Small moments and Sound visions with michael manring

Image by Sarah Windisch

Bass virtuoso and innovator Michael Manring recently released his newest album, “Small Moments” and a short companion documentary called “Sound Visions.” I was able to email him a set of questions to delve into his songwriting process, how he thinks about the bass, whether or not he’s secretly a punk icon, and how he sees this moment in human history in relation to music in general and bass specifically.

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Doug Robertson- How important is understanding and appreciating the history of bass to you, and how important do you think it should be to modern players? Are there Must Know recordings for every bassist regardless of genre?

Michael Manring- The history of the bass guitar is relatively brief, but I think it's helpful to understand where it came from and to be able to place it in the larger context of music and culture. This is partially an objective process, but like all artistic undertakings, there's a lot of individual assessment that needs to go into it.

There are several recordings that can be thought of as having shaped how we got to where we are, and a lot of the lists I've seen out there do a good job of putting things in perspective. I seem to recall Bass Player magazine had a good one a few years back. My personal list would differ somewhat from the published ones, but I'm not sure how important that is. Overall I'd advocate for a broad general understanding of music over bass-specific one, but in any case, if I was making a list of essential bass recordings it'd have to be at least 100 or so and the winnowing process would be imprecise and vexing.

DR- You're famous for, among other things, the hyperbass- an instrument so complex I noticed my Thunderbird trying to read over my shoulder when I was reading up on it. How many tuning and tonal combination options do you have at your disposal? With the growing popularity of five, six, and even seven string basses have you ever thought about extending your range even further by making a 5yper Bass? (You can have that name, by the way. You're welcome.) 

MM- Ha! Joe and I started construction of a double neck 6-string Hyperbass (a "12-per bass'?) many years ago and got most of it done, but we haven't been able to afford to finish it. I have several 5 and 6-string basses, and even a 10-string bass, that I love, but there's something appealing about the 4-strings. Maybe it's just because I'm a contrarian, but I think there's more to it. Four is the least number of strings I need to be able to do what I want to do, and that's a powerful concept as it engenders efficiency. With just four strings, every string is always doing something and I can give my full attention to each one.

There is no standard tuning for the Hyperbass. I use piccolo strings on it and I don't know what they are supposed to be tuned to, but that doesn't really matter to me. Bass is a low tension instrument and using these extra light gauge strings means the Hyperbass can be tuned over a very wide range. The low string, for instance, I tune over the range of more than an octave. This makes for radical changes in tension, of course, and I know that's an uncomfortable concept for many bassists, but I like to try to take advantage of the various colors these tension changes offer. I can't quite tune all four strings over that big a range, but, for the sake of estimation, let's say the average tuning range of the strings is a major 6th, or 10 notes. That means, applying some rudimentary set theory, the total number of possible tunings for the Hyperbass would be 10 x10 x10 x10 or 10,000. 

The dynamic tuning system on the Hyperbass makes it possible to move quickly between a subset of these tunings. I originally had the standard hipshot Extender keys on the headstock. These allow for two tuning positions for each string and this means the number of tunings available by moving the Hipshot levers is 2 x 2 x 2 x 2  = 16. The bridge is designed to change the tuning of strings in groups so it can move just one string, two, three or all four. There are three tuning positions with the bridge. Since it's rare for a double re-tuning to be at pitch (say, if the Hipshot moves a string down by a whole step and the bridge moves it down by a half step, it is unlikely the combination will lower the original pitch by an in tune minor third), it's safe to assume the bridge adds just two additional tunings to our 16 for a total of 18. 

However, currently I have the DoubleStop Hipshots on the Hyperbass, which have 3 positions for each string. This makes things considerably more complicated as the number of tunings available with the Hipshots alone has now become 3 x 3 x 3 x 3 = 81; adding the the two additional bridge tunings gives us a total of 83. That's just theoretical though. In practice other factors and possibilities come into play and it's actually feasible to get more than that if you're determined enough. 

