Gary Willis – Bass

I got hold of this album around the time that it was released. I had seen these guys talked about in guitar magazine and thought they sounded cool and I think I had heard Scott Henderson with either Jeff Berlin or Chick Corea. Anyway, the 1985 Tribal Tech album ‘Spears’ was an incredible recording in it’s day and, I believe, has travelled well – I can’t believe that this album is fort years old. (To put that in perspective, when Punk happened, forty year previously was before the Second World War had started and they had only just invented Bebop).

I loved Gary Willis. He had so much control and sounded funky as hell and it was only later that I got hold of his tuition video and learned how he was getting that fantastic feeling in his playing. It taught me the value of understanding the importance of where notes FINISH as well as where they start. This was the opening track on the recording and I have always wanted to get underneath it but couldn’t get to the details using the available technology of the day. Moises and Transcribe! have given me the gift of remixing a bass heavy version and slowing it down. I am so proud of this transcription you have no idea. It is great to read along with the recording. Don’t think you are going to play it straight off – it’s not that kind of transcription. Worth spending time with though and the best news (for me, anyway) is that a lot of the best bits are written and not improvised. The lines are genius. This is so cool. There are a couple of bars that I have marked as clinkers – they sound fine at tempo but, when you slow them down and isolate the bass, you can hear that things go momentarily awry. Still love it though, every second of it. Also, 1000 ghost notes but that’s what Gary Willis does, innit?