[One of my friends showed me the Victor Wooten vid where he plays all the wrong notes for a bassline but it sounds great. This prompted the following.]

One of the weirdest things for me, cos I had organ lessons from 12 – 16 was that it was very, very square music. No jazzness, all CLIMB EVERY MOUNTAIN, ODE TO JOY kind of stuff. So I kind of got crypto-trained to never play anything sharp or flat of the note I was going for.

Wind forward to hearing Depeche Mode when I was… 14? And I tried to work out Just Can’t Get enough, the bassline. Well, Fletch was a electric guitar bassist and he transposed those lines onto the bass synth. I couldn’t for the life of me work out wtf was going on with the first bit, I knew it was going from G to the C above but the passing note?? I kept playing A cos that was the not-wrong note. And then I realised the bit was G – G – C – B – G – G. And at the end, there was a bit that went F – E – C – C. This going a semitone below the note freaked me out. In a lead melody, it’d be a bold statement but in a bassline? Just a sprinkle!

Even know, I have to sometimes remind myself to break out of any notion of what should the be note playing and just play whatever. There is no wrong note, it’s all about how the note makes you feel. Sometimes a stinky dissonance is what scritches your brain just right.