DR- I saw you talk about how you've been working on “Sardonic Grin” for years. Can you explain what that looks like with your process? 

MM- "Sardonic Grin" was a bit of a puzzle, both compositionally and technically. I knew pretty much what I wanted to do from the beginning, but it took time to work out the composition so it had the formal integrity I was looking for. I'm very lucky in that I get asked to work on a lot of music projects, but this means work on my own music is often relegated to little bits of down time I can steal wherever they are available. I'm kind of obsessed with form in music and to work out the structural process for a piece like "Sardonic Grin" takes a fair amount of intellectual capital. I tinkered with it off and on for years, both with the bass in my hands and away from the instrument. The final bit of the puzzle came when I was standing on a beautiful beach in Sardinia looking out at the ocean. When I got back to my hotel room I was able to put it all together and I've been happy with that structure ever since. I wouldn't say it's a particularly complex composition. It just takes a long time to get it right - especially when I'm involved in so much other music!

Once I had the composition in the form I wanted I found the piece was quite a challenge to play, but this is common for me. I seem to have a knack for writing at the edge of my ability! I never know exactly how many hours of practice it's going to take to be able to get through a composition before it begins to sound passable, but it's usually plenty, and "Sardonic Grin" was on the far side of that equation. Again, I wouldn't say it's especially challenging technically - it just was for me!

DR- Small Moments is a beautiful album, front to back. I love the mixing of sounds in “Open the Box”. Did you set out to write a beautiful album or does that just happen? I would even say that you’re painterly in your approach to music. Does that resonate with you?

MM- Thank you so much for the kind words! I hope folks aren't disappointed when I say I don't think about music visually. I don't really have a "movie" in mind when I'm working on a composition and for me, just the sonic experience is engrossing. However, I'm thrilled when folks tell me they see something when they hear tunes of mine and I love hearing the stories.

These days I don't generally compose with an album in mind. I'm just always working on music and little by little certain continuities begin to appear. I'm generally so involved with the process I don't have much perspective on the big picture until everything is nearly done. With "Small Moments" I was a bit surprised that it ended up with so much melancholy, but I suppose that's reflective of my experience in the world over the last few years.

DR- I'm always interested in how instrumental songs get their names. Does the name come from the mood of the piece? The mood you're trying to convey? For example, “Dance of the Pessimists” has that quick higher note run going through it while long whole notes boom across the top. How literally do you think about that as a dance, and what are you hoping the listener is hearing or seeing?

MM- It's nice living at a time when we can give our instrumental pieces titles. For a lot of Western history, you had to call a piece "Sonata in B minor" or something, which isn't a title, but just a categorization. Over the last 40 years or so it's been more expected to use titles and I like this because it gives me a chance to add one more creative element to the work. I like to think of titles almost as very small poems. As you suggest, it's an opportunity to give a piece a sense of context, like the setting for a play.  A title can also offer a clue as to the structure of the music, as in "By Fives" and "Encirclements" where the letter count reflects the rhythmic themes.

I liked the title "Dance of the Pessimists" because it made me laugh. Normally I like to include a fair amount of humor into my work, but somehow that didn't happen much for "Small Moments" so I was glad to sneak "Dance of the Pessimists" in there. 

For every art form there are always people who resist creativity and innovation. While it's easy for a guy like me to get frustrated by that point-of-view, I actually think of it as a vital part of the process. While it can be predictable, I actually find that kind of pessimism quite beautiful, like a dance.

DR- I saw an interview with Devin Townsend once where he talked about his music and how the listener relates to it and he basically said, "When this happens in the song it means I want you to feel this." Do you think about your music that way?

MM- I'm a fan of Devin's music, but I don't really see my own music that way. I like to go on a kind of journey with music, but I don't really expect other folks to go there with me. In fact, I'm always kind of surprised when people say they do! The journeys I take rarely have a specific story line, but rather just a general narrative emotional flow and I'm open to whatever interpretation listeners want to bring to it.

DR- In Sound Visions you talk about how sometimes you’ll strike a note and listen to it ring. Do you have a favorite chord or note? 

