WARNING: THIS ARTICLE WILL MAKE YOU A BETTER PLAYER!
That’s right- Play it like Tabasco- simple and hot! (Like Bend it like Beckham) .
Ed. Note- At the outset I acknowledge the longstanding debate between Tobasco & Frank’s Red Hot ™. I do NOT want this thread to be jacked over this longstanding debate which will, even with our best efforts, and most creative minds on this column, will not end here. So please don’t try! ☺ ... but read on.

Ahem, …yes, you don’t have to make a piece so complex you can’t play it or, to quote the incredible Mr. Tipton, alienate your audience.

Tabasco has three ingredients- distilled vinegar, red pepper and salt. That’s it. All natural made by natural processes.

No mono potassium phosphate, no Sodium Benzoate, no Glycerol Ester of Rosin, no Glycerine, and no Red Dye #3. Nope, none of that!

They also have a brilliant new slogan, “Drop Everything”- or all you need is a single drop on all kinds of food to make it hot, tasty and memorable.

The diet of the Reconstruction South was bland and monotonous, especially by Louisiana standards. So Edmund McIlhenny decided to create a pepper sauce to give the food some spice and flavor — some excitement…and you can too!

There is an old adage that if a song can be broken down to a voice and a guitar or a piano, then it’s a great song. Also the simpler the arrangement the cleaner and clearer the melody becomes allowing the listener to grasp it better, to remember it and to take it to heart.

When I opened for the California Guitar Trio a few years ago, (I hung out with them last night at Club Café), I closed my set with “Field of Dreams” by Sting ( Gordon Sumner). Very clean melody line with a hint of reverb; in the bass, no effects, I used roots and occasionally a fifth. I played it as if it were the last song on earth. I evoked the vistas that the lyrics convey which perfectly match the mood of the underlying chords- tension, release and harmony. Holding on some notes, legato into others, and allowing space to be created around all of it.

When I was done, you could hear a pin drop. (There was a tailor convention and they did free hems at the concert☺) There was a slight pause, then came the thunderous applause. As I came off the stage; Paul was coming past me and said “Amazing set”. It really doesn’t get better than that.

So play like Tabasco with simple ingredients. Just play a single melody line along with the root of the chord in the bass, but play it with burning fervor and add that heat so palpable the audience is reaching for Solar Caine. Field of Dreams isn’t at 225 bpm; it is a slow to medium tempo song. You don’t have to be flashy or kill yourself out there- just be true to the piece and it’s composer, be true to your self, and add your own personal heat.

I know you all have that heat in you, just don’t make it harder than it has to be or should be.
and put YOUR drop on everything!
Hope this helps,
Dave Brosky

PS. Yes, at breakfast this morning, I had some Tabasco on my eggs which inspired this post.
For more on Tabasco-
http://www.tabasco.com/mcilhenny-company/about/

This thread brought to you by capsaicin.

Capsaicin
Making the seemingly subtle spectacularly sublime for millennia

I like it, simple & hot. It's the same reason I drink my coffee black.
I am curious to hear this "Fields Of Dreams" by Sting. If you build it they will come and listen. I do a version of "Fields Of Gold" which I suspect is very similar

The best way to lose a bass gig is to play too many notes. This is why Sting himself is a great bass player. My personal experience has been that when you approach things with clarity and simplicity, it's much easier to get your point across well. Whenever I put on an uninspired, nervous or even insipid performance, it's usually because I've lost that focus. Let go of the "note-ego" and focus on rock solid time, melody and getting the point across.
Great post, thanks.

Andy

So true, keeping it simple can make a song sound brilliant and tell the story so much better.
Please watch this videe in this post as proof.
It's going viral now in the Netherlands. It's an audition for the 'best singer/songwriter of Holland'. The three people in the couch are the jury. They are very popular dj's and the lady is a popular vocalist in the Netherlands.
Maaike (the singer/songwriter) is almost only playing triads on her guitar, but just let it sink in. Since the song is in Dutch, I wonder how you receive her story.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObGlgJPCZj4[/youtube]

Cheers,
Bas.

Beautiful.

I can't tell the story although I'll bet it's about love and it's a sad one.

I think it's a Great song even without understanding the words.

Brett

That is beautiful. My rusty German is some help with the lyrics, but only enough to inform the mood. If anything, I learned that I should visit Holland.

If I should upset anyone, I'll claim my name is Bas Smith.

Thanks, Dave...words of wisdom worth taking to heart. As I put more time into my effort to learn to play bass to a lead sheet, it's tempting to want to have the right hand always playing something or other (to justify its existence, I suppose ), rather than to be content with keeping it off the board until it has something meaningful and appropriate to contribute.

This is not necessarily related to the topic of the original thread except where it refers to the chile pepper.

"I am seriously informed by a Spanish gentleman who risided for many years in Mexico and was an officer in Maximillian's army, that while the wolves would feed on the dead bodies of the French that lay all night upon the battlefield, they never touched the bodies of the Mexicans, because the flesh was completely impregnated with chile."--Hubert Howe Bancroft, American Ethnologist (1882)

Just puttin' it out there, Mike

PS. this quote comes from the book "Hot Sauce! Techniques for making signature hot sauces" by Jennifer Trainer Thompson("the queen of hot" acording to the Associated Press)

At the risk of getting too off-topic... I'm mexican, and this story seems to me to be completely impregnated with bullshit.

Back to topic: After many years playing guitar and bass, and just a year learning the Stick, I've started to listen to music in a very different way and now I totally get what you say, Dave. Simplicity. I used to play in a band and the drummer and I were always talking about the beauty of simplicity in music, but on our songs we usually went in the opposite direction. I like complexity, but now with the Stick I can appreciate simplicity a lot better than before; it's a matter of choice. You can choose to play an incredibly complex tune with displacement and polyrhythm and some exotic time signature, or you can play something very simple like you say.

To me, the best songs still are the ones that seem very simple when you listen to them but if you try to play them you discover some complexity underneath. I was thinking about this last night, listening to old classics such as Another One Bites the Dust and Owner of a Lonely Heart, both of which have apparently very simple bass lines but which are very often played just plain wrong by most bassists (including myself) - my bass teacher discussed AOBTD once, explaining to me how the silences between the notes were just as important (if not MORE important) than the notes themselves. I still get the feeling at the beginning of that song, something similar to suffocating, lack of air... he explained it's due to that looong pause at the end of the bass riff, before it starts again (it's something like a full quarter of maybe a half measure, but since the notes are staccato, it feels so much longer). And like someone else already mentioned (or was it you also?) many bassists have this MOAR NOTES tendency and usually play the fill in every round instead of leaving it alone and letting the silence do its part.

Sometimes the way to turn a good bass line into a great one is by taking away some notes, not adding more.