Originally posted by LikeASong:Yes to everything, yet I have to quote a musician I interviewed some years ago:
"The bass is that instrument that no-one hears much of the time, no-one cares about most of the time, but when a bass player fucks up, everybody else think it's their own fault and all is prone to go south".
Adam is not really skilled musically -none of them are- but after watching the OOC video above I tend to agree with Alex: he might very well be tone deaf or have developed some kind of amusia with age - because you just CAN'T unhear when a bass is out of tune like that. It's just impossible, not only for a musician: also the audience notices. They might not know what exactly is wrong but they know something's going on. But Adam just goes on without noticing anything. It's hard to swallow.
Don't want to boast or show off, but I was playing a concert with my band a couple of weeks back; the bass was out of tune for the last song because the bassist had hit his amp by accident while finishing the previous song, and I went and tuned it right on the spot while he was playing. And I don't have perfect pitch or anything - I just have a trained ear. You can see it here, bass comes in at 00:30, we both realize but we can't stop the song (this was a band talent contest), so I go and tune it around 01:30. (For reference, a good performance of the song with all instruments properly tuned can be heard here).
I'd like to think if I can do it, a professional bassist can do it. And if he can't, I'd like to think he suffers some kind of physical problem rather than just absolute ineptitude, or worse, carelessness.