What Makes Up A Groove...

What makes up a groove?  Have you ever thought about that?  Your listening to your favorite bass player and you say “man...John Paul Jones is grooving”.  John Paul Jones is one of my favorite.  Maybe yours is James Jamerson, Rocco Prestia, Victor Wooten or whoever.  Well if you have ever noticed that a bass player is grooving what is usually the next thing you do... for me it is the tapping of the foot or the head moving to the groove.  Then you start noticing the accents of the groove and before you know it you are drawn in to jam with that song all the way through.  

It does not matter how many notes you play but rather what you do with the notes that you play.  This is key to creating a groove.  You do not have to fill every space with a lick or always follow drum rolls to the next phrase.  Bass players have a tendency to over play and walk all over the vocals and get out of sync with the band.  Busy bass lines work if they are done correctly.  Listen to the song “Can You See The Real Me” by The Who.  This is one of the greatest bass lines ever played but it is also very busy.  Why does it work?  Listen to the interaction between the bass and vocals.  It is like they trade licks throughout the song.  The guitar jams but stays out of the way of the bass.  It all works well because the bass takes all the solos.  The choruses the bass goes to pedal tone of sorts and allows the song to breath.  It is quite the masterful bass line.  I am sure John Entwistle enjoyed playing this one live.  He incorporates all the mechanics for grooving.  The choke, playing on the upbeat and dead notes or some call them, ghost notes.  

Dead notes is really the major key to creating the groove.  Dead notes are played by choking the note and then plucking that string to create a thud type sound.  Just go to youtube and type “dead note bass” in the search box and you will find a lot of videos to give you a better understanding of what I am talking about.  Once you do this I challenge you to take a simple groove that you have written or one from someone else and as you play it add some dead notes and see how it helps the groove and solidifies the pocket a little better.  It might even change the groove a little bit.  That’s okay...sometimes changing up the groove is a good thing.  As you expound on a groove you will find that after a while you become more confident.  Creating the pocket starts with being confident with groove.  Dead notes is one way to help make this happen.