A few days ago the youtube algorithm showed me Rick Beato’s interview with a bass player I was unfamiliar with. I didn’t watch the whole interview but I did check out her other videos. Kinga Glyk is a jazz musician, composer, and bass player from Poland. What really caught my ear was this improvisation over Wham’s 1984 hit “Wake Me Up Before You Go Go.”
Overplaying? Sure. But she is fantastic. Definitely a player to watch.
But another thing occured to me. This is the definitive sound of a jazz bass. I don’t know if she’s playing through an interface into a DAW, using plugins or an amp, but this is to my ear exactly the sound that a jazz bass makes.
An experienced musician friend of mine once asked me “what makes it a jazz bass?” I had been showing him my Sire V5. “Well, if I solo the neck pickup, I have a decent approximation of a p-bass. And if I solo the bridge pickup, I’m Jaco or a disco king.”
And that’s true. But it’s not the full story. When both pickups on a jazz bass are on, there’s a “scoop” that happens in the mids, a place where the pickups are canceling each other out.
Or so they say.
So I went searching for answers and I found them. Here is the full explanation of the very real and empirically documented mid-scoop of the jazz bass.
Notice that the “scoop” moves around depending on what note you’re playing. I believe that this is what makes a j-bass so slappable. It retains a low bump and never loses the high end snap, but has a built-in mechanism for reducing the clank noise in the middle.
No, you’re a fucking nerd.