Listen to a behind-the scenes interview with writer Caden Traw here:
I have had a long, on-again off-again musical journey. Dating back to my third grade music class, I instantly fell in love with melody, harmony and percussive instrumentation. I have spent extended portions of my life enveloping myself in music. During my time as a trombonist in middle school and as a tenor one in choir, music became my life — almost to a fault.
The one thing I could never grasp that same relentless passion for was string instruments, particularly the guitar. My dad has been a guitar player since his early teens, and he spends a decent chunk of his free time riffing. Seeing his passion ignited the same in me to pursue the guitar, but when I tried to learn from him, I never felt fulfilled. I grew annoyingly impatient with my inability to shred like Jimi Hendrix or fingerpick like Joni Mitchell, and I’ve always hated finger calluses — a staple of guitar playing. I tried learning guitar at the peak of my choral interests, and since the guitar is arguably THE backing instrument for singers, I assumed I’d have the same drive to learn it as I did to sing. That proved to be false rather quickly, and voilà — I stopped trying to learn for the foreseeable future.
Once the pandemic hit, I was forced to stop doing choir. While it initially cut deep to have one of my favorite hobbies get stripped away from me, my passion began to wane. My motivation to continue pursuing most of my other interests faded with it, leaving me directionless and feeling distraught without any sense of purpose. However, one thing remained — my love for listening to music.
As was the case for everybody, the pandemic gave me limitless time on my hands. I spent more time twiddling my thumbs than doing anything remotely close to productive, but this thumb twiddling was soundtracked by my favorite tunes. Months had passed, and I had entirely re-shaped the way in which I consume music.
Due to my experience as a trombonist, as well as constantly hearing my dad riff on his acoustic guitar, the only element of music I ever paid attention to was the instrumentation, albeit casually. The only characteristics needed to make a good song for me was catchy production and melodies. However, the unprecedented isolation of the pandemic made it uniquely difficult for me to process my emotions, and finally paying attention to the lyrics in my favorite songs gave me a newfound sense of fulfillment in the listening experience.
With this new love for paying attention to and analyzing the lyrical content of songs, my desire to listen even more carefully to the instrumentation followed with it. Songs and artists that were once hard to digest became my favorites, both lyrically and sonically. Artists like Steely Dan, Nirvana, Radiohead, D’Angelo and New Order catapulted toward the top of my list of all-time favorite artists. While these artists are all drastically different in virtually every way, I came to realize there is something they all have in common — top-notch bass lines.
To the casual listener (which I once was), bass lines are quite unassuming, very rarely taking the lead while making way less noise than a guitar, horns or drums. The bass is the tie that binds everything else together, and they are the backbone to an undeniable groove. Tying together my casual, groove-oriented listening roots to my decades-long experience playing instruments made for the perfect recipe to learn the bass.
At this point in my life, I have no desire to become some bass prodigy who turns it into my entire career. In the past, I let my passion for music and performance be the only driving force behind every decision I made, crushing my work ethic in every other aspect of my life. After years of struggling to pick up my old habits from the ground, I have found a healthy balance of maintaining a productive lifestyle while still allowing myself to put energy into my passions. The first month of playing the bass has proven to be the perfect hobby to keep that balance intact.
