I'm Adam Manus, and I'm Peter Martin, and you're listening to the You'll Hear at

podcast. Peter Martin, and you're listening to the You'll Hear It Podcast.

Today we're going to do something a little bit different on the You'll Hearer podcast.

We're going to start what we hope is going to turn into a series of instrument spotlights.

And today, we are going to focus on one of my favorite instruments,

the bass. The bass, yeah, truly the foundation of many jazz ensembles. And I'm excited. Now, do not bass... You don't sound that excited. No, I'm getting there. I'm getting there. I mean,

you know what? A great bass player is very calm and collected. That's true. Not easily excitable in terms of personality because they have to hold everything together. I'm trying to get in the mode here. It's kind of solid and boring is what you're going for. Exactly. Now, do non-basists need to press pause or skip of this episode or can they stay on? No, I don't think so at all. I just wanted to make sure that we talk about the role of the bass. We talk about players we love, recordings we love, and hopefully that'll inspire some people to maybe think differently about the base or get into a lot. I like it. Now, I would say if Christian McBride or Ruben Rogers or Robert Hurst or Rodney Whitaker any great bass players are listening, please stop listening now because we don't want to contradict you. We are not bassists. We're just say that. But we're going to

do our best to talk about the bass. Yeah, maybe this should be titled, The Bass from a pianist's

perspective. I like it. I like it. Okay. So I think the first thing, you know, to really understand

and appreciate about the bass is that foundational role it has

in the ensemble. And I think that emanates not just from, you know, the register of the instrument

because, yes, of course, it's low, but I mean, a piano goes a little bit lower than the bass.

But I think it's from traditionally how within jazz and really just sort of modern music, groove,

music, whatever we want to call it, like the bass, you know, forms the foundation of several

important aspects of the music.

The groove, you know, along with the drums, but really the bass, that rhythm section,

I mean that's the bass and the drums.

But then the bass is also playing, oddly enough, the bass line.

I don't know how that happened.

You know, so the bottom of the harmony is that that foundation of the harmony really comes from the bass.

We always think of the piano because we can play or the guitar play all the harmony.

But the bass, that establishes that bottom note

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