Play the field to get a bigger-picture understanding of the game

The expression "play the field" started out as a horse-racing term, which meant to spread your bets around the different horses, to reduce your risk of losing your paycheck on one jockey. Then the expression got picked up as dating slang, to mean "date a bunch of people at the same time", rather than locking in on one Romeo or Juliet.

There's a less common use of the term "play the field" that is the starting point for this bass playing post. In baseball, when a coach says that a player "plays the field", this refers to the usual situation, in which players go up to bat and have a position somewhere on the field (first base, left field, etc.) when their team isn't up to bat. There are some less common cases where a player doesn't "play the field", such as a designated hitter or "pinch hitter", a specialist who only hits the ball.

Most baseball players who are starting out in the amateur leagues wouldn't be encouraged to train solely as a designated hitter, because if did it that way, they would be unlikely to get a broader, deeper understanding of the game.

If you compare an amateur baseball player, Pinch, who only does designated hitting roles and never goes out to the field with, Jaz, a baseball player who is a "Jack of All Trades" (or "Jill of All Trades") in their community baseball league, and who is happy to switch from batting to playing any position that the coach needs, I bet after a few years, Jaz will have a much better understanding of baseball strategy and tactics than Pinch.

If you want to learn to be a good bass player, it's important to play the field, musically speaking. To be sure, any good bass player needs to "woodshed", the slang term for holing up in a practice room to drill deep on specialized bass techniques. However, if a bass player were to only practice playing the bass, they would become like a baseball player who only hits the ball.

Yes, that baseball player might have an astonishing ability to hit home runs, but if they only practice batting, they won't understand the bigger picture of pacing a team during a game or a series, and they won't understand how the positions need to work together.

To be a strong bass player, it's important to learn about the wider ocean of music that bass is part of. If music is an ocean, then bass is the deep foundation, anchoring the song by providing powerful, resonant low notes that lay down the roots (and other bass notes*) of the chord progression.

To continue the metaphor, the sustained chords of the organ and synthesizer pads are the smooth-flowing currents in the middle layer of the sea, and at the top, where the waves go up and down at the top layer, and sparkle in the sun, are the melodic lines of the lead guitar, sax, and singers.

To be a strong bass player, you need to know how to play with solid rhythm and, for upright bass/fretless bass, good intonation (correct pitch), consistent and pleasing tone, and with a tasteful use of variation and fill-in lines ("fills"). That requires woodshedding and diligent study of the bass and the tradition of bass playing laid down by great bass players. However, staying in a practice room with a bass and practicing will only get you part of the way towards becoming a well-rounded, total musician.

How can a bass player "play the field" and learn more about music? Flirt shamelessly with other instruments and musical roles. Dabble in different instruments and see how they work and try to understand what role they play in your favourite styles of music.

• Buy a starter ukulele (prices begin at $30 to $40) and drive your roommates mad by learning to strum folk songs. Yes, you already know how to play the basslines to these songs, but the song "feels" different when you strum the chords. As a bass player, your sense of the song is from the "bottom" of the musical ocean. You sense the way the low roots and bass notes form the song's foundation. The ukulele player strumming chords is in a different part of the ocean, filling in the harmony notes with triads and seventh chords.

• Buy a used beginner's digital keyboard at a thrift store for $50. Yes, its former owner was a kid and it's covered with Hello Kitty stickers and the names of the notes are written on the keys in Sharpie marker, so you probably won't be taking it to play at your local coffeeshop. But for the price, this children's instrument has a lot to teach you. If you use the organ sound, you can learn to sustain chords and move smoothly from one chord to the other by moving to the nearest chord tone of the next chord. This technique, called "voice-leading", is essential if you want to learn to arrange sweet-sounding bowed string instrument parts (violin, viola, and cello) for a pop song or arrange a rich tapestry of sustained voices for a ballad's choir backing part.

• Buy drumsticks and a practice pad and learn drum rudiments. When my teenage son was away at summer camp, I "covered" the drum set lesson slots he had booked at Spaceman Music (an Ottawa music store/ music school) and I got to learn drum rudiments (single strokes, double strokes, and paradiddles) and I got to see how a simple drum pattern is put together. Even though I have no intention of making listeners suffer by ever attempting to play drums in public, it gave me good insights into the role of the drummer. Another inexpensive option is to buy a sand-filled percussion "egg" and practice shaking it along with recordings.

• Learn to sing folk and pop songs, to further torment your housemates beyond the pain you've inflicted with your beginning ukulele strumming. Even if you never end up singing onstage, learning about singing can give you insights into how melodies are constructed and on how expression is added into musical lines with vibrato, slides, and changes of volume. You could bring these insights from singing to liven up your bass playing. As well, if your study of singing goes well, and you learn to sing with a solid pitch and a clear tone, your bandleader might ask you to start doing some simple backup vocal parts.

Notes

* People sometimes say "the bass always emphasizes the root notes of the chords in a chord progression." This is generally true. However, the songwriter, composer, arranger, or bandleader sometimes asks the bass player to play a note other than the root:

* playing the third of the chord in the bass (for example with the

chord progression "C, G with a B bass note, A minor, G", which is designed to have a smooth descending scale in the bass. The "G with a B bass note" is the chord that has the third as the bass note rather than the root note.).

* playing a deep pedal point that stays the same as the higher-pitched chords change over top of it (for example, the chord progression "C with a G bass, d minor with a G bass, G7"). Pedal points are used to add tension and built a sense of musical excitement. They create musical interest because dissonances are created, such as with the "d minor with a G bass" in the example here, and then resolved. The "d minor with a G bass" is perceived as dissonant because there is no G (note) in the "d minor" triad (which is the notes D, F, and A).