Jaco's tone for those who saw him LIVE or met him

EmaTheMirror

EmaTheMirror

Oct 9, 2009
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Genoa, IT - London, UK
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#1
Due to chronological reasons, in the mid 80s I was too young to even know about 4 strings on a neck, let alone know of him.

This is why I'm asking how his tone was (in terms of - rather obviously - memory recall of aural perception) for those here on TB who had the chance to see him play during concerts, jams, lessons, hanging out, and so on...
There's a precise reason: although we all know his playing and tone on recordings (studio and live), AFAIK he mainly relied on D.I.s and desk processing while his famous live rig was primarily based on Acoustic gear - that 361 cab is also quite peculiar to capture with mics and retain good definition.

I often think of his tone, given his solo album and Weather Reports stuff, as rather prominent in the midrange, a bit rolled-off on the higher end of the spectrum and definitely not very low-heavy.
Anyway, correct me from wrong but I read him saying in interviews that he often kept the bass knob rather cranked on his Acoustic to compensate for the bridge pickup voicing, higher register and plucking area. That rig is not "thin", so I am inclined to wonder if his tone we hear on records wasn't 100% what came across when he was playing or if it was pretty much the same.

- Was his tone in live context (or when heard through his rig) fuller and fatter than what we generally hear on records? I almost take for granted that you could recognise his playing, so I'm not referring that much on the "tone is in the fingers" effect, but rather on an objective perception of frequencies and timbre.
- Although he relied on fretless (and noise is one of the reasons why), how was his overtone content and string/neck/instrument/finger noise live?
- Was his timbre rather consistent or it varied according to live production, gig, venue or had different flavours across the years?

These questions also apply to those lucky enough to have been around him in a rehearsing room with whatsoever amp, taking live lessons and so on. Live interaction or attendance, anyway.

There's a sort of similar thread on TB ( Jaco Sound - Bass, amp & cab ) but I don't think it addresses the question in the same way.
 
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#2
EmaTheMirror said:
I was too young to even know about 4 strings on a neck, let alone know of him. This is why I'm asking how his tone was
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EmaTheMirror said:
it varied according to live production, gig, venue or had different flavours across the years!
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he played the area where i'm from (indy and surrounds) 4-5 times in the summer and fall of '71 or '72 when i was about his same age, a year older, but very much interested in wayne cochran's 'white boy', horn band show/review. while everyone in my band/circle was impressed with jaco, we were impressed with all of the other musicians as well...our guitar guy was impressed with wayne's guitar guy, our horns with their horns, etc. i didn't play bass then (sax/show) so i loved the whole deal! i assume that he played a fretted ax when i saw him, through the 360(s), but TBH: i can't be sure. i never saw him perform (live) after that. the times i heard the C.C. riders he did not sound like the lyrical artist we've come to know via his work with weather report, joni, etc., e.g., on most of the recordings. but we all knew he was special. and he was a 'character' (very animated, dancy, smiling, sometimes clownish!) when he played with that band in those smallish, smoke-filled nightclubs. in those settings wayne was an 'instigator' and jaco was often right there with him.

but then he blew up as the 'premier' EB cat and everything changed in the world of bass/EB because of it. and that, my son, is why we revere him today! :laugh:

it'll be fun/interesting to hear what others have to say!
 
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#3
Concert sound in the 70’s wasn’t all that precise; while the technology and techniques were developing quickly, and it definitely was an improvement over that of the 60’s, the main concern was that it was loud enough.
I saw WP with Alphonso in a 3.5K seater auditorium in ‘74; he was also using a Jazz Bass, don’t remember the amp, but it was definitely there, plenty of low end, but plenty of room boom. The following year, I saw Jaco twice, both times in the same 2K theater, better acoustics. First with Herbie Hancock, then with WP, and once again, plenty of low end, but maybe with some upper mid bump?
I dunno, maybe a bit more articulate, but not exactly hi-fi, not exactly ‘just like the record’. They were loud, of course, but not like a rock band with a constant barrage of all instruments; due to the nature of their music, lots of dynamics between all the players. The finale of “Boogie Woogie Waltz”, however, was full on hammer down. I don’t know if the live album, 8:30(one that I’ve not listen to much)would help you.
 