MM- I'm sorry, I don't. In fact, over the last ten years or so I've been working with a harmonic concept that doesn't include identifiable notes and chords. That may sound odd, but the basic concept is simply that not all Bb's, for example, are the same. Even though they may look the same on paper, the Bb below middle C played on a bass clarinet is a very different sonic and emotional experience from one I play on my bass with, say, a shred distortion sound. The effect is even more pronounced with combinations of notes. This concept is more about resonance than harmony, and it's perhaps less academic, but it's a central aspect of my musical point-of-view.

DR- Your liner notes say “Small Moments” was recorded live with minimal overdubs. Does that mean you wrote the songs but then whatever happens live happens? Do you try to play them to the recorded note when you play live? Can you talk about a happy accident that resulted in a song moving in an unexpected direction on Small Moments? 

MM- I wanted each piece on "Small Moments" to be playable live using only the gear the airlines will allow me to carry with me. All the pieces were written at least in part while traveling and I like imagining playing them all somewhere even if I never get the opportunity. Traveling has always been a big part of my life and these tunes got imbued with that spirit. 

There are actually no overdubs on "Small Moments," although I keep reading reviews that insist there are! Working with just the sounds I can produce live with minimal gear offers a nice way to focus my work and I love being able to showcase the incredibly wide range of colors and emotions the bass is capable of creating.

In my compositions I use improvisation as a structural element. Some of my tunes have very little; some are almost all improv. In any case, I rarely try to play pieces like the recorded version live. For one thing, the recorded version is typically not very good. I usually have to record a piece shortly after I'm able to play it acceptably. After the recording is done, I'm able to listen to the piece many times and often have the chance to play it live a lot as well. This process inevitably deepens my relationship to a piece, so I look forward to how each one will evolve over time, usually in ways I never could have predicted. In fact, I think "Dance of the Pessimists" is probably one of the most under-formed pieces I've ever released. I'd really love to have the chance to perform it live many times to see if it will grow into what I'm hoping it can become. 

There are often happy accidents in composing music. The one that comes to mind for "Small Moments" is "23 Oktober." I had the initial ideas for the piece at home in Oakland, but no time to work them out. The chance to do that came many months later, in Hungary. I was on tour there one October and we had planned to play in Budapest on the 23rd, but we had to cancel because it's a national holiday that marks the beginning of the 1956 uprising and there were protests that were expected to turn violent. So instead, I holed up in a little bed and breakfast in the countryside and had an entire day to dedicate to working on the piece - a real luxury! I worked throughout the day and by nighttime it was finished and I realized I had inadvertently composed it in a 5/8 rhythm that's endemic to that part of the world.

DR- Do you still practice? Or do you think of it as something else now? 

MM- I love to practice and it's a good thing because there is so very much to do! 

DR- I think most bassists play bass, but it seems like you’re actually playing the bass itself, the instrument itself, with all the tuning options and pickups in the nut and body. How does all the tonal options you have available change your compositional process? With the amount of choices ingrained in the hyperbass how much time is spent after the song is written playing with all the options to find the in-bass mix that you love?

MM- One of the fun things about playing bass is that, in my opinion at least, the concept of the instrument isn't really fully formed yet. I love to experiment with possibilities in technique, design and processing to see where the instrument can go. Often, design aspects of the instrument will inspire compositions, such as the re-tuning mechanisms giving rise to the primary themes in "Tetrahedron." When I start a piece I usually can already hear in my mind's ear how to realize the recording process, but sometimes it's a puzzle to work through. Since the Hyperbass has a separate output for each string, I like to take advantage of the possibilities that aspect offers for sonic imaging in the stereo field, but sometimes a piece seems better served by recording from the mono output. It really depends on the concept behind each composition and I try to align the recording process to each one's guiding principles.

DR- How do you find new music and what are you digging right now?

