Be a promiscuous sponge in your musical life

Music and musicians tend to get hemmed in by frameworks and grids. Yes, it's good to have different categories and names for the different styles of music, as it helps us to navigate the wide ocean of genres. However, we shouldn't think of there being walls between the styles. A better model would be a Venn diagram, in which the circles overlap with intermingled zones in between. To learn and develop as a musician, the more styles and genres you listen to, the better.

Classical double bass players could learn a lot about rhythm and timefeel by listening to psychobilly* upright bassists playing rapid-fire percussive slapping with double, triple, and even quadruple slaps interpolated between the notes of their bassline. In classical music string playing, we barely study pizzicato, because most of the focus is on bowing. In psychobilly, they become pizzicato virtuosos. When I watch and listen to the top psychobilly bassists, I am humbled by their skill. [* a style that blends rockabilly style with the energy of punk rock. Examples include Tiger Army, Nekromantix, HorrorPops]

Electric bass players could take inspiration from the lyrical, expressive bowed melodies played by classical bass players. Classical bass players put a lot of effort into creating a legato sound, in which all of the notes are smoothly connected. As well, classical bass players pay a lot of attention to role of vibrato (in different levels of intensity and speed) to add expression.

Bassists from the mainstream music genres (pop and rock) could learn a lot about intensity, raw power, and endurance by listening to bassists from the hardest genres, such as hardcore punk and extreme metal. These bassists play hard and fast all night, and they end the show drenched in sweat. Recently, I worked on some metal basslines and I was humbled by the virtuoso level of their playing, with all the rapid licks, pull-offs, and hammer-ons.

In many styles of music, bass solos are a fairly rare treat. But in some small jazz groups, the bass may solo in every (or almost every) tune. Listening to small jazz ensembles gives you an opportunity to hear lots of bass solo improvisation. How do these jazz bassists develop their musical ideas? What tools (scales, arpeggios, developing motifs, grooving and expanding on a riff) are these jazz bassists using? Could you use some of these jazz bassists' ideas or approaches in the bass solos you do in your band?

This isn't an exhaustive list of which types of bass players could take inspiration from which other type. But it gives you some examples of how you could listen to bassists from different styles of music (or who play a different type of bass, such as electric vs. double bass).

Be promiscuous as a bassist: listen to bassists playing rock, classical, funk, punk, blues, country and everything in between. Don't set up artificial boundaries and walls. Value and respect all bass players, whether they're playing an electric upright bass in a jazz lounge, a hand-carved double bass at a classical show, a vintage electric bass in a rock concert, or a beaten-up old plywood upright in a rockabilly band. What are their strengths? What could you--to continue the "sponge" metaphor--absorb from them in your style?