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#4
EmaTheMirror said:
- Was his timbre rather consistent or it varied according to live production, gig, venue or had different flavours across the years?.
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I only saw him play live twice, but his tone with Weather Report at the show I saw was radically different than it was on the Joni Mitchell Shadows and Light tour. In neither case would I call his tone "thin" by any means though. A lot of people seem to gloss over his pioneering use of digital delay and multi-cab rigs, but I've always felt that to have been a big part of what we were hearing.
 
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#5
You're asking a really good question, one that doesn't get asked or discussed a whole lot here despite how many threads there are on Jaco's "bridge pickup tone" and technique. So often bassists will say they don't like his tone because it sounds so nasal and mid-rangey. I worry that the poor audio quality of YouTube videos is a huge factor in that.

I saw Jaco many times in hs post-Weather Report career, first with his Word of Mouth Big Band show at Avery Fisher Hall in NY (now officially documented as "Truth, Liberty & Soul"), then in NY clubs like The Seventh Avenue South and the 55 Bar, outdoors at NY's Pier 84, in Washington DC at Blues Alley. I can say with certainty that in just about all of these performances, whether he had horns, guitars, piano/keyboard, percussion in his band, Jaco's sound was full, deep and prominent. He had a sound from his Jazz basses (fretless and fretted) that punched straight through the middle and carved out a space of it's own that wasn't exclusively dependent on cranking his amp up (though he'd do that, too). It wasn't thin and twangy or lacking in any way, as so many online videos suggest. (I'm thinking of the atrocious sound we hear in that video of him on Belgian TV).

But as I'm reflecting now, I have to believe at least some of that awesome Jazz bass sound of Jaco's also has to do with the incredible musicianship of those he played with. Let's face it: Mike Stern and Hiram Bullock were two of his close associates. They played around him and gave him tons of space. They were't playing power chords that competed with the bottom range of the bass's aural space, they left that for Jaco to cover. And for drummers and percusisonists: Peter Erskine, Kenwood Dennard, Don Alias. These are sensitive players who complimented Jaco's playing and never overplayed. They let Jaco do his thing. Maybe I'm a little off topic by raising this, but I can't help think how the clarity, the ability to punch through so articulately and audibly, had to owe something to the fact that his fellow musicians gave him the space to start a solo quietly then build. (Now I'm thinking of his solo in "Donna Lee" from the Live in Montreal show, starting at about the 18:18 mark.



He brings the entire band down to a quiet hush for nearly 30 seconds before he starts to solo. Imagine that: thirty seconds to let the heights they reached in Bob Mintzer's solo to settle down, so he can command the space to begin his solo!

But back to the original question: was the tone fuller and fatter than what we generally hear on records? I say defintiely yes and again, so much more live than the videos that are so prominent on the internet would lead you to believe.
 
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#6
I saw him a bunch with Weather Report and once just playing solo bass opening for the Pat Metheny group at Alice Tully Hall with his loopers. His tone was different than the studio tone, but not by much. It was never thin or lacking balls by any means. He was a take no prisoners player, a man on a mission. The times I saw him were before his decline, he just flat out slayed!
 
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#7
webspeare said:
But back to the original question: was the tone fuller and fatter than what we generally hear on records? I say defintiely yes and again, so much more live than the videos that are so prominent on the internet would lead you to believe.
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Great replies so far, thanks.

Anyway, even on records (and with different gear used accordingly) I think of his tone with a distinct mid-range presence and not very heavy on the low end for articulation, but definitely not thin or bad. I hope that was not misunderstood.

I was sort of guessing that his live tone was somehow a bit different, especially back to when your amp's bleed played a great part for your tone as opposed to today's standards, which seems to be the case. Given the 361, I guess your placement in the audience might have contributed as well, and the tone he heard himself close to the cab was probably a bit different too.
It reminds me of playing the double bass with a bow: you player probably get the worst aural experience, with the tone heard more "from the neck" than the soundboard/box and a prominent hair/string/rosin noise when bowing - it affected me a bit, psychologically.

Back to Jaco, I also suspect (especially when listening to his records more attentively) that his tone was more open in the highs than most people (and I too, at first) tend to think - getting less noise because of the fretless board (he mentions that in his filmed method) while retaining a livelier and expressive sound at the same time.

