Talk to me about Organ LH bass

[nadroj]

So I recently got my first dual manual clone and now I'm all in. Well, partially - I'm not quite at the basspedal stage, and won't be for a long while. One thing at a time...

 

Over the years I've picked up a couple of basic LH walking formulas for things like Autumn Leaves (1-3-5-b5), or (1-2-3-b4-4) etc for going from chord to chord in basic standards, and could probably spend a year just doing that, but I'm not really a straight jazz guy. I am wanting to branch out and make a real go at getting that left hand down, though.

 

So far I've been listening to Jimmy Smith. His basslines obviously change based on the tune, but one thing I've already noticed is that he seems to start his basslines fairly "simple" and then go wham later on. There seem to be a few patterns there - I'm not yet sure if he does the same thing on various tunes. Maybe he has a formula I've not worked out yet. Just now I'm working on "Back at the Chicken Shack". It's deceptively simple at the start but branches out as the choruses go on (it also helped me realise how bad I am at trilling chords in my RH). I've been playing "Green Onions" for years and have picked that back up. It seems 90% of youtube performances of that tune (even from the greats themselves) have a bass player during the solos. I figured I'd make a go at practicing soloing over that, with the LH bass too, just to get me the practice playing with dotted/ghost notes.

 

Any other tunes I should look at for developing some LH bass technique/chops (of various styles), or any general resources someone can point me to? Hopefully you've gathered that I'm not looking for "easy" solutions; I'm all on board with putting the work in over the long haul, ie. listening to tunes, slowing them down, isolating the bass then copying it.

 

Also, bonus question: what the hell do you do with ballads? I've tried listening to organ versions of misty, etc, and just can't pick out what the LH is doing cos most of them are so slow.

[jmemcse517]

I have nothing to help with, but you did remind me it's been ages since I listened to this - https://www.amazon.com/Organ-Ized-All-Star-Tribute-Hammond-Organ/dp/B00003OP46 

I think I'll dig it out today and re-enjoy  

 

[JamPro]

For blues, I work the "approach tones": where C is the target, I want to play A - Bb - B - C.  The I practice getting to all the targets (i.e. all keys).  Then I create my blues bassline from that:

C - D - Eb - E - F - A - Bb - B  - C - E - G - E - C (here typically I will go to the C one octave up rather than the C I started on) - D - Eb - E - F - A - C - A - F - A - Bb - B - C - E - G - E - C - E - F - F# - G - B - D - G - A - Bb - B - C.

 

While this is not a transcription of what Jimmy Smith does, I find it very useful to be instantly familiar with how to get to any given note using these approach tones.  "Useful" as in helping me create a flowing LH bassline.  This method is useful in jazz tunes (Autumn Leaves, etc.) as well.

 

I've been using my 2-manual XK3 for a few years.  I'm wondering about making the leap to foot pedals.  Doing LH bass now seems almost easy to me compared to learning to use bass pedals.

 

 

[Al Quinn]

I’ve never tried to learn bass lines from organ players. Although I don’t ever recall transcribing bass lines I’m sure that my favorite bass players are a big influence on what I play. For me folks like Ron Carter, Christian McBride, James Jameson, Jaco, Ray Brown, Leland Sklar, and Neil Henning Orsted Pederson provide inspiration. There are some very good instructional videos on YouTube by great bass players. I think these videos can be an excellent source for the type of info you're seeking.

 

Here’s a short example where Mr. McBride tells us how it's done:

 

 

[SamuelBLupowitz]

Somewhere floating around the forum is a video of @Mitch Towne telling a joke while playing a blues with walking bass on his B3. I think it's relevant to this conversation, if anyone can dig it up.

 

I love playing key bass, and I can get around on the pedals a little bit too (heel-toe, baby). But it demands your focus, for sure. I'm no slouch as a bass player, but playing keyboard bass parts that are interdependent with right hand chords, melodies, and improvisation is its own skill. So I'm going to lurk on this thread and see what folks have to say -- it's a part of my musicianship I'm always excited to develop.

[Al Quinn]

I think Sam's hit on the more difficult aspect of playing organ LH bass and that's hand independence. I've spent a ton of time working on that and very little time working on the actual notes. 

[BenWaB3]

One of the best organists to listen to to pick up LH bass ideas would be Groove Holmes. He definitely earned his sobriquet and a large part of that was due to his bass lines.

[David R]

Far from an expert in this, but I agree with @Al Quinn. I’d listen to Wilbur Ware, Ray Brown and Paul Chambers for inspiration on walking bass, more than other organists. I believe @Jim Alfredsonhas a great video on YouTube talking about hand position and working your note choice in with that.

 

I think on ballads, the Jimmy Smith technique was roots on the pedals, rootless voicings on the lower manual and the melody on top. 

[Mitch Towne]

44 minutes ago, SamuelBLupowitz said:

Somewhere floating around the forum is a video of @Mitch Towne telling a joke while playing a blues with walking bass on his B3. I think it's relevant to this conversation, if anyone can dig it up.

 

 

Here’s the video mentioned above. 
 

