carry an awful long way. Jazz basses tend to be cheaper, because jazz musicians can't... But also we are most often amplified, so it doesn't matter so much about the huge sound. My problem is that when my last double bass went into the shop for some repairs, they lent me the one that they lent to Ronnie Scott's, and it made a noise that my other double bass had never made, and then they got me addicted to it, so then I had to go and get something better. I see. And that's what I ended up with. Yeah, it's a very strategic move from the shop. And is there a difference in range between orchestral double basses and jazz basses? Sometimes you get a five string double bass, and those are just massive, and with my size of hands, I couldn't really deal with it because it means that the whole fingerboard has to be another couple of inches wider. But you can get a C extension, which extends the fingerboard back up to the top of the scroll, so it makes the string, whatever that is, another sort of six inches longer, so that you can get low Cs. I've seen those on orchestral basses. And sorry, just to stop you for a second and talk about the fingerboard and the scroll. Now, a few episodes ago, we had a brilliant cellist on, so we've kind of been through some of that stuff. But it might be worth just going over it again. Absolutely. So the scroll is the curly, whirly bit at the top of the bass. And that is where the strings are attached, so that they hold the tension. And then the fingerboard comes down from that, and that's the bit where you press down the strings to make the different notes. So if my lowest note is an E, Yeah. But it still makes me go, yeah. But if you had a C extension on it, that takes your... That is a tone from there to the end of the
string. So that's two keys on the piano. With the podcast. And that is about four inches. So if I wanted another two tones down, then it has to go all the way up to the top of the instrument. And that's just a brief diversion, I guess, to talk about the physics of it. And it's a bit like on a piano, right, where if you think of a big grand piano, it's really long and then it drops off very steeply. Exactly, yeah. And so, and that's because, yeah, there's more physical distance between the length of strings, right, to go, even though it's only a semitone or a tone, or in this case, obviously, like a third, the physical distance up there is much greater because of the way that basically the physics of the strings work. Than it would be down, yeah, than it would be. I wonder if you could just show us and explain as you're showing us the equivalent of like the tone on the lowest string, on the E string, and then the tone, you know, higher up the fingerboard. So my lowest tone would be E to F sharp, which is... And that is, at a guess, I'd say that's about four inches. If I get up to my G, that's, so that's halfway along the string, exactly halfway along the string. G to A is, well, it will be half of that, so it's two inches. That's three quarters of the way along our string is the next G. So then, a tone is one inch apart. Yeah, one inch. So it's one inch at the very top end of the instrument and four inches at the other end. Yeah, every octave is half of the frequency of the octave below. Exactly. And so, yeah, down the bottom, that means a much bigger gap. Anyway, yes, thank you very much. So you were explaining about the think board and the scroll. Yeah, so the other thing at this end of the instrument, which is really interesting and different to other string instruments, so on a violin, viola, cello, they have a tuning peg, which is just a bit of wood that you hammer sideways into the scroll, and that's what you wrap your string around, and they're just held there by the pressure of it being held into the hole. On a double bass, the tensions are too big for that, so we've got this lovely kind of quite steampunk arrangement of the strings are just massive, so you need a lot more weight to hold it where it's supposed to be. Because I've talked to both the cellist I had in and the harpist, and we were talking about string tension, and particularly on the harp, I think, because you can get a similar sort of low end on the harp, I guess, and the tension must be pretty extreme. It's mad. I've heard about strings snapping. One of my teachers told a story, because he was a bit of a prankster. He told me a story where he reached around the side of a pillar to his colleague's double bass in an orchestra and tuned one of the strings up so far that it snapped. And that sounds like a gun. It's terrifying. A double bass string snapping is a very scary thing. And then the problem is because the bridge which holds up the strings isn't glued down. That's only there by tension.
