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["The Awakening"]

Listening to Primus was a huge inspiration for me

when I first started playing bass.

This is me my sophomore year of high school

butchering Les Claypool's arrangement of Master of Puppets.

So whether you're just a fan of Primus

or you're looking to improve your bass game,

here are seven reasons why I think Les Claypool is awesome,

including bass lesson tips

you can use to sound weird like Les.

[BassBuzz Intro]

When I first heard Les slapping on tunes

like My Name is Mud or Hamburger Train

I was just like WUUTTTTTTTT

That sounds so crazy!

He must be doing some weird, crazy, weird slap technique.

But can I tell you a secret?

His technique actually isn't that weird.

And if you can nail some slap fundamentals,

you can actually nail a lot of Primus riffs.

Les was influenced by slap grandmasters

Larry Graham and Louis Johnson.

And if you look side by side,

you can see his slap hand is moving in the same basic way.

Les' slap technique arsenal includes slaps with the thumb,

pops with the index finger,

which is basic stuff that I teach you how to do

in my Idiot-Proof Slap video.

He also uses a lot of hammer-ons,

As well as fretting hand slaps,

which is where you smack your fretting fingers

against the strings, which makes this percussive sound

that allows you to do two hand drumming kind of patterns.

So what makes his slap lines sounds so unique?

Well, one thing is his quirky patterns.

A lot of slap lines just go slap-pop on a bunch of octaves,

which you can hear all over the place

from Larry Graham's Earthquake-

To Freddy Washington on Forget Me Nots.

To Flea on Tell Me Baby.

But you'd be pretty hard pressed to find

basic slap pop octaves in a Primus song.

Take something like Lacquerhead

from 1999's Antipop record.

Most of this bassline doesn't even have any notes,

it's just a cool percussive pattern

that alternates slap, fretting slap, pop, fretting slap.

With some funky hammer ons thrown in,

which sounds like this.

One, two, three, four.

The second thing that stands out about Les' slapping

is he's very, very fast.

Check out the solo break in Lacquer Head,

he's playing another cool drumming pattern-

But at like breakneck speed, which sounds like this.

One, two, three, four.

By the way, I tabbed out all the Primus riffs

in this video for you in a Noteflight score

if you want to mess around with these on your own later.

The link is in the description.

So where should you start if you want to slap like Les?

One, think rhythm first and just start messing around

with some patterns you like between your slaps, your pops,

your fretting slaps, your hammer ons-

And two, once your fundamentals are in place

you can start working up your speed gradually

'cause the secret to being able to do this-

Is to be able to do this.

And work your speed up over time.

But we're still missing one big piece

of Les' slap approach, and that's his signature strumming.

So gently strum that like button

if you're enjoying this

and make sure you tap subscribe for more bass le-

okay, I'll stop.

Most bands don't really have bass chords,

we just kind of dutifully play one note at a time.

But Primus has many, many, many bass chords.

Les has a couple cool but simple chord shapes

he uses the most, which is good news

for those of us trying to hone our Les Claypool impressions.

**Say baby do you want to lay down with me?**

Les' most used shape is the mighty power chord.

If you watched my bass shapes video,

you'll recognize this is just a root,

a fifth, and an octave all played at once.

This shape is super versatile,

it works on major and minor chords,

and it's not too difficult to play.

An easy Primus riff you can get started on these with

is Here Come the Bastards from Sailing the Seas of Cheese.

To strum these chords, Les just anchors his thumb

to either the side of the neck

or the low string he's not using,

and then strums up and down with his fingers,

which sounds like this.

One, two, three, four, five.

What makes these power chords sound really Les-y

is when he combines the strumming with his slap technique.

Check it out on John the Fishermen

from the Frizzle Fry album.

This line starts with just some strummed power chords

sliding around, which is a great way

to wear all the skin off of your pinky.

And then he switches to slapping for some single notes

and then back to the strums, back and forth,

and it all sounds like this.

One, two, three, four.

What gets tricky with this technique

is switching back and forth between the slaps and the strums

more quickly like he does in Tommy the Cat

from Seas of Cheese.

This line starts with a quick strum or two at the beginning,

and then he quickly shifts into

more standard slap gear for the remainder.

And it's even harder on a six string fretless bass

like he originally played it on.

Let's see if I can make it through this alive.

The other chord shape that Les seems to favor

I like to call the Batman shape.

Because it gives you the old Batman theme song.

♪ Na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, Batman! ♪

Not like this newfangled Christian Bale Batman,

I mean like old-school Adam West Batman.

This shape is heavily featured in Too Many Puppies

from Frizzle Fry, another great slap and strum riff

that sounds like this.

One, two, three, four.

If you want to get chording like Les,

start by just practicing some simple slap, strum,

slap, strum, back and forth to get the coordination

and try out some power chords or some Batman shape

and put it all together and you can come up with

a pretty decent rip-off Primus-y kind of riff.