If you were to drastically "roll off the tone" and play in the mix, I guess his lines would result way more muffled than they are in fact. I know that his place in the mix was quite prominent anyway, but what was happening around wasn't that quiet either - think of Havona's louder parts, you have to have a degree of bite in the highs.

It's also worth noting that isolated bass tracks averagely sound way livelier/dirtier/rougher etc than we might perceive in context or think of when hearing the piece, but that's something most of us know and I'm digressing a bit.
 
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#12
J_Bass said:
Subscribed. Always happy to learn more about Jaco.

OP, don't forget he played the fretted Jazz a lot, even more when performing live, I believe.
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Yes. Besides his (no pun intended) "precision"... in his hands, plucking technique and position, I guess the choice of using J basses predominantly with the bridge pickup contributed to the focus and intelligibility of notes in articulated and fast passages too, taming the "noise".

For instance, I'm mainly a P player (and unfortunately that's the bass model here) and as much as you can play fast and so on, there's an inherently more evident "clank" in the tone and fret noise gets across more easily in fast runs, unless you roll off your tone/EQ to a certain degree. That's not to say that one instrument is better than the other, since I still like playing Ps.
IMO, flatwounds on P basses help to gain directness of the note and pitch detection for faster parts - especially when shifting positions on the neck - while taming down the "noise".
 
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#14
I didn't heard him live, but i am shure that his favourite bass was - bass of doom and electronics on bass - neck pick up off brindge fully up and the tone at the midle or half off. As to amp - bass a litle on, midle more on and threble a litle off. That is where i got the Jaco tone on my Fender Jaco tribute bass and Aguilar tone hammer 500 amp and Hartke hydrive hd112 cab.
 
#15
I saw him several times both before and after he began to self destruct (which was really painful to watch since we all loved him so much). I can remember his being so goddamned loud, especially with Weather Report. So many older jazz guys complained about the volume when they went, but it was the late 70's - early 80's and everything fusion was loud as hell.

I think my takeaway was that his sound was definitely born of the pairing of the Jazz bass with the Acoustic Reverse mounted 18" cabinet. Thick and LOUD. It was always close to the recordings and had various levels of tone variation. I remember him fiddling with the knobs on his amp and various chorus and Eq boxes, sometimes to excess. He rarely touched the levels on his bass as I recall.
 
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#16
J_Bass said:
Subscribed. Always happy to learn more about Jaco.

OP, don't forget he played the fretted Jazz a lot, even more when performing live, I believe.
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Interesting. I saw him every chance I got and every time it was the Bass of doom. He had a sonic blue (?) Jazz onstage several times but I never saw him pick it up. I would have liked to hear him on a fretted live. Sorry I missed it.
 
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#17
thmsjordan said:
Interesting. I saw him every chance I got and every time it was the Bass of doom. He had a sonic blue (?) Jazz onstage several times but I never saw him pick it up. I would have liked to hear him on a fretted live. Sorry I missed it.
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I never saw him live, I was too young and from another country.

I just said that from interviews that I have read and from other TB threads about Jaco.


The fretted Jazz is very similar to the fretless.


Fretless:
jaco-pastorius-1500x1000.jpg


Fretted:
jaco-pastorius-1280x720.jpg
 
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#18
J_Bass said:
I never saw him live, I was too young and from another country.

I just said that from interviews that I have read and from other TB threads about Jaco.


The fretted Jazz is very similar to the fretless.


Fretless:
View attachment 4048312

Fretted:
View attachment 4048313
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Yes, if you watch the Jaco documentary or look at press photos from his life, you will see him with three fretted basses. You'll see the one pictured here, the light blue one I mentioned and there are pictures of him with a Swamp Ash Jazz bass that is apparently an aftermarket body since it looks pristine and doesn't appear to have ever been drilled for a pickguard. That one is pictured several times in photos used for the Jaco documentary. There may be more.... Anyone??

Come to think of it, his Hiroshima bass may have been the same as the sonic blue bass? Didn't they refinish it after he chucked it into a river?

Perhaps someone can correct me here, I am out of my depth on Jaco trivia. lol...
 
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