MM- I often hear people my age say there is no good music being made now and It's always hard for me to figure out what the heck they're talking about! Some of the music on my current playlists include Allaudin Mathieu, Mysore Manjunath, Malcolm Braff, Morton Feldman, Robin Adams, Easley Blackwood, Terry Riley, Gyan Riley, Ted Greene, Jojo Mayer, Dusan Bogdanovic, Thinking Plague, Douglas Alonso, Kaushiki Chakrabarty, Bill Withers, Rajesh Vaidya, Chris Dave, Nate Wood, Tigran Hamasyan, Marco Minneman, Beethoven, Stravinsky, Adam Deitch, Isaac Albéniz, and Eugene Blacknell.

DR- You probably would never think of yourself like this, but I think of you being both a true progressive musician in the fullest sense- not just playing a million notes in 11/6, but actual pushing your playing in new and different directions without constraints- and an embodiment of the punk ethos- that being I don't care what you think, I'm not in this for the fame or money, I'm in this to say what's inside me. Only a true punk, like Devo was punk, would go full solo bass. I don't have a specific question here, I just wanted to bounce the idea that you're secretly a punk icon off you to see what happened.

MM- I grew up at a time when both progressive rock and punk came into being and I dug both! I always try to learn something from every kind of music I come across and I think you described well the most compelling ideas of these two.

DR- Dr Seuss wrote Green Eggs and Ham on a bet from his editor that he couldn't write a children's book using only 50 words. Have you set musical challenges for yourself just to see what happens? 

MM- Yes! In fact, a couple of the pieces on "Small Moments" fit into that category. "By Fives" is probably the most "etude-ish" piece I've ever written. I'm a student of Carnatic rhythm, which comes from the south of India and I composed "By Fives" to explore ideas about how rhythms based in 5 can fit into a 2/2 time signature. Of course I had to play it on my 10-string bass which has 5 sets of 2 strings!

Image provided by M. Manring

DR- What does "groove", "feel", and "soul" mean to you in a musical context? Are they the same thing? Can they be taught? Are they vital?

MM- I'm not an expert in what's happening in musical culture, but I worry sometimes these have become buzzwords. By that, I mean concepts it's fashionable to talk about without perhaps an understanding of their deeper significance. "Groove" and "feel" in particular are often used to describe rhythmic objectives and that's not a problem, but I'm concerned that their use sometimes obscures the larger context of how rhythm functions in the psyche and in society.

A lot of my thinking on this is informed by the little bit of instruction I've had in Bata, the music connected to the practice of Afro-Cuban Santeria. In West African musics and musics of the West African diaspora, rhythm is a vehicle of consciousness expansion. If the proper rhythms are played in the correct way, listeners (maybe "participants" is a better word) actually take on the consciousness of the associated deity. I think this might be an accurate, or at least, useful way to think about rhythm -- that it has powerful effects on consciousness and being, that open us to the deepest psychological and spiritual possibilities. There's nothing wrong with using rhythm to be hip, cool or to make a lot of money, but that conception is considerably more venal than the one drawn from our most central humanity. I suppose you could even say the two conceptions are opposite to the degree that the goal of one is glorification of the ego, while the goal of the other is transcendence of the ego.

To answer your questions, I use these terms to communicate with other musicians, but I don't think about them much myself and I don't worry about their subtler meanings. To be "good" at rhythm, you need to do a heck of a lot of study, so certainly a lot of rhythmic art can be taught, but there is a very large experiential component that doesn't lend itself well to academic methods. And yes, rhythm is vital. It's about as vital as anything can be!

DR- How did “Sound Visions” come to be, and why release it on YouTube? Was there a temptation or a plan for a more detailed Behind the Scenes/Making Of documentary or did you want to keep it short and more philosophical than technical? Does talking about the technical aspects of playing bore you after so many years?

MM_ While I was finishing up "Small Moments" I was contacted by Andy Westhoff about the possibility of doing a short film. We discussed the options and decided it'd probably be in everyone's best interest to make it a companion project to the record release. YouTube is really the default platform for independent projects these days, so that seemed like the obvious home for it. "Sound Visions" is really Andy's baby from concept to final editing and I can't tell you how lucky I feel to have had the opportunity to work with such a wonderful artist.