So if your string snaps, the bridge falls down. If the bridge falls down, it takes pressure off the table, off the front panel of the instrument. And that's the only thing that holds the sound post in place. So then the sound post falls down, and then you've got just a non- functioning giant wardrobe. Brilliant prank. Yeah, because these, coming back to the strings, I mean, you can see why it would be terrifying them snapping, because they are, particularly that low E string is thick, right? Yeah. Is it a millimetre thick, a millimetre or two thick? Yeah, at least, yeah. It's chunky. It's really, really, really chunky. So it would be slightly terrifying that sort of going. So we've done the scroll, we've got where the strings hold on. The neck is a bit more than a foot long, probably. And that's just getting from the scroll to the body. And then the body of the bass, you've got lovely sloping shoulders, different to a cello, because they're round straight off the side. But the double bass shoulders slope. And I think that's mainly because if they were rounded, you wouldn't be able to reach the high notes, because there's just too much instrument in the way. And then the body of the thing is beautiful, and they're carved. I used to think that they were kind of steamed into shape, but they're not. If you see a luthier's shop, they have a huge block of wood, and then they carve all the curves into it. Yeah, it's really cool. So a big sort of massive plank, and then they carve the... So they carve the belly, and there's a name for that nice inny bit, where the waist is, and I can't remember what it's called. So the body, I mean, it's very sort of resonant wood, so it really kind of booms if you even just tap it. Do you know what wood it's made from? You're one by any chance? I think it's maple. It's often maple. And that resonance, again, we talked about this with the cello, that resonance is really important, obviously. Can you talk about the role of why it's hollow and why that resonance is there? So, when you play a string, that sound carries down through the bridge and that takes the vibration to the body of the instrument. So the first thing that vibrates on the body of the bass is its front kind of tabletop bit, and then that makes all of the air inside it vibrate as well. And then I think the whole thing goes whoompf, but lots of the sound comes back out of the F holes, which is a very beautiful swirly-whirly cutouts down there. But it's the actual... It's the... I love how you play it every day, but you still find it beautiful. It's a really important lesson. But I think the fact that the sound is actually coming through the wood, not just through the F holes, it's the whole body of the instrument. Yeah, it's a big deal, and you can really feel it because they're such low frequencies that you can actually feel the vibration in a very real way, which is super cool. And then we've got all the way down the instrument, so the bridge has all these cutout bits. I'm not sure why it's got cutouts, but I'm wondering if it might be so
that it's not too much weight on the top, because I think any extra pressure that you put on here or anything that you clip onto it stops the vibration to a certain extent. So if you put a mute on, what you're doing is clumping a big lump of rubber on the front, and then that stops it vibrating. So I'm wondering if the cutouts might be to make it a bit more resonant still. And then the strings have these big kind of, kind of like a reel, maybe? Like a cotton reel on the bottom, where the end of the string is. So they're wrapped in thread because it's a wound string. So they have to have something to hold all the bits together. And then those are held onto the tail piece, which in turn is held onto the very base of the instrument. And then it goes around the spike. And you've got a spike at the very bottom. And then I've got a spike at the very bottom. So when I'm playing this, the spike would be out by another sort of five inches or so, which would make me not fit in. You wouldn't fit in this very low ceiling room. And then, can you just talk about the sort of holster that you've got here? Okay, yeah, and it's called a quiver. Is it really? Yeah, so it's the same name as what you would hold your arrows in for bow and arrow. It's that sort of ironic it's called a quiver because a quiver holds the arrows and this holds the bow. It holds the bow, I know exactly. And lots of the work I do, I have to switch between bow and pizzicato, so plucking the strings really quickly. For smaller string instruments, you can get away with using the very tip of your finger to play the string. But on the double bass, that doesn't always get enough sound out. So it's more of a whole hand activity. So if I play just with the end of my finger... Good for creeping up on people. But if I want it to sound like a jazz double bass... And that's using, that's not just the tip of my finger, that's using the whole surface area of my index finger with my whole hand behind it and all of the weight of my arm. Yes, it's a big movement, isn't it? It's like a really muscular thing, that you've got it, it's a really muscular instrument. I think that's, people don't necessarily realize how, I mean, I've had to try to, you know, play, and apart from the fact that it immediately hurts my fingers and my left hand, when I'm trying to, but also just to get the sound out, to get it really resonating, you've got to really put some. Yeah, and yeah, I think some people just go with the muscles in their hand, but that seems like a waste of energy really, because you've got small muscles in your hand, but there's a lot more bigger muscles further up your arm, so I tend to, when I'm teaching, I tend to say you want to put your whole body weight behind it, and then that stops you getting cramp. Oh, I see. Yeah. Is that a very real problem when you first start?
