WorkshopLive interview with
Chris Kuffner
Started: Age 11 in 1991
Education: SUNY Purchase, BFA Jazz Performance
Instruments: Electric Bass, Upright Bass, NS Design Bass Cello, Electric/acoustic guitar. Styles: Pop/Rock, Funk/Rx, Jazz Gear: Spector NS 4 -
4 string, Spector NSJ-5 Fretless 5 string, R. Cocco strings, Digitech Bass Synth Wah, Whammy, and JamMan pedals, and the NS Design Bass Cello.
When did you start to play? My family is a music family, and I grew up drawing comic books and not wanting anything to do with it.
In junior high school I was the tallest kid in the class, and I had to take an orchestra class, so I chose the upright bass. And immediately, after playing three notes, I knew that
was going to be the rest of my life. I totally took to it full speed and haven’t stopped. I played upright for about 6 months exclusively, and then started taking electric bass
lessons with a jazz guitarist. That was where I got into blues and jazz and funk. His whole approach to it was that he had played with some amazing bass players, and he
kind of told me what he liked in a bass player. So we approached the basics of theory and harmony - how to play over chord changes, chord/scales relationships, all the
technical stuff - and then he said, “OK, now, this is how you would apply that in a musical setting as a bass player.” So he taught me the role of the bass.
It was great because in all my lessons I was playing with a guitarist who was amazing. So I got used to playing with another person.
When did you start to notice that your playing was different from everyone else's? It was actually the first day in class, when everyone
was playing “Mary Had A Little Lamb.” Everyone went around the room and played it, and I just immediately understood how to get a sound, how to play in tune.
I think it came from growing up with music all around me. My father started a guitar store called Mandolin Brothers. There were always people coming over to the house and playing
music. World-class musicians would buy guitars from my father, so I would get to see some amazing music first-hand, in my living room.
I grew up around Ned Steinberger, Stuart Spector and Mike Tobias, and they were all just friends of my family. I didn’t even realize until I started getting serious about electric bass
and reading Bass Player magazine and seeing ads for their stuff… I didn’t even put two and two together until one day there was a family party and everyone came over, and I
said “Hi, Stuart…” and, oh my God, it’s Stuart Spector! He’s been coming over to my house for as long as I remember!
When did you find your voice as a player? Actually, as a writer, I’ve only found my voice within the past year or so. I would always do
solo bass arrangements of other people’s music, and that was kind of fun. It’s helped me get my technical thing together, and I just like playing music by myself on the bass.
But it wasn’t until really the past year that I started exploring making solo bass music. And I find that my voice as a writer is different from my voice as a player.
Probably about 25% of my playing is solo. The bulk is in group settings, which I really enjoy, but it’s nice to do both. It’s funny - both settings help me be better at both things. When
I do my solo stuff, I get to let loose and indulge every idea that I have and create whatever I want, and have full control over every aspect of the music. And then, when I’m playing
bass for an artist, I get to sit back and support their art, and try and not cloud their artistic vision and not get in the way of what they’re trying to do. Because I have that time solo,
it helps me to not take it out on someone else’s music.
How do you keep your playing fresh? By listening to different music, new styles, world music, pop music, hip hop music – everything I can
hear. I try to listen to as much music as I can in any style. We have a feature called "Big Ears", where we suggest interesting music to our members
that they might not have heard before. What would you suggest for them? As far as the bass goes, I would definitely recommend Michael Manring’s records, in particular
"The Book of Flame and Soliloquy." Michael’s solo bass records are really different from what anyone else does on the bass. Really amazing stuff. As far as
music in general goes, one of my favorite artists is Bjork. A record that she did called "Vespertine" is one of my favorite records of all time. It doesn’t even
have any bass or guitar on it, but her approach to music is very, very, very intense and really beautiful. It’s one of the most beautiful albums I’ve ever heard. She’s a genius of the
highest order.
What do you do when you get stuck? You always find yourself getting stuck, because we practice things in patterns and we want to get
good at one thing so we do it for a long time, and then it can take hold of you. The important thing is to look past it and try and change whatever you’re doing. As soon as you get
stuck, start listening to something totally different and try and play it, even if it’s not on your instrument. When I get stuck soloing on the bass, I try not to listen to another bass
player. I try and learn a trumpet solo, or a saxophone solo. That’s a fresh perspective from a different instrument, a different mindset that you wouldn’t get just by practicing the
bass lines that you’ve always practiced.
Is there anything that you still find hard to do? Yeah! You never really get there – you’re always on the learning path. You’ll always be
a student. And any discipline that you do, you can always get better at. I’ll never be the soloist that Herbie Hancock is. I’ll never be the writer that Paul McCartney is. But I’m always
trying to push it as hard as I can.
It’s funny – the more you learn, the more you realize what you don’t know.
How often are you surprised by your playing, or what you’re listening to, or music in general? That’s a good question. By what I’m
playing – a lot of the time, I’m very surprised by what I’m playing. You’ll find yourself in the middle of a performance and you’ll go to a new section of a song, and all of a sudden
you realize that the bass is tuned differently, and you just have to improvise where you’re going. Some of those moments are the best moments in music, where you have no clue
of what’s going to happen. Those are the moments that are the most fulfilling at the end of the night. I’ve come up with some of the craziest stuff I’ve ever played, actually, not
knowing what I was going to play next.
With the looping devices, the first thing is to always hit the pedal in time. Every once in a while you’ll count something wrong and
hit the pedal out of time, and you’re on stage, and you have to make it work. It’s funny to fill up those extra spaces of extra time that you haven’t planned for, or to compensate
for something that you thought was going to be there, that now isn’t there – it’s always fun. It keeps you on your toes.
