Bass Player: Jeff Berlin

From the 1979 album, ‘One Of A Kind’, this transcription features a performance by the legendary band Bruford. G’. Jeff Berlin is known for avoiding certain techniques that he feels are associated with significant players. He ‘never’ plays fretless because of the massive influence of his contemporary, Jaco Pastorius, and he ‘never’ slaps or taps because he chose to avoid compaisons with another school of popular bass players like tappers Billy Sheehan and Stu Hamm and slappers such as Stanley Clarke, Marcus Miller, Victor Wooten. Where slapping is concerned, Jeff considers himself to be a ‘novice’ at it. The fact is that Jeff did flirt with these techniques and appraoches briefly and took the decision to avoid them only AFTER he had tried them and decided that they weren’t for him. Despite his self-depracating comments, he left us with a monster groove that has tied many of us up for weeks.

During his time with UK Jazz Rock icons, Bruford, Jeff featured slapping in a number of tunes and there are recordings of gigs in which he plays an extended solo using the technique but the only recorded work where he actually slaps is this track, ‘Five G’. The transcription suffers from a couple of issues. There is one bar which Bilbo is not at all happy with (bar 24) becasue he couldn’t get Sibelius to play 4 notes across 3 beats in the middle of a bar – he remains silent on whether this is a failing of the technology or his capacity to use it). In addition, the chopsy slap bit that opens the chart , whilst it tells you which notes to play, does not really tell you HOW to play them (or where). In an effort to help, we have posted a link to the YouTube copy of Jeff’s Starlicks video where he shows us how to execute the passage (around 14:50 mark on the video).