Yeah, absolutely. So, especially if you want to play fast. Well, then the body weight things, yeah. It's all a balance. Yeah, of course, of course, of course. So, we were just talking about the bow versus pizzicato, which is the plucking instrument. Could you just give us a little demo? So, the bow, it can sound really grumpy. The Carnival of the Animals. We are always characterized as the elephant, and that's fine, but also it can be really lovely. So it can sing as well. And we didn't talk about the bow, actually. Again, we talked about this with the cello, but if you could just talk a little bit about the... Sure, yeah, so the bow is, it's a stick. I don't know what kind of wood this is, actually. The bow I've had since I was 11, when I had to get my own double bass. Really? Yes, it cost more than the double bass that we bought with it at the time. So I went, I want that one! And my parents are softies. But it's a nice chunk of wood. It's got a point at one end, which is where the hair, so it's horse hair attached to it. There's horse hair attached to one end, and that's kind of stuck there. The other end is called the frog, the big square bit. And that is loosenable and tightenable by a turny screw at the end. And you can actually, if you loosen it enough, you can take that off. And so that's getting the tension exactly right for making the perfect amount of friction. It's got a little bit of mother of pearl inlay. And some of them have ivory ends, but this is actually a pit bow. So it's designed to be played in an orchestra pit. So it's a few inches shorter than a normal bass bow. I was going to say it does look quite short for the size of the instrument compared to the bow. And one of the things that they've done to compensate for that is that it's actually metal on the end rather than ivory or a plastic equivalent so that it balances the weight really nicely. And I've never found another one nicer. Oh great, that's nice. Where you play on the string, how far you are away from the bridge makes a massive difference to the sound. So, if I want a really normal, kind of normal volume. And that's exactly the same as on the bass guitar. If you play right next to the bridge, you get that funky kind of pop sound. And if you're up over the fretboard, then you can get away with creeping in without anyone hearing the front of the note. The only other thing, though, is that you have to adjust that for where you're playing on the string. So if I play up high, in my nice normal place down there, all of a sudden, it sounds a bit weedy. And I have to go closer to the bridge. I see, I see. Interesting. You just talked about the bass guitar, and we don't need to go into detail about the bass guitar because we'll talk about that another time. But can you just talk a bit about the difference between this and the bass guitar? So you're a jazz player, right? And why would you
choose to play the double bass over the bass guitar? I started on the double bass, and I own bass guitars, but to get to a high level, it's a different instrument. Really different instrument. And it's kind of the opposite approach. Double bass, you have to put a lot of body weight into it, and it's a very physical thing. To play well on the bass guitar, the lightness of touch is everything. I can play bass guitar, but I don't like doing jazz kicks on it. And just about the sound, from an artistic point of view, it's partly to do with preference, but is there a reason that you would choose one over the other? The double bass has got more harmonics to it. On a bass guitar, unless you're playing fretless, which is its own very particular sound, on the bass guitar, your note is stopped by a fret, and you don't really get any of the sound of the rest of the string. It means you always play in tune, but maybe you want to slide around a little bit. Well, it's interesting. Again, we talked about the fact that some instruments are fretless, like trombone being one, for example, in the brass world. The cello is fretless. On one level, it must make it harder because you've got to do a lot more work by ear, but actually makes it maybe more expressive. I think it can do, yeah. I mean, I know some incredible bass guitarists, so not throwing any shade. But yeah, for playing tunes, I think the double bass probably wins. And yeah, I like the feeling of... I don't feel like I can swing on the bass guitar because a lot of the way that I have learnt how to play my walking bass lines is such a physical thing. And if you're all of a sudden not really allowed to put any weight behind it, then I don't feel like... Yeah, it's a different discipline. You're talking about swing, so that's obviously a really important part of the job. Jazz sound and a massive part of what you do, I imagine. I guess we haven't got time to go into the depths of what swing means here. We will do that over the course of lots of episodes. Could you just demonstrate what you mean by walking bass and swing and what that means? So the job of a bass player, quite a lot of the time, is to try and make people want to dance just by playing crotchets, by quarter notes. Yeah, so great. And I think, you say it's just playing crotchets, just playing bum, bum, bum, but it's all about the little ghost notes that you throw in in the middle, right? That's what it sounds like to me. Yeah, exactly. And for me, I mean, swing can be very, very much kind of divided up into triplets. Or which is going one under, two under, three under, four under. Or anywhere in between, but if I'm setting up a groove, that's how I'm thinking. And in my head, I've got all of those triplets going on. So I might be playing that, but in my head, I'm like, and then I've got control over which ones I choose to play. So could you just do that again with, and we'll have another listen, like, with that. Triplet theme in mind.