But what the hell notes

is Les putting on all those slaps and strums?

That's what we'll talk about next.

With most of the bands and bass players

that I break down for you on this channel,

it's pretty easy for me to say, oh,

they were using this scale on this chord

in this key, bada bing, bada boom.

KRUSTY: Bada bing, bada boom, I'm done.

But that is NOT how the notes and harmony work in Primus.

Part of what makes them different

is the frequent use of dissonance.

Some combinations of notes most of us would agree

sound nice and pretty or consonant.

Other note combos sound more intense and jarring,

which we call dissonant.

So Primus leverages these more dissonant note combos

to get their signature weird sound.

Check out the main riff from Fisticuffs

from 1998's Brown album.

We have two gnarly dissonances featured in this bassline.

The first one is called a tritone, or diminished fifth,

which makes this nice shape up a string

and up a fret from your starting note,

and we'll revisit that shape later

when we talk about Les' tapping lines.

We've also got some heavy use of the minor second,

or half step, which is just moving one fret.

And that sounds super heavy

with the notes played one after the other like this,

or even clashier

if you were to play those notes simultaneously.

[extreme bass face]

Here's what this riff sounds like in the song,

it's completely filthy.

One, two, three, four.

Compare that to a less dissonant bassline

like Money by Pink Floyd,

which I've moved up to the same key as Fisticuffs.

I chose this song to compare

because it starts with a very similar shape

to the Fisticuffs riff.

In Money we descend from that octave down to the fifth,

then down to the root and then we play some cool,

but easy to digest, minor pentatonic scale notes.

It's super chill, right?

You could groove along to that bassline all day.

But in Fisticuffs, we swap that fifth

for that nasty tritone.

And then we get some equally nasty minor second action

in place of those pentatonic notes.

And now it's like, whoa, we're not chilling,

we're at an evil carnival

and we're gonna die! or something.

You'll also see these dissonances

in most of the other riffs we look at in this video,

not to mention all of Larry LaLonde's

super cool and quirky guitar parts.

I love how these guys dare to get super weird

and dissonant with their note choices,

because if nobody ever went outside of the right notes,

we wouldn't get to listen to Primus,

it would all just sound like this.

[I'm so sorry I just had to do this]

[I thought it would be funny]

[I hope you don't get nightmares]

So you can create feeling and music

without following the rules,

it's just gonna be a really weird feeling.

For established styles of music,

yes you're gonna need some standard scales

and chord progressions.

If you want to play blues,

you need to know the 12 bar blues,

if you want to play country,

you're gonna need to play some roots and fifths.

And that's why I cover common harmony

and chord progressions and stuff

in my Beginner to Badass course,

to get you rolling with just standard normal, popular music.

But if you just want to sound wild and weird,

then go way outside the box

and just get weird and dissonant with it.

I don't know if that's going in the video...

Well this just wouldn't be a very good Les Claypool video

if we didn't talk about some tapping stuff.

Tapping is where you smack the strings down

onto the fretboard so you can play notes with both hands

rather than having to pluck.

But you won't hear Les doing any like

Van Halen style tapping

where the notes all flow in the same melodic lines.

That kind of thing.

His approach is more chordal and rhythmic

where the hands are kind of trading off.

Kind of like the slap drumming patterns

we were looking at earlier,

which means that neither hand ever has to work too hard,

'cause you're trading back and forth.

You can see this play out on the main riff

from the Pork Soda album track DMV,

which is a song I relate to having probably gone

to some of the same terrible DMV locations as Les

in the north San Francisco Bay area.

The fretting hand is interjecting

some low notes periodically,

so what would normally be your plucking hand

is only hitting three notes in a row at the most, like this.

One, two, three, four.

Also remember the tritone,

that dissonant shape we talked about earlier

where your notes are one string and one fret apart?

Les loves to use that shape for the high notes

in his tapping lines, which is because of the quirky sound,

but probably also 'cause it's a nice natural shape

for your fingers to make on the neck.

You can see that shape in DMV,

and also in probably his most famous tapping line

Jerry Was a Race Car Driver.

Both of these songs were originally played

on the six string fretless, by the way,

but I'm adapting them to four strings

so you can still play them without a big, crazy bass.

So the tritones played up here take the focus in this line

and they get broken out by some taps

and hammer ons in the fretting hand.

And that sounds like this.

Wow, playing that riff makes me feel like

I just landed a Kickflip McTwist.

So if you want to fake a Primus tapping vibe

with no theory required,

just grab that tritone shape with your plucking hand,

throwing in some random notes with the other hand,

drum back and forth,

and you'll have a pretty convincing,

powdered, rehydrated version of Primus.

[Les] "What drives me is experiencing new things,

new music or new musicians, or just a new challenge.

