Bass phenom Matt Garrison (John McLaughlin, Ravi Coltrane) sits down with fellow Epifani Artist KJ (‪@TheOddysy‬) to talk about using the Melodic Minor scale and its modes over a groove in E. Along the way, Matt talks about how important it is for bass players to transcend their traditional roll in music and learn the language of music completely. "Bass players tend to focus on groove," says Garrison, "but they often lack harmonic knowledge."
To demonstrate his theories about theory Matt shows KJ a groove from a song called Atmosphere II which Garrison recorded on his album Twelve Months. "My goal," says Matt, "was to play something common that you can relate to, but then play something more harmonically interesting on top." With a tonal center of E held down by the low bass, Matt lifts off into his improvisation via a series of fluid lines built on A melodic minor. He often thinks of it starting from the root of the groove, in this case E, describing the resulting scale as E Mixolydian flat-6. It's a fascinating journey into the mind of one of music's most learned voices. Throughout the session you can watch and hear Garrison spontaneously compose a verbal explanation, grounding a theoretical basis now so second hand that he hardly has to think about it at all.
And that's the goal here. As KJ points out, theory sounds like theory until you work to turn it into music. It's at this point that he asks Matt to talk about what it takes to make that transition from the theoretical to the musical, listenable, enjoyable. The answer: "Well, at some point you just have to sit there for hours and be the nerd." The statement itself may be flippant, but the lesson is very serious. It comes down to the 10,000 hours theory, made famous by Malcom Gladwell, in which the artist must dedicate countless days, weeks, months and years to the internalization of a complex set of rules used to understand and explain the music we've been making naturally since the dawn of homo sapiens.
Matt and KJ are each playing their custom Fodera basses through an Epifani UL 901 bass amplifier. Garrison's amp is pushing a couple of DIST2 1x12 dual-impedance bass speaker cabs. KJ is playing through a DIST2 2x10 cabinet.
The video was shot live on location at Shapeshifter Labs, Matt Garrison's slick Brooklyn music venue. The video was edited by Ruddy Alcantara.
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