bassmagazine.com ; ISSUE 4 ; BASS MAGAZINE 71
Abraham Laboriel
time — the rest of the band will play the oth-
er notes.”
Hear the big picture. “Here’s anoth-
er thing Steve Gadd said that has guided me:
When he plays, he thinks of the music and
how what he’s doing affects the music. He’s
always listening to the music, not thinking
about doing ratamacues or paradiddles.”
Use other flavors. “I’ve listened to a
lot of ethnic music, and I try to incorporate
as much as I can. But it didn’t work with Joe
Sample, because he would say, ‘Abraham, I’m
from Texas. I need to hear the one, and I need
to have the downbeat.’”
Don’t lose the intensity. “We have de-
veloped a very bad habit as human beings in
terms of dynamics. Instinctively, loud means
fast and soft means slow. You should be able
to play soft without losing intensity.”
Be a whole person. “Sometimes, when
you develop one area of your life, you neglect
others. And that’s not good. A pastor, God
bless him, told me, ‘Just because you are an
entertainer does not give you the right to re-
quire everybody else to treat you as if you are
privileged.’ We need to learn to be people,
and you need to enjoy being a person with
other people.”
Watch out for carpal tunnel. “I had
lost the feeling in my right hand; when I
would shake it, it would come back. The main
problem was with my left hand, though. My
first instrument was the Goya, and it had a
small neck; when I started to play other bass-
es, made for upright players, I had to open up
and bend my wrist.
“God bless my wife. She read an arti-
cle about this neurologist in Boston named
Fred Hochberg who had developed a spe-
cialty in musicians’ hand problems. He had
me bring my basses to the appointment with
him, and he noticed that when I played the
Goya, I didn’t bend my wrist, but with wid-
er necks, I did. His advice? ‘Tell bass manu-
facturers to make you instruments that don’t
require you to bend your wrist. And if you’re
going to play a really wide bass [neck], play it
in such a way that instead of playing chords
all the way from the top to the bottom, find
all the chords that don’t require you to bend
your wrist.’ He gave me a couple of exercises,
which I learned. The carpal tunnel has never
come back.
“Another very important thing he told
me was that the moment the string touches
the frets, there is sound, so whether you have
to play very loudly or very softly, the pressure
[exerted by the fretting hand] doesn’t need to
change. All of his advice was very practical.”
Groove! “My personal philosophy has
always been the groove is everything. The
most important thing is groove.”