 

 

The idea of that exercise is to get the LH on autopilot. That’s the reason he told me to “sit on my right hand for six weeks.” He wanted me to only concentrate on getting bass lines working and concentrating on how the “feel” as much as how they sound. How a 3-6-2-5 bass line feels under your fingers is very important because when you are playing through a standard or a blues at a fast tempo, you can’t think about the notes. You have to feel them just like you do if you’re a piano player and you’re comping with your LH. You probably know how a C-7 voicing feels or how 4ths voicing feel without thinking about what notes you’re playing. 
 

I learned a lot when I was starting out lest it how to walk a bass line from the Joey DeFrancesco instructional video from the 90s. In this video, he talks about hit to start learning to play bass lines and talks about walking “up to the 6th.” So, a bass line over the first four bars of an F blues would be:

 

F7 

F A Bb B / C Db D Gb / F A Bb B / C Db D B/

Bb7

Bb D Eb E/ F Gb G Gb/

 

Each bass line is 1-3-4-b5-5-b6-6-b2 (except when we are going to the next chord change, then we play a half step above or below the target tone.)

 

Also, the b2 is played back down right above the root. You go up to the 6th and back down. The b2 is a half step passing tone to the root. 

I might do a quick video for this later if people think it might be helpful. 
 

Mitch

[Mitch Towne]

A quick demonstration of my previous post.

 

I’ll do the classic “Subscribe to my channel!” plug here. I have posted some other organ-centric instructional things and will post more in the future. Thanks!

[SamuelBLupowitz]

This is gold, Mitch. Thanks for the free lessons!

[lightbg]

As mentioned above heel and toe is the only way to go with Hammond pedals since they don’t sustain. Sometimes it’s not the notes but the feel that’s more important. You can cover with your left hand but pedals are there to be used. Wild Bill Davis taught me to treat a Hammond like a big band. Pedals = rhythm section, lower manual is Sax or trombone chords, and upper is solo or block chording. 
Here’s how I do it

 

[Mitch Towne]

7 minutes ago, lightbg said:

As mentioned above heel and toe is the only way to go with Hammond pedals since they don’t sustain. Sometimes it’s not the notes but the feel that’s more important. You can cover with your left hand but pedals are there to be used. Wild Bill Davis taught me to treat a Hammond like a big band. Pedals = rhythm section, lower manual is Sax or trombone chords, and upper is solo or block chording. 
Here’s how I do it

 

Nice work on the pedals! 
 

When it comes to pedals, it’s interesting that gospel organ and jazz organ have two totally different approaches. 
 

Gospel players play their RH stuff on the bottom manual and their LH stuff on the top manual and cover most of the bass with their feet. 
 

Jazz players play RH stuff on top, mostly because of the percussion I suppose, and play LH on the bottom manual. Most of the bass line work is done with the LH, while the pedals are used for emphasis. It’s a common misconception that Jimmy Smith was doing all

the bass with his feet. It was mostly LH. Joey D talked a lot about how it’s really the LH that does the work when playing jazz. 

[ProfD]

As @Al Quinn mentioned, listening to bass players is a great way to develop LH bass playing. 

 

2 hours ago, SamuelBLupowitz said:

but playing keyboard bass parts that are interdependent with right hand chords, melodies, and improvisation is its own skill.

Agreed.

 

There's more to playing LH bass than music theory can cover. 

 

Following chord/scale relationships will sound like an exercise more than actually playing bass lines.

 

IMO, Neal Evans (Soulive) is the best example of a modern LH bass player.  He's an absolute monster in that area. Check him out.😎

[SamuelBLupowitz]

Just now, ProfD said:

IMO, Neal Evans (Soulive) is the best example of a modern LH bass player.  He's an absolute monster in that area. Check him out.😎

Neal is one of those players who is right on the razor's edge between inspiring me to practice and making me want to quit music, hahaha.

[ProfD]

@SamuelBLupowitz, upon 1st hearing Neal Evans over a decade ago, I can imagine how you felt.🤣  

 

No disrespect to the great organists of the past but Neal is that dude when it comes to LH bass playing now.😎

[SamuelBLupowitz]

As long as we're discussing LH bass vs pedals, figured I'd do the prerequisite shoutout to my biggest inspiration in the world of keyboard players covering low end, Mr. John Paul Jones. He was always very clever about how to economically translate his very fluid, Motown-inspired bass guitar parts to his feet, but you can really cop his background as a church organist with his pedal work on this one. There's a nice close up around 22 seconds in.

 

 

[konaboy]

less talking

just enroll to tony monaco's school.

https://tonymonaco.vhx.tv/browse

[Adan]

I do a half-decent left hand walking bass, but how I do it is kind of a mystery, in the sense that it's like a compartmentalized subconscious function that works on its own while the conscious part of my brain focuses on the right hand.  I was trying to think of an analogy and the only one that came to mind was using a manual shift on car.  It takes time (and lots of trial and error) to learn the precise physical hand movements to get to a certain gear, and then coordinate the timing with the left foot pressing and releasing the clutch.  Once you've got that down, you no longer think about it.  You instead think about directions, steering, gas and brake pedals, etc . . . all the stuff that is situation-specific and constantly changing.  Left hand walking bass, at least the way I do it, feels to me to be similarly automated.  I think what that entails is that I'm not being creative, or being only minimally creative, in the left hand.  It's like the brain says finger is on this note on beat one, next chord on beat one of next measure is X, I know 4 ways of getting to the root of X, and the brain picks one of those 4 ways without distracting the main part of the brain much from the chords and melody.  So that's where the analogy is less than perfect, because there's only one way of going from 3rd to 4th gear, but you may (should) have several ways in your repetoire of learned physical movement of moving the bass from point Y to point X in a chord progression.

