She’s brought her band, the Deep MO with her, Scott Firth on guitar, Robert Mitchell on
keys and Miles Bould on drums. They are all fantastic musicians in their own right, but the
thing that strikes me most about them is how they play together. There is an amazing level
of discipline on stage, a group of individuals who are in tune with one another.
It’s a nice class, a good mix of anecdotal and practical information. She’s got a disarming
conversational style, but always in control. It is definitely a one-way affair. She has an idea
about what information she wishes to dispense and how she want to dispense it. Like any
good musician, she is taking us on a journey.

I find sometimes that music and musicians can actually put you off. There is often a
feeling within us that it’s not possible, really we’re just wasting our time. We’ll never be as
good as Stuart Zender, Flea or John Patitucci, so the chances for us to reach these heady
heights are just a childish fantasy. But Yolanda has no ego or edge, she’s nice, you could
imagine going to the pub with her for a pint and a packet of pork scratchings. The
difference between her and the rest of us doesn’t seem to be pre-ordained or magical,
she just works hard and enjoys what she does.

She plays through another track which is on her current EP, The Deep MO. It's got a more
angular groove, the placement of the beats is pushed to the edge of what can comfortably
be called groovy, whilst still maintaining the groove. Yolanda explains how she has split
the straight four-four groove into 12 subdivisions, with an accent on the 5th one, which
gives it it's odd feeling. That’s what I love about listening to bass players talk about music,
they’re analytical like drummers, but have the understanding of melody and harmony of a
guitarist or keyboard player. That's what gives her music its edge, its the energy and
musical understanding that's gone into it, pushing ideas further without compromising the
groove.

She shows us an exercise that the band use to help them maintain such an angular
groove, whilst still all playing together. It's an exercise which I have since tried with a band
myself, and even with our relatively limited abilities, it did help us to feel like we were one
unit rather than a collection of individuals, oh yeah, and it was a lot of fun too. So the trick is
to first set up a groove, then you have to slow down together, until you feel you are going
as slow as possible, then you have to speed up until you feel you can go no faster, before
finally returning back to your original tempo. It sounds fairly simple, which of course it
really is, but in the demonstration that follows it is really hard to tell who is the pace setter.
When the whole band move as a unit, you can feel them listening out for each other, but
there is no attempt by an individual to take the lead as it were. They are tuning into one
another. "I've demonstrated this before in a master class, saying that it was great fun but
that I'd never needed to use it. Then a few months ago we were playing on Jools Holland.
As a surprise we were asked to play a groove for a singer who used to rap. So we started
up this groove, but she was getting into it and shouting 'faster, faster!', so we were able to
speed up nice and smoothly."

It's like they have made their own reality. The practice lead to it being required. To me it's
like sometimes I think, if only someone would pay me to play music then I could afford to
get better, but that's not the way it goes. I think this is proof that, if you want to 'make it', then
first you've got to  practice, you've got to hold onto that dream and chip away at it a little
everyday before it becomes a reality.

Singing whilst playing bass: there have been a number of people who have done it over
the years. Phil Lynott of Thin Lizzy fame springs to mind, as does Sting and of course
Lemmy from Motorhead, but these guys didn’t really play busy bass lines whilst singing.
Not a huge challenge to the aspiring bass player. Yolanda however sings throughout her
tracks which include complex slap lines and interesting grooves. She let’s us into her
secret: you have to count out loud whilst playing. Sounds simple enough but if you’ve
never tried to count out loud whilst playing a complex bass line you should give it a go. It’s
pretty tough, especially when it’s syncopated over a 12/8 groove. As with anything you have
to take it slow to start off with. Step 2: you then have to pick just one beat to say over the
whole bar groove. Finally you speak the lyrics, kind of replacing the numbers with the
words. Easy, just bring everything up to speed and you’re there. She shows us what she
means through playing one of her songs, "Civilized". It's a real funk-groove piece, starting
with a guitar lick that you might hear at the start of Shaft, think Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye
and Issac Hayes. It's a powerful piece with its lyrics questioning today's society:

“I haven’t been working on it every night [singing whilst playing], you know ‘cause
sometimes Battlestar Galactica is on”, bass player and sci-fi geek, be still my beating
heart, “But it’s great when you can get something that you couldn’t do before."
That's the most important thing I think we can take form this master class. Aside from the
specifics, the actual exercises, the soundscapes that the band inhabits, the focus on
groove, which is what makes Yolanda the kind of musician she is. The practice is actually
what makes her free, it's what gives her the opportunities to play with so many amazing
people, it's what allows her to be a musician full-time. The focus of that practice? Well
that's our choice, our bit of fun to sweeten the deal. Right then, where's that Victor Wooten
CD...