I'd like to release some homemade performance and explanatory videos about the pieces on "Small Moments." As soon as I get time I'll start to work on one or two and if there's interest I'll keep going.

DR- Regarding “Sound Visions”- do you have synesthesia?

MM- No, not at all, unfortunately. To me sound is just sound, but that's plenty!

DR- In Sound Visions you say bass sounds to you like who we are and what we're doing at this point in history and I'm wondering if you can expand on that?

MM- I describe it this way: the bass guitar was invented not long before I was born, not far from where I live. It's literally an instrument of my time and place and I've grown up with it. It's imbued with our zeitgeist, and I think sometimes we forget how different our era is from any other. The bass was designed to be mass produced and inexpensive, an instrument of the middle class rather than the aristocracy, and of the economic paradigm that has so shaped our world. Perhaps most significantly for me, it's a fusion of acoustic and electric, old technology and new technology. I have the feeling it "wants" its sound to be electronically enhanced and altered in a way acoustic instruments don't. This for me, represents one of the main challenges of humanity and one we face especially poignantly in the current era. Biologically, we're primates of the savannah, but we can't live without our man-made comforts and conveniences. Our technology gives us enormous advantages but also presents significant challenges and that push-pull relationship is one of the biggest hallmarks of contemporary life. Art is a place we can work out challenges like this in semi-metaphorical situations and I believe important sociological ideas often find expression in music before becoming standard thinking in a social system. For me, playing and composing for bass is a way of experiencing life as completely as possible.

DR- Obviously The Great Stay Home of 2020 is hurting a lot of musicians. What kinds of things are you doing differently because of it?

MM- It seems to me the standard model of the music industry has been shaky for a long time now and I wonder if this will be a turning point. Most of the venues in which I perform were struggling to stay open even before the pandemic and for the last few years I've been thinking about how to make and market music in alternative ways. It seems to me this crisis may jumpstart the process. I have a small hope it will encourage folks to think in new and creative ways about economic ideas in general. The arts are often bellwethers for ideas in the culture, so maybe we struggling musicians are a testing ground for some new thinking. Mostly though, I'm just trying to get through one day at a time! 

I feel quite lucky in many ways. First, since the lockdown was announced, I've been contacted about playing on many recordings. I love doing session work and I've worked on someone's project almost every day since this began. I'm also lucky that many folks have asked for remote lessons. I think I learn more than I teach, though! I've also been starting to do virtual workshops and performances. It's been a busy time!

DR- How often do bassists come up to you and only manage to say, "Dude… Like...how... like… What the hell, man? How?" Because that was the sum total of the first draft of this interview.

MM- Ha! I guess it does happen with some frequency. I apologize, but this way of playing bass just makes sense to me!

DR- What can our readers do to support you during this trying time for musicians? Can we expect a tour or maybe a pandemic-inspired album when all this is over?

MM- Thank you! The most helpful thing at the moment is to buy music online. The outlet that offers the best deal for us musicians these days is Bandcamp, but other services are fine, too. We get paid very little from streaming services, but streaming does help, as does visiting our social media pages (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube).

We'll have to see what shape the music infrastructure is in when this is all said and done. If there are places to play I'd be delighted to hit the road again, but if not, I'll find other ways of participating in music making as best I can. I hope to see you soon.

Image provided by M. Manring

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Many thanks to Mr. Manring for taking the time to share his thoughts and help us all be better. Don’t forget to check out “Small Moments”, “Sound Visions”, and all of his other work.

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Doug Robertson is the editor of The Bass Blog, the blog component of The Bass Channel, your one stop YouTube channel for all things bass. His number one is a Mexican Geddy Lee Signature Jazz and his boomer is a BEAD tuned T-Bird. Find books by Doug here. If you’re interested in contributing to The Bass Blog please reach out to Doug at doug@thebasschannel.net. We would love to hear from you.