I'll count us in. Yeah. Yeah, man, I can listen to it all day. It's the first time I've had a bass in this room, and it's, yeah, there's just something so magical about the bass. I think partly because of doing so much stuff in the brass world, it's rare that I get to play with a double bass these days, which is a shame, because I love it so much. And it's your job as the bass player to lay down, you used to talk about the groove. Can you just talk briefly about the different, so people might think that the groove is the drummer's job mainly in a band, right? But in jazz, it's a bit different. Yeah, I think the best time you can have playing jazz is when everyone is taking responsibility for the groove. So yes, the drummer might be playing most of your subdivisions. So you've got your big beats, is like your one, two, three, four. And then inside that, you're gonna have either triplets, like in the swing thing, or semiquavers, so it might be going one e and a two e and a three e and a four e and a. And your drummer will probably be playing most of those if they're feeling kind. But I think when everyone takes responsibility for it, everyone can relax. It's a trust thing, really. So it's really, like for me anyway, I often think of the bass player as, again, you're quite right, of course, everyone takes responsibility. But the bass is very rhythmic, right? Often it's the bass I'm listening to more to lock in with where the time is than the drummer who can sometimes embellish over the top of it. Yeah, you haven't got the luxury of doing four sounds at once with the double bass. So on the bass, there will be a note which will hopefully be placed exactly right. Yeah, exactly. And then just talking about the harmony. So in other words, laying down the chords. Can you just talk in sort of brief terms about that? Sure. So in a chord progression, you're given chords that make up the heart of the tune. And as a bass player, your first job probably is to put down the root. So if you're playing a blues, the first thing you would do is play your roots like that. But then once you've done that, you've really got license to have some fun. It depends on the style of music. The further back you go in time, the more the bass's job is really to outline the root and the fifth of the chord. So in C, that would be a C and a G. A C and G. And you can get an awful long way just playing the root and the fifth. That's most of what most people want you to do. And anything else is a bonus. They'll love you forever if you just do that. That's great. And then a little bit later, and you might be playing the chord tones, so like the root and the third and the fifth, and maybe the sixth or the seventh. So the root, the third and the fifth again in C would be C, E, G. Yeah, so that's where you get your rock and roll. Or lots of big band music, lots of big band music goes. And again, that's where you get those slides, that you can only do with that fretless instrument, right? The slides are so great. But then you can get a bit creative with it, but that's really what
most people want you to do, most of the time. Yeah, yeah. So you are quite a rare musician, in that you are a singer as well, as a bass player, right? And that combination, I mean, Paul McCartney aside, is relatively unusual, I guess. So, well, you can tell me, maybe I'm wrong, but can you just talk about how those two things interact with you? Because you've got this brilliant album out, which is where you sing and play bass. So maybe just mention, yeah, talk about the album for a second. Yeah, sure. So the album is called Nature Is A Mother, and it's songs, well, I started just writing songs when I felt like it a few years ago, and then I realized that there was a bit of a narrative going on. It's a very broad narrative. It's my experiences as a woman. But that hadn't been done very much in a jazz sphere, so I thought it would be worth doing. I recorded live in the studio, and I did the vocals at the same time. I'm not sure how I feel about that now. I might have quite enjoyed a few more goes. It's always the tricky thing, isn't it? Yeah, but I'm really proud of the outcome. It's a great record. I think it's cool. And one of the later songs that I wrote for it is Sisters. And I basically realized that I'd written a whole album of stuff where I didn't really show off very much. So I thought I should show off a bit. And one of my latest tricks I've been working on is singing in thirds with myself. So that's the beginning of Sisters. So I came up with, well, I didn't come up with a riff first. I was just noodling. And what came out was... That's beautiful, really. And hearing those two things together is really effective. It's cool. And then I kept noodling, and then realized that I had changed chord tone. So I'm not actually sure if I can do it without the saxophone. But I think. Yeah. So then in fifths with myself. Right, right, right. But that, so in that case, you're singing the line that is in parallel, right, with what you're playing in the bass. But presumably quite often when you're singing, you're not doing that. No, I'm quite often playing something completely different, and then singing a melody over the top. Is that tricky? It's mainly fine. I have to know at least one of the parts really well. Otherwise, they start doing the wrong things. Right, right, right. But for that same tune, for Sisters, I sort of came up with it away from the bass, from the melody, and then had to actually slow it down to half speed and practice with a metronome to fit everything in in the right places. Right, right, right. Because it's stupid, because I've got a very syncopated bass line, so it goes across the beat, and then a very on-the-beat melody. And then I felt a bit silly because I couldn't actually do it live.
