“What do you call some­one who hangs out with musi­cians?” goes the hoary old musi­cians’ joke. Answer: “a bass play­er.” Haha­ha. Very fun­ny. And just plain untrue. Maybe the bass has few­er strings to mas­ter than the gui­tar, but it requires bet­ter tim­ing, and — most impor­tant­ly — more lis­ten­ing than any oth­er instru­ment in a band set­ting. Or so says Flea of the Red Hot Chili Pep­pers, a band I some­times think of as a bunch of guys who hang out with a bass play­er.

All musi­cians need to lis­ten care­ful­ly to oth­er play­ers on stage, but the bass play­er’s role is spe­cial, Flea says in the video above, excerpt­ed from the hour-long bass les­son you can watch in full below. Bassists need to lis­ten to melody play­ers and soloists, sup­port­ing their parts with sub­tle­ty and nuance, with­out (says Flea of all peo­ple) doing the kind of show­boat­ing that pulls focus from the leads. Bass play­ers also need to lock in with the drum­mer, lis­ten­ing so intent­ly they can fit their notes right in the cen­ter of each drum hit.

This hard­ly sounds like unskilled musi­cal labor, even if most bassists can’t — and don’t need to — play with the speed and feroc­i­ty as our instruc­tor above. But Flea as teacher isn’t try­ing to teach oth­ers how to play the way he does, a style inspired by leg­ends like slap bass pio­neer Lar­ry Gra­ham and Motown stal­wart James Jamer­son. He’s giv­ing stu­dents his take on the basics — first learn to walk, then learn to walk real­ly, real­ly well, with lots of prac­tice. These basics include going over the parts of a bass gui­tar, talk­ing about tun­ing, and learn­ing dif­fer­ent ways of hit­ting the strings, from pluck­ing to pick­ing to, yes, slap­ping, with­in rea­son.

Com­ing from a play­er who so com­mands the spot­light with his bass the­atrics, Flea’s advice to aspir­ing play­ers might seem odd­ly con­ser­v­a­tive. But it’s the bass play­er’s job, he says, to make every­one else in the band sound good. And the bet­ter a bassist is at help­ing oth­er play­ers shine, the more they stand out as a great musi­cian in their own right.

See time­stamps for the dif­fer­ent top­ics in Flea’s les­son just below:

0:01 Flea Bass
7:27 Restring and Tun­ing
12:51 Pluck­ing
16:36 Slap­ping
22:53 Pick­ing
23:53 Fin­ger Prac­tice
30:24 Major Scale
44:34 Final Thoughts

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Flea Rocks “The Star Span­gled Ban­ner” on the Bass

What Makes Flea Such an Amaz­ing Bass Play­er? A Video Essay Breaks Down His Style

Watch Some of the Most Pow­er­ful Bass Gui­tar Solos Ever: Ged­dy Lee, Flea, Boot­sy Collins, John Dea­con & More

Visu­al­iz­ing the Bass Play­ing Style of Motown’s Icon­ic Bassist James Jamer­son: “Ain’t No Moun­tain High Enough,” “For Once in My Life” & More

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

This past Tues­day, April 26, exper­i­men­tal Ger­man elec­tron­ic com­pos­er and musi­cian Klaus Schulze died, leav­ing a musi­cal lega­cy as sig­nif­i­cant as they come in the past half-cen­tu­ry or so. Crowned the “god­fa­ther of tech­no,” Pitch­fork writes, he was inte­gral to both Krautrock (as 1970s Ger­man pro­gres­sive rock was unflat­ter­ing­ly called) and the “Berlin School” of tech­no, and he “laid the ground­work for ambi­ent, IDM, and many oth­er sub-gen­res of con­tem­po­rary elec­tron­ic music. His rel­e­vance nev­er waned.” Although a leg­end among those in the know, Schulze isn’t known in broad­er pop­u­lar cul­ture.

He should be, and will be, says Oscar-win­ning Dune com­pos­er Hans Zim­mer, who worked parts of Schulze’s 1978 com­po­si­tion “Frank Her­bert” (below) into the 2021 film’s score. “Klaus Schulze’s music has nev­er been as rel­e­vant as it is now,” said Zim­mer.

Soon after­ward, Schulz record­ed a new album, Deus Arrakis, sched­uled for release on June 10. “I need­ed more of that spice,” the 74-year-old com­pos­er said. (See him above, sit­ting cross-legged, with blonde Prince Valiant ‘do, per­form­ing “For Bar­ry Graves” live in Köln in 1977.) “From there I felt com­plete­ly unleashed and just played and played…”

Giv­en Schulze’s stay­ing pow­er and influ­ence, it may be puz­zling that he isn’t men­tioned with house­hold names like Bri­an Eno and Kraftwerk, or even hip­per names to drop like Karl­heinz Stock­hausen or Jean-Michel Jarre. This is in part because he rarely stuck with one sound long enough for praise and could­n’t have cared less whether any­one knew who he was. Though an ear­ly mem­ber, as a per­cus­sion­ist, of Tan­ger­ine Dream, Schulze left after their 1970 debut, Elec­tron­ic Med­i­ta­tion to form the band Ash Ra Tem­pel, which he also left after their stel­lar self-titled debut, a psy­che­del­ic clas­sic (though he’d return occa­sion­al­ly over the decades) to form and dis­solve project after project, while also con­sis­tent­ly releas­ing albums under his own name.