Just now, Adan said:

 

 

[JMcS]

You can't go wrong learning from Tony Monaco.

 

You might find this interesting/useful: https://www.organfreak.com/

[Mitch Towne]

Part 2. 
 

 

 

[CowboyNQ]

@Mitch Towne, who I see has already been very generous with his thoughts on this thread, explores left hand bass from a more philosophical standpoint and tells the already referenced and wonderful “play while telling a joke” anecdote here from 24:20.  I found this both entertaining and educational.  Thanks Mitch!

 

 

[dazzjazz]

Here’s a beginners tutorial I put together last December when I was guest artist for Tony Monaco. If you find it useful, please SUBSCRIBE.
 

 

[K K]

Playing bass on a Hammond with the LH is for amateurs. Real men and women play bass on a Hammond with their feet.

 

 

[nadroj]

Holy crap, I come back and my question has been answered by several people giving indepth theory/written out notes, suggestions for tunes, links to classes, youtube videos and even some custom made on the spot lessons. Blown away.

 

That's a lot of stuff to look through, and I'd be lying if I said I've had the time to look over everything above properly yet - thanks so much to everyone who has contributed, this is going to send me well on my way. I'm going to make sure to pick my way through everything shared here. Will no doubt have more questions once I start diving into all of the above - watch this space.

[nadroj]

6 hours ago, Mitch Towne said:

A quick demonstration of my previous post.

 

I’ll do the classic “Subscribe to my channel!” plug here. I have posted some other organ-centric instructional things and will post more in the future. Thanks!

There's already a tonne of good stuff in this thread and some of the info above this quoted post is golddust, but Mitch I just want to let you know how much I appreciate you taking the time to put those videos together today, they are incredibly helpful and I'll no doubt have them on repeat in the coming weeks. Thank you.

[Mitch Towne]

45 minutes ago, nadroj said:

There's already a tonne of good stuff in this thread and some of the info above this quoted post is golddust, but Mitch I just want to let you know how much I appreciate you taking the time to put those videos together today, they are incredibly helpful and I'll no doubt have them on repeat in the coming weeks. Thank you.

I’m glad they are helpful! When you work on them, be sure to work on them with just your left hand. Don’t even think about comping or soloing at the same time. The goal is to get the LH on autopilot. So just work the LH for a few weeks. That concentrated effort will pay off. 

[Tom Williams]

On the jazz side, Dennerlein's amazing footwork appears to have a subtle non-Hammond trick to it: it triggers a monophonic synth bass (almost certainly through MIDI) with a long decay, so the tones keep ringing as she moves her foot to the next pedal.  She often uses MIDI on the lower manual as well. 

 

Don't mistake this for a lack of admiration for her skill.  I would be proud if I could do half what she was doing 20 years ago.  I believe she's now expanded into "classical" pipe organ territory as well, using a Hauptwerk to simulate different organs and acoustics when practicing at home.  Wow!

[Doerfler]

just got home (it's almost midnight writing this) from work and quickly scanned this thread, will spend time watching the videos this weekend.

 

Threads like this are the reason I love it here.  OP lives in Scotland, gets advice from everywhere on the globe, including instructional videos

 

from the people who actually made them, not just posting a video someone else made. (Nothing wrong with that, I do it all the time).

 

Europeans, Aussies, Americans, all hanging out helping each other becoming better musicians. That, my friends, is dope. 

 

Cheers to all of you  

[SamuelBLupowitz]

18 hours ago, Mitch Towne said:

Nice work on the pedals! 
 

When it comes to pedals, it’s interesting that gospel organ and jazz organ have two totally different approaches. 
 

Gospel players play their RH stuff on the bottom manual and their LH stuff on the top manual and cover most of the bass with their feet. 
 

Jazz players play RH stuff on top, mostly because of the percussion I suppose, and play LH on the bottom manual. Most of the bass line work is done with the LH, while the pedals are used for emphasis. It’s a common misconception that Jimmy Smith was doing all

the bass with his feet. It was mostly LH. Joey D talked a lot about how it’s really the LH that does the work when playing jazz. 

Which hand to use on which manual was one of the things that overwhelmed me the most when I first started playing a dual-manual organ. Eventually I figured top/right and lower/left was the way to go, if only because it made the associated drawbars more accessible to the non-playing hand (since the drawbars for the upper manual are on the left side of the console, and vice versa).

 

Does anyone know why and how these different approaches developed between jazz and gospel playing? Other than jazz players liking the percussion for the melodic work, that is.