They're like, no, I really like this. I'm going to make it work. It's just practice, isn't it? Could you just show us what you mean by syncopation? So it's also in seven beats in the bass, so. You've really made life difficult for yourself there. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. So I always hit the beginning of the bar, but pretty much everything in the middle is across the beat. Across the beat, which is what makes it sound so great. And again, what gives it that kind of rhythmic motion that is so important to us? Energetic. Yeah. Oh, that's so good, thank you so much. So you were just talking about, we're gonna have a little jam in a second, but you were just talking about the name of your bass, because you've named your bass and the history of your bass as well. Yes, so I've never named an instrument before, but when I found this guy, he is so old and so French and so beautiful that he deserved a name, so he's called Claude. It's a very good name for a place, Claude. So at the bass shop that I always use, which is Thwaites in Bushy, they're wonderful, they lent me the double bass that they lend to Ronnie Scott's, and when I got my own double bass back, I cried, because I realized that it was no longer doing the job for me. So I went back to Thwaites, I told them my budget, they showed me everything that was available in my budget, and none of it did the noise, which I needed. Can you describe the noise? It's sub frequencies, very low, underneath the note, whoomph, and smaller basses, newer basses just haven't got it. They just don't do the same noise. It's... It's that kind of warm, underneath the note, ah. And just to clarify what you mean by that, because again, we've discussed this a little bit on the show over various episodes, but every note that you play or anyone plays in any instrument is made up of lots of different waveforms all stacked up, right? So when we hear you playing that low E, for example, we're hearing the kind of fundamental E, the fundamental frequency, but then also like a lot octave below and an octave above and all sorts of, so those are called overtones. And that is like the combination of all those things that make up the sound of the note, right? Yeah. And it's the different combination of those that make up the sound of your bass versus another bass versus I'm here with the trumpet and the trombone. And you know, so that it's those, that different combination of. Exactly, yeah. On this bass, it's that the size of the instrument, because it's a bit bigger than normal, but also the age of the wood changes the resonance. And the guy in the bass shop said, and I haven't looked into it, but the guy in the bass shop said, when wood ages, the individual plant cells dry out. So you get like micro resonance inside every cell. I don't know. It could be one of those nonsense things, but it's quite an
attractive nonsense thing. It does sound kind of cool. Yeah, yeah. Every cell is resonating. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, and the, so a new double bass, however nice it is, however carefully it's made, will still always sound better in 20 years time than it does today, which is mad. But actually only if you play it. If you leave an instrument in a cupboard for a month and then come back to it, it doesn't resonate the same as if you've been playing it. And that's because of the string tension and stuff, presumably? I think it's the wood. I think the wood actually kind of, I don't know, it's magic, basically. It's a sort of living, breathing thing in that sense, isn't it, whereas like, I don't know, so we've got Joel here, he's a brilliant trombone player, and I don't know about you, but it doesn't make much difference. I mean, my lips, you know, if I don't play a horn for ages, it does change, but that's because of me, not because of the instrument. And I think, and people love old instruments, but that's because of the design of them and stuff. They don't really age in the same way, I think, do they, brass instruments? But yeah, so this particular bass, because I exhausted all of the options in the bass shop, and then poor Bill said, oh, I know which bass you need. And he had to look in three different store cupboards. It was down in the basement. It was covered in dust with Clean Me drawn in the dust and some other unsavory images. And the neck that was on it was warped to the point where it was unplayable. So the neck, because it's under so much tension, the neck had warped forwards. So the strings were very, very high off the fingerboard. So you couldn't hold it down, couldn't hold the strings down to play. But still I touched it, it went like this. And I said, that's my bass. Oh, really? So they put a new neck on it, which is why it's a seven eighth bass with a three quarters neck, because they did that especially for me. And the luthier at Thwaites, Chris, is a magician. So this is the old scroll