Mov­ing from band to band was hard­ly unusu­al in the 1970s Ger­man music scene. Two of Kraftwerk’s found­ing mem­bers split off to form major post-punk influ­ence NEU! (then fur­ther split for oth­er projects); the list of cur­rent and for­mer Tan­ger­ine Dream mem­bers runs over two score entries. Schulze’s “almost aller­gic response to the past,” Pitch­fork writes, set him apart. “The com­pos­er refused to release reworks of his cat­a­log, instead pre­fer­ring to push for­ward and dis­cov­er new sounds.” His exper­i­men­ta­tion start­ed as a drum­mer in the 1960s for Berlin bands, when he began “plac­ing his gui­tar on the ground and play­ing it with unlike­ly objects such as met­al tubes and cop­per plates.”

“His first solo release was Irrlicht in 1972,” The Guardian notes, “a com­po­si­tion in four parts that involved Schulze manip­u­lat­ing a bro­ken organ, record­ings of an orches­tra and an ampli­fi­er to cre­ate a tow­er­ing wall of sound.” His next album, 1973’s Cyborg, began his use of syn­the­siz­ers, which con­tin­ued through­out his 50-album run (includ­ing live albums and sound­tracks) but nev­er type­cast him. After Cyborg, Rolling Stone writes:

Schulze and his label­mates formed the Krautrock super­group Cos­mic Jok­ers and their epony­mous debut album. That col­lab­o­ra­tion segued into the most vital peri­od of Schulze’s solo career, as the mid-to-late Sev­en­ties saw the release of elec­tron­ic music clas­sics like 1975’s Timewind, 1976’s Moon­dawn and 1978’s “X.”

The list of solo albums and col­lab­o­ra­tions con­tin­ues (includ­ing an all-Moog inter­pre­ta­tion of Pink Floyd titled Dark Side of the Moog), stack­ing up into a must-hear list of titles for those unfa­mil­iar with Schulze’s work. “I hope nev­er to get bor­ing,” he said in 1997, and he meant it. “If an artist can­not amaze peo­ple any­more, that’s the end.”

Reach­ing the end of his own life, after a long ill­ness, Schulze did deign to revis­it a moment from his past. It pro­pelled him for­ward into his final work. “At the end of that sec­ond pri­vate Dune jour­ney,” he said, “I real­ized: Deus Arrakis became anoth­er salute to Frank Her­bert and to that great gift of life in gen­er­al.”

Schulze lived and still lives in the music he inspired, per­formed, and record­ed. “There was still so much to write about him as a human and artist,” con­cludes a state­ment from his fam­i­ly, “but he prob­a­bly would have said by now: nuff said!… You know what he was like: his music mat­ters, not his per­son.” Or maybe it was that the two were insep­a­ra­ble. Hear music from his upcom­ing and final album, Deus Arrakis, just above.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Pio­neer­ing Elec­tron­ic Com­pos­er Karl­heinz Stock­hausen Presents “Four Cri­te­ria of Elec­tron­ic Music” & Oth­er Lec­tures in Eng­lish (1972)

The His­to­ry of Elec­tron­ic Music in 476 Tracks (1937–2001)

The His­to­ry of Elec­tron­ic Music, 1800–2015: Free Web Project Cat­a­logues the Theremin, Fairlight & Oth­er Instru­ments That Rev­o­lu­tion­ized Music

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

In addi­tion to play­ing the beat­ing human heart on the Bea­t­les’ glo­ri­ous swan song Abbey Road, Paul McCartney’s bass pro­vides melod­ic accom­pa­ni­ment, har­mo­ny, coun­ter­point, empha­sis… and some­times it just sings a lit­tle tune up and down the neck, the sort of thing a bass play­er can turn into need­less show­boat­ing in rock and roll.

That’s not at all the case on “Some­thing,” where McCart­ney runs, slides, and bounces through the gui­tar solo, a moment when a sup­port play­er might con­serve his musi­cal ener­gy.… McCart­ney total­ly goes for it, as he does on every song, Fend­er amps pushed into over­drive through Abbey Road Studio’s famous com­pres­sors.

