"All Alone"

Bassist Ron Carter in a live workshop recorded at David Gage String Instruments in New York City, part of the Bass Workshop Series. He opens with the problem every touring bassist now faces, playing a different, unfamiliar instrument every night, and shows the ten-minute routine he uses to find out what a strange bass will give him: locating half position, checking how the intervals lie, testing whether the strings are true against the harmonics, and getting an even sound across the instrument. Then he plays a solo bass set, the "all alone" of the title, and demonstrates the percussive and two-handed sounds bassists reach for when they want to make an impression.

What's covered

• Sizing up an unfamiliar bass in a short sound check: half position, interval spacing, string trueness, harmonics
• A solo bass performance, and how playing alone became part of leading his own bands
• Rhythmic and two-handed effects on the bass, and why each player should develop sounds of their own
• His 1959 bass and the LaBella 7700 strings he helped design, and why he never changes the strings on a borrowed instrument
• A long question-and-answer session: his classical background, how a recorded bass sound survives engineers and mastering, learning tunes by their form rather than by rote, warming up cold hands on the first tune, developing time by playing against an established meter, the duo record with Houston Person, drum tuning, drawing a big sound out of the bass without overplaying it, and how to talk to a loud drummer or a pianist who buries the bass

Running time: 1 hour and 19 minutes, recorded in the room with audience questions. For bassists at any level who want to hear how one of the most recorded bassists in jazz thinks about the instrument, the gig, and the people on the bandstand with him.