and a new neck. Oh wow. And the old body. And the join is up the length of the scroll, stops about there. And it's a diagonal sliver that is almost invisible. It's so cool. That's amazing. And also to do that and to have it under such tension is quite amazing. Yeah, it's awesome. He's from the Miracourt region of France, which I think is somewhere near Champagne. I was built in the 1870s. And it's got quite a lot of scars on, but they're all patched up on the inside. So it's not gonna break on me. And yes, that's why, il s'appelle Claude. And the scars are good. The scars are amazing. There's a lot of belt buckle scars on the back, which you're always gonna get on a bass. Now we're gonna have a little mini jam, because we've got Joel here, who's very kindly helping out a bit today. He's an incredible
trombone player. And we're just gonna have a little noodle on the blues, because I thought, suddenly realised that we've got three musicians in the studio, and we could have a little play. Absolutely. And again, obviously we haven't got a drummer here, but I think it's quite a good example of the fact that you don't need a drummer with this stuff. We're just gonna do a little blues noodle. Do you wanna start us off? Yeah, a new trio is born. That's beautiful. That was nice. That was lovely. Oh, thanks so much, Charlie. That's brilliant. And people can check out, you've still got some tour dates for the record, right? Still got some tour dates left. We're doing the 7th of June in Birmingham, at Thousand Trades, the 12th of July at Ashtad Jazz Club, 16th of July at Hitchin Jazz Jam, and then we're at Crazy Cocks in Piccadilly on the 15th of October. Oh, great. And yeah, please check out the record. It's called Nature Is A Mother, right? And it's available in all the usual places. And before you go, I mustn't forget, because I'm going to film you in slow motion, because I'm going to see these strings do their thing in slow mo. It always entertains me for no one else. Could you just give us a little walking bass? Yeah. Great, lovely. All right, thanks so much, that's brilliant. So you can see that slow-mo bass playing on my social media and again on the Patreon as well. And the reason I did that is that if you're anything like as musically curious as me, you'll enjoy how far that bass string moves. It's quite extraordinary to watch when it's really slowed down. You can really see how it's moving the air and getting the air molecules vibrating and then resonating in that big, beautiful, wooden bass body. So thanks again to Charlie for that. But now it is time for the genre tombola and again, I'm still gonna be working away on corrido. But now I've put the list of all 1300-odd genres into this random list picker. I'm gonna press run and here we have got arabesque. Arabesque is what I'm gonna be looking at alongside corrido. So I'm gonna be reporting back on one or other of those genres in the next episode. So stay tuned for that. Now, if you've made it this far, I wanna give you a little extra cheeky reward. Now, in this episode, I've talked a little bit about some of the festivals I'm doing, particularly that First Light Festival, but I'm also doing the incredible Also Festival. See what I've done there. And that is in July. It's a really great festival. I did it last year with Valeria on Harp. This year, I am doing a live podcast recording. I've got a brilliant guest lined up for that one. And it is honestly an absolutely incredible festival. There's lots of good music at that festival, of course, but there's also some absolutely incredible speakers. And if, like me, you're a curious type, then there's lots of things that will appeal to your ears and
your brain and everything in between. There's the swimming in a lovely lake there. Yeah, I really recommend it. I can't recommend it highly enough. And there's a special discount offer just for this podcast, which is OOTP, OOTP, Origin of the Pieces, will give you a discount of 15% on tickets for that festival. So if you go to alsofestival.com, you can buy tickets from there and check out the lineup, which includes loads of amazing comedians, loads of amazing speakers, authors, loads of great music, loads of really delicious food, swimming, all sorts of things. So yes, alsofestival.com and then put in OOTP. Right, I think that's about it for today. I'm gonna be back, as always, in two weeks. You may have noticed that schedules changed slightly for the releases. They're now mainly going out on Tuesdays or Wednesdays. So I'm gonna be back in a couple of weeks' time. Thanks, as always, to the brilliant guests, Charlie Pyne, Chris Lintott, the Filament Choir, Valeria Clarke, the Hackney Colliery Band rhythm section. Ah, have I missed anyone else? And of course, the theme music is by Angelique Kidjo, me and the Hackney Colliery Band. Thanks very much for listening. Stay musically curious and I'll speak to you in a couple of weeks.