I like turning over rocks and looking for the new,

whatever's new for me, it's exciting."

I really admire Les' commitment to creativity,

even when it might've cost him fame or fortune.

Take his choice to put Primus on hiatus

after the 1999 Antipop record.

"I remember towards the end of the 90s with Primus

feeling that the well had dried up on all levels,

personally, creatively, enthusiastically.

Getting away from the band and doing other things

was the smartest thing I did for my creativity."

I don't know about you,

but I actually love the Antipop record,

it doesn't sound like a dry well to me,

but it's cool that Les had the wisdom

to go find creative juice elsewhere

and not just keep milking the money machine.

As he says, "it's a smart business move

to nurture your brand and stick to it,

but for me it wouldn't have been a smart move creatively."

Of course, Primus got back together eventually,

but Les has kept it spicy with a ton of other projects

over the years, including

Colonel Les Claypool's Fearless Flying Frog Brigade,

Oysterhead with Trey Anastasio and Stewart Copeland,

Colonel Claypool's Bucket of Bernie Brains,

with Buckethead and Bernie Worrell,

Duo de Twang, and most recently

The Claypool Lennon Delirium with Sean Lennon.

So what's the takeaway for those of us

who aren't 10 years deep into a super successful band

and needing to diversify our creative projects?

The lesson I take from this

is sometimes creativity needs space.

Taking breaks and trying new angles can allow

fresh ideas to come in so you don't get burnt out.

If you apply this to bass playing and practice,

maybe that means taking a break from your scales

if they're becoming stales and do something fun,

like some Bach or... something that you think is fun.

I think Bach is fun.

If you're sick of your ear training practice,

maybe try taking a break and just like listen

to a whole record without multitasking, uninterrupted.

Seriously, like when's the last time you did that?

Take a page from the Les Claypool book

and when you're facing burnout, give it some space.

Primus was often lumped in with other alternative

kind of rocky, funky bands in the 90s

like the Chili Peppers and Fishbone.

But if you listen to just the bass,

you can hear that tone wise,

Les didn't really sound like anyone else.

You can nail the strums and the slaps

and the weird notes and the taps,

but to truly rip off a Primus riff

you need to copy that Les Claypool bass tone.

His gear and sound has kind of shifted around

over the years, but one thing has remained consistent,

at least to my ear.

The bass tone always kind of matches the sound of his voice.

This is a cool thing I've never noticed

with any other singing bass player,

but if you listen to Les' bass by itself-

And then listen to him sing-

There's a nasal mid-rangy quality that they both share.

Like if you're talking

and you want to do your Les Claypool impression,

which I can't get enough of,

then you just gradually shift your voice

up, up, up into our nose until it's like

hello Mr. Krinkle. [Kermit approves]

And you can do the same kind of Les impression

on a bass guitar by shifting

to the pickup that's closest to the bridge,

which is a sound that's typically characterized

as being nasal.

On Les' main Carl Thompson basses, the pickup,

which translates the vibration of the strings

into the sound you hear,

is approximately where the bridge pickup

on a Fender Jazz is placed.

Even if you're not a bass tone nerd,

you'll still be able to hear how crucial this

mid-rangy nasal sound is to the overall Primus vibe.

Let's test it out on the verse from Tommy the Cat

that doesn't usually have bass on it

so you can hear it in the mix.

Here's the standard jazz bass sound

where you're hearing 50/50 the signal

from the neck pickup and the bridge pickup,

that sounds like this.

It sounds kind of out of place, right?

It's a good, solid bass tone, but it's just really

not what you're used to hearing in this context.

So now let's try it in Les mode with all bridge pickup,

it's going to sound a lot more nasal and Primus-y.

As a bass teacher, I'm guilty of leading my students

towards more classic, standard bass tones.

I want you to have good all around tone

for a variety of genres and be able to cover

your favorite artists.

But if Primus is what you're aiming for,

or some other experimental sound,

you're gonna need to go off the beaten track

and follow your ear.

In a music industry where he saw other bands

compromising their visions and opting for money,

Les Claypool has always chosen to just be Les Claypool.

LES: "I think we were able to stick to our ideals

and not be too terribly dickish about it

and that's why we've been able to

stick around as long as we have."

From the wild sounds, to the quirky get-ups,

to the sweet dance moves, Les has never been afraid

to defy the laws of tradition. [get it?]

At the same time he doesn't force being intentionally weird.

According to Les, "I've been told how weird our music is,

but to me it all seems normal."

I also love his low key understated humility,

which really comes across in soundbites like

"We're lucky because people have always wanted

to come see us waggle our fingers and stuff."

So thank you Les for all the great music and inspiration,

and thank you for watching me waggle my fingers and stuff.

[Weirdo] You're the guy

from the Hamburger Train, right?