Go on… put your LP on the Hi-Fi and lis­ten to the way he swings on “Oh! Dar­ling,” how he anchors “Maxwell’s Sil­ver Ham­mer” so heav­i­ly he almost makes Ringo’s bass drum redun­dant (but it isn’t), how he bounces through Ringo’s “Octopus’s Gar­den” with an exag­ger­at­ed music hall lilt, then, in the bridge, oblique­ly turns the song into an almost fuzzed-out rock­er.

Do I even need to men­tion “Come Togeth­er”.…? Do we need to talk about Side 2?

“Ngl,” writes Red­dit com­menter karensellscoke on the site’s “Loud­est and Most In-Tune Com­mu­ni­ty of Bassists,” r/Bass. “I’ve been sleep­ing on Paul for a bit and call­ing him over­rat­ed and a ‘dad’ bassist but I think this may have changed my tune.”

By this, our com­menter refers not to Abbey Road prop­er, but to the iso­lat­ed bass tracks of the entire album, just above (with plen­ty of micro­phone bleed from the rest of the band). I don’t know what a dad bassist is, but I agree with the sen­ti­ment, “These are some well craft­ed basslines exe­cut­ed with per­son­al­i­ty.”

Paul plays with a feel­ing rarely heard on mod­ern record­ings. Much is due to his gui­tar-like play­ing style. Much is due to the absolute­ly dis­tinc­tive tone he achieved on the instru­ment. And much is due to the tech­ni­cal lim­i­ta­tions of record­ing at the time.

“The lim­i­ta­tions of Bea­t­les-era tech­nol­o­gy were sub­stan­tial,” writes Justin Lan­cy at The Atlantic, “and they forced a com­mit­ment to cre­ative choic­es at ear­li­er stages of the record­ing process.” No infi­nite num­ber of takes as in our dig­i­tal audio work­sta­tion times. Para­dox­i­cal­ly, in the right hands, at least — most espe­cial­ly those of the white lab coat-clad tech­ni­cians at Abbey Road — low­er tech made for bet­ter record­ings.

When you lis­ten to record­ings from a gen­er­a­tion or two ago… you often hear all sorts of rough edges: large dynam­ic tran­si­tions between loud and qui­et, the sounds of over­sat­u­rat­ed tape and tubes, instru­ments bleed­ing togeth­er. Chun­ked notes. Vocals that are out of pitch. Drums that drift in and out of time. Mis­takes. Lots of mis­takes.

Do you hear McCart­ney’s mis­takes? Sure­ly he did. “It was because artists were stuck with the mis­takes they made that they some­times decid­ed to embrace them.” This explains why anoth­er r/Bass com­menter found the iso­lat­ed bass tracks “inspir­ing­ly slop­py.… There’s a great rough­ness that’s absent today.” Musical_bear describes being “blown away” on “Oh! Dar­ling” by “how slop­py the iso­lat­ed bass is.… Things I’ve nev­er noticed before, like a ran­dom pow­er chord start­ing verse 2 I think, and even some botched/missing notes com­plete­ly… but it all some­how sits great in the final mix.” (Read leg­endary record­ing engi­neer Geoff Emer­ick­’s track by track analy­sis of how he helped make all that hap­pen here.)

We feel every note of McCart­ney’s play­ing, instead of just admir­ing its pre­ci­sion or what­ev­er. “I lis­tened to this entire thing in one sit­ting, just his bass,” writes a con­vert­ed karensellscoke (recall­ing the adage that there are Bea­t­les fans and there are peo­ple who just haven’t heard enough Bea­t­les), “and loved it.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear the Beau­ti­ful Iso­lat­ed Vocal Har­monies from the Bea­t­les’ “Some­thing”

Watch Pre­cious­ly Rare Footage of Paul McCart­ney Record­ing “Black­bird” at Abbey Road Stu­dios (1968)

How “Straw­ber­ry Fields For­ev­er” Con­tains “the Cra­zi­est Edit” in Bea­t­les His­to­ry

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

From the offi­cial Iron Maid­en YouTube chan­nel comes the two-part doc­u­men­tary The His­to­ry of Iron Maiden. Released in 2004, Part 1: The Ear­ly Days (above) moves from the band’s begin­nings in Lon­don’s East End in 1975, to the Piece of Mind album and tour in 1983. Part 2 (below) was lat­er includ­ed on the Live After Death DVD release in 2008.

The His­to­ry of Iron Maid­en will be added to our col­lec­tion of Free Doc­u­men­taries, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

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Relat­ed Con­tent 

Watch Heavy Met­al Park­ing Lot, the Cult Clas­sic Film That Ranks as One of the “Great Rock Doc­u­men­taries” of All Time

1980s Met­al­head Kids Are Alright: Sci­en­tif­ic Study Shows That They Became Well-Adjust­ed Adults

Who Invent­ed Heavy Met­al Music?: A Search for Ori­gins