Date : 18th April 2005
Time: 19h00
Venue: Damelin Campus, Bramley

Attendance 33:
Steve Crozet, Phil Raath, Quinn Hawley, Concord Nkabinde, Kerry Hiles, Doggit, Glenn Haggis, Kai Horsthemke, Carlo Mombelli, Sylvester Majola, Mlungisi Gegana, Martin Simpson, Anthea Buys, Justin Taylor, Trevor Muller, Justin Maree, Gerhard Kok, Gerrie Lubbe, Nick Cook, Wesley Chetty, Jessica Clarke, John Clarke, Imogen Clarke, Fred Clarke, Trevor Smith, Schané Coetzee, Ashwin Ashley, Greg Gibb, Sheggy Olusi, Ashley van Wyk, Arthur, Michael Phillips & Michael Brown
Apologies : Dave Askes

Martin Simpson welcomed everyone and immediately introduced Carlo Mombelli who, in turn, introduced one of his students, Fred, who would provide an entrée to Carlo’s workshop. Although apparently a ‘fledgling’ bassist who has only been playing for 18 months, Fred impressed with a dazzling technical display that included slide bass playing, side-handed slapping, popping, string-bending, natural and artificial harmonics, rapid strumming and chording, de-tuning and tapping. The performance was warmly received: Fred is a huge talent who will undoubtedly also discover the joys of thematic development, melody and space.

Then Carlo began his workshop on improvisation. He started by emphasizing ‘being young’, nurturing an ongoing willingness to strive, to progress, to learn. As an example, he mentioned his own desire to investigate the double bass – at the ripe age of 45. He next mentioned the importance of daily practice. It won’t do to practice 15 hours once a week; it’s much better to set aside time on a daily basis and to establish a routine, even if it is only 15 minutes of dedicated practice. In the same breath, he mentioned practicing composition: the more you practice, the better you get at it. Turning to improvisation, Carlo contended that the biggest threat to improvisation, especially improvising in front of people, is fear, mainly the fear of making mistakes. In this regard, he emphasized the imperative of not trying to show off: ‘It’s much more important to touch people than it is to impress them.’ On the same subject, he referred to the value of technique, not as an instrument to dazzle but to ‘help to bring out what is inside’. While acknowledging the possibility of being an artist with no or hardly any technique, he claimed that technical facility helps to express the innermost, to share it with others – and also to recognize the quality of something, even if it isn’t one’s taste.

Carlo began playing on a fretless 4-string acoustic Vester bass (‘a cheap piece of balsa wood from South Korea’). He explained that he sees everything vertically rather than horizontally, when practicing, and spoke of the importance of practicing everything over at least three strings. When moving horizontally, Carlo advised ‘jumping’ with the first two fingers rather than with the ring finger or pinkie, as this would impact negatively on accuracy and intonation, especially on a fretless: ‘Practice slowly, in order to build up a library in your subconscious’, a process Carlo referred to as the formation of ‘motor-ingrams’: ‘the bigger the library, the greater the possibility of intuition and spontaneous creation’. This he took to illustrate the adage, ‘For art to appear, you must disappear’.

Carlo then turned to the major components of practice and improvisation, harmonic knowledge and understanding and the groove – time and rhythmic confidence. With regard to the former, he stated that arpeggios ground harmonic movement, before embarking on ‘the method according to Mombelli’. This method involves both intervallic and scalar permutations. The former refers to the distance between two notes (1-3, 1-4, 1-5 etc), while the latter refers to a series of notes. Practicing these in ascending and descending patterns should include both ascending and descending movements within these patterns, an exercise that yields four different permutations for each intervallic combination. After emphasizing the importance of being able to sing everything one plays, not least for purposes of ear training, Carlo went on to working on scalar permutations, using the same ascending/ descending formula. He recommended practicing all seven modes, the pentatonic scales, as well as the symmetrical scales: chromatic, whole-tone, diminished and the diminished blues scale. On the subject of the chromatic scale, he mentioned the value of ‘playing away from the harbour’ (the tonal center), in order to create tension and maintain interest. As a third exercise along these lines, the same ascending/ descending patterns, Carlo suggested working on triads (three notes) and 7ths (4 notes). All these improvisation aids work not only in solos, but also in lower register groove patterns. The example used here was ‘Giant Steps’, with its ‘ridiculous’ demands on the bassist, both in terms of harmonic knowledge and flurries of 8th notes at high speed, not to mention its exigencies for the improvising soloist.

With regard to groove, Carlo repeatedly referred to the benefits of practicing with a metronome – in that it improves time. But it ‘should not lead to automatism’: ‘pulling’ and ‘pushing’ are essential elements in groove playing. Giving an example of what he calls ‘being in the state of artificial loudness’, a ‘zen-zone time exercise’, he suggested setting the metronome at a moderate tempo, playing the same note, altering the fretting fingers, but taking care to maintain the same attack and volume, in a kind of focusing or meditational exercise. Once in this state or zone, one would begin subdividing the beat, employing half-note triplets, quarter note triplets, 8th notes, 8th note triplets, etc before gradually ‘stripping down’ and taking the process back to the beginning. A useful exercise here would be to count the metronome beats as indicating ‘2’ and ‘4’, in order to make it ‘swing’. Carlo’s ‘zen’ approach proved to be the perfect finale to an illuminating and enriching workshop.

Those less (or un-)familiar with modes might have hoped for a more detailed demonstration of these, how they could be applied in improvisation, especially when negotiating changes, and perhaps for an account of ‘leading’ and ‘leaning’ notes while soloing and comping. But everyone would agree that we all got something out of the workshop that we didn’t know before. Carlo’s anecdotes and frequently self-deprecating asides made this a hugely enjoyable event, clear evidence that humour is the shortest distance between two people, in this case between Carlo and everyone of us.

Kai