The bass line that I am on is kind of odd. Whenever we get easy unison parts, it sounds horriblly mushy. However, as soon as we get to a six-tuplet run, or something that is actually difficult, we play it perfectly. Can anyone please explain this, or maybe even tell me what to do to fix this problem? thanks for your time.

Same thing happens with our line.I think that maybe the eaiser parts people stop counting or lose focus, and when a difficult part comes everyone wants it to sound awesome so they try harder and count. That's just what think.

i agree with everyone else. we had this problem when i was on bass for about a day or two and then our instructor made us stop. when we would come to something easy we figured "ok i don't have to concentrate so much now" and then it would be bad. but he told us that the eaiser stuff is actually harder to play sometimes because your brain wants to relax and then that makes you mess up.

Ha ha ha...I heard about that on Thursday, because us over here at Fox have the same problem...We couldn't split 8's, so we tried sextuplets and played them about 10 times better than the 8's, but I can't help you out because I can't even get us to play it right.

If you get the problem fixed PM me and help us out, I will let you know if we can figure out this problem. Thanks.

Also, please remeber that unison problems more often than not should not be POUNDED out. LOW dynamics and stick heights work best considering you have 4, 5, or even 6 drums playing the same part. Even if the dynamic marking is the same as a previous run that you are coming out of musically your heights should still go down.

The unison parts are the hardest to make clean on a bass line, or on any part of the line for that matter. Its the same concept with snares and tenors, the more people playing the part, the harder it is to make the part sound like only one drum is playing it. This is why larger lines that are clean are so rare. Because matching playing styles, diddle spacing, and stick heights with say 9 snare dummers is so much harder than matching those components with say 3 snare drummers. Clean unisons on any part of the line comes with repetition and observing playing styles from drummer to drummer, and changing to match that style, to make one collective style through ought the line.

Well, I think one of the main causes of this is everyone's different playing style. You should try to get everyone playing almost the same way. When you have someone that uses their arms when they play and not their wrists they seem to drag the beat just a hair and vis versa. That certainly worked for our bass line, maybe it will work for yours.



AWC II
BHS Tenors 05-06

If you would like to fix the problems all you have to do is get a metronome. Also, it would help if you could stand in front of them while they are doing unison parts. Make each bass play it by themselves with the met on, that helps most of the time. If they can all play it with the met then having the met will be a good tool but it's a starting point in to where they can key off. Look at their feet as well and make sure they are all marking time together, that can be crucial a lot of times.