Imagining the Modern Bass Studio
Lately, I’ve been observing the state of the music academy, reflecting on my own experiences as a student, and considering the direction of professional music-making; I’m concerned that the academy’s continued insistence on specialization and siloed disciplines is thoroughly outmoded in this shifting moment. I’m not writing this to suggest a throwing off, necessarily, of pedagogical traditions within the academy that continue to benefit students’ abilities to engage critically and from many views, rather, I’m in favor of expanding the gaze and scope of our siloed programs.
Many institutions are readily aware of the need for transdisciplinary bridging between and amongst disciplinary focuses, but this should not become a perfunctory watchword substituting for genuine innovation. Apophenia is a a tendency toward perceiving meaningful connections between seemingly unrelated things. Typically imagined to be a case of misguided thinking or faulty objectivity, I would like to suggest here that apophenia could function in this moment as a tool to create new kinds of connections, breaking disciplinary structures and strictures out from the grip of their traditionally-held exclusivity.
What does this mean for musicians specifically?
In my career, I have adopted the character of the “portfolio musician”; due to challenging local music markets, I have had to readily adapt and constantly expand my stylistic and instrumental repertoire. Doing so, combined with my largely classical musical training, has allowed me to make unusual connections between styles and idioms: consider, the framing benefit of Baroque fortspinnung when analyzing Frank Zappa’s melodic composition. While these two concepts come from different contexts, a more interesting throughline is created to help the analyst, listener, and musician consider the “spinning out” of germinal melodic seeds as a stylistic hallmark and calling card.
More practically, I envision the modern bass studio as becoming more encompassing: students, at the undergraduate level, should be demanded to perform classical double bass, jazz double bass, and electric bass in a number of styles. Additionally, they should be capable of programming and performing synth bass parts, increasing a part of a bassist’s duties in contemporary concert performances. Further yet, bass students should be challenged to expand their view of the bass beyond the Western, Northern Hemispherical conception: instruments like the tololoche and botija (yes, even an aerophone) are candidates for greater integration and theorization. Along with this knowledge comes an experiential knowledge of amplification technologies, virtual studio technologies, fundamentals of acoustics and live sound, and professionalism as enacted in a number of rehearsal/performances spaces.
Beyond the technics involved, this sort of encompassing undergraduate battery of modern bass playing creates cultural knowledges, experientially conceived, of these interconnected musical styles; demanding that the students make the connections between these seemingly distant styles additionally bridges a divide commonly held between the disciplines of ethnomusicology (new name forthcoming?) and musicology, between the theoretical and the applied, the teoria and praxis.
The modern bassist can no longer afford to be a mere specialist, but rather must be engaged in cultivating a musicianship that is as large and encompassing as possible. Not only does this benefit the student, but it will have bridging effects in local music-making communities amongst styles and communities that have been long held as ‘incompatible’ through domineering logics of race, class, and nationalism.