Do you have a regular practice regimen? At this point, I don’t, actually. For many years I would always practice scales and arpeggios,
getting around the bass, always with a metronome. Then I’d play through some jazz standards to get my sense of harmony up and running. Then I’d play some rock 'n' roll grooves
to get my timing down, and then I would improvise with all of that. And that was always my practice routine. But nowadays I do the improvising thing, and pretty much will loop a
groove and do whatever I want to over it. I won’t record it. Maybe I’ll give myself a key, and just go. And that’s my practice. That’s a large part of my writing. What used to be my
practice time has now become my writing time. I’ve spent so many years playing scales and getting around the instrument that I don’t have to think of the ‘math’ of it.
I can just be creative. I’d say that every time I sit down and practice I come up with at least one or two things that stay with me for a while, and that I build on, and eventually get
incorporated into a live performance.
Talk a little bit about your equipment. I play a couple of different instruments. I have an acoustic upright; I have an electric bass cello,
which is pretty interesting. It’s like an electric bass crossed with a cello, and it can be tuned in fourths or fifths. It has a curved fingerboard, so you can bow it; it has no frets; and the
strap system is really wild. Just by moving the instrument to where you want it, it’ll stay there. I have a Modulus bass with a graphite neck, and because it has a graphite neck, I can
tune it however I want. It’s tuned in fifths from an F to a D. It’s got a pretty broad range on just 4 strings – it’s pretty much a cello tuned down to F. Because of the tuning in F you
get a lot of big stretches without moving too far. I got into the altered tuning thing from listening to Michael Manring, a really amazing electric bass soloist – kind of like my favorite
bass player. I use two different pedals that loop – one is a Digitech pedal, and then there’s a Line6 pedal. I use one to make a short loop, and then record that loop, and make a long
phrase of the same thing, so I can play around with that same idea. So instead of having a loop be a short, repetitive thing, it can be a little longer, and it grows thematically as
it goes along. The effects pedals I use are just as much my instrument as my bass is. However you can get across the ideas you want to get across – I think you should alter your
instrument and make it your own.
Is there a piece of gear you just can't live without? Yeah, the Digitech JamMan looper. That thing has taught me so much about my
approach to time and harmony. To have an instant playback of what you just played has been the biggest teacher for me right now. As a teaching tool, as a rhythm tool, as a
practice tool, as a writing tool, I find it really invaluable. I use it both on stage and at home. At home it’s pretty much the only piece of gear that I use, other than a bass or a guitar.
Are there one or two core ideas that are central to your teaching that you make sure every student learns? Every student is different,
so some students don’t respond to certain ideas as well as others, and some students respond really great to ideas that others aren’t into. But I do try and instill a sense of respect
for all music in my students. I try to get them to get them to hear the good in different styles – to hear the good in Snoop Dogg as well as Sting as well as in Bach. And to
understand harmony. Ear training is big part of what I do with my kids. If I can get my kids to hear something, then they can figure out how to play it. And if they know what it’s
called, and can hear it, that’s the most important thing, because they can take that to any instrument.
Do you find yourself returning to listen to the artists who inspired you when you first started to play? Who are they? Constantly.
Jimi Hendrix was a big one for me. His approach to the guitar just blew me away when I first started playing music. It was so raw and it was so passionate, and so expressive, and
so emotive and energetic, that it didn’t matter that he didn’t know what he was doing technically. ‘Cause I didn’t care as a listener. I was just blown away by the amount of soul
that he had. I still throw on his records once in a while, and listen, and it always hits me differently, since I’ve grown as a musician since the last time I listened to it. I always
hear something new. He’s probably my favorite of the artists who inspired me as a player. The Beatles are huge for me. I’m a die-hard Beatles freak. I listen to those albums still.
Stevie Ray Vaughan, Jaco Pastorius, Flea. I don’t listen to the Chilis as much as I used to, but every now and then I’ll throw on "Blood Sugar Sex Majik" and
groove out for a while.
Does your playing change when you switch instruments? You’re playing doesn’t change, but the approach that you’re taking has to change.
If you’re playing a bass line you have to think as a bass player. If you’re playing a melody you have to thing as a lyricist – you have to think melodically, as well as rhythmically.
If you’re playing chords, then you have to be sparse about your rhythm, or complex about your rhythm, whatever is appropriate for that role. Because I do all this looping stuff on the
bass, I take on each path as a different role – this is the role of the drums, this is the role of the bass, this is the role of a rhythm instrument, this is the role of a melodic instrument.
I play the guitar as well, and I play it a lot more like a bass player than like a guitarist – so I guess maybe it doesn’t!
How often, when you're playing, do you find those moments of pure music, when your head is clear, your fingers are working, there are no distractions,
and it’s just you and the music? Not often enough! It’s hard to come by, but as long as you can clear your head, you can get to those moments a little easier. Whenever I do
a solo bass show, I always open with a Bach cello suite prelude, and I find that playing that really quiet piece of music is like a meditation, it gets me ready to play the rest of the set
with a much clearer head than if I’d just started off with any other piece of music. Some nights are better than others. Playing in a band, it happens a lot more often than when I’m
doing my own thing. I can sit back and just listen to everything.
Do you have a musical wish list - other instruments to learn, people to play with, artists or styles to explore? The wish list of musicians is huge,
but most of them have passed away – you know, Jimi Hendrix, Bach. I would love to sit in a room with Bach and see how he makes music. Andrew Bird is an artist that I like a lot,
who’s doing some amazing things with flute, violin, guitar, marimba and whistling – he’s an artist that I’d love to play with. I’ve actually been lucky enough to play with some of my
favorite musicians. I feel blessed because I’ve played with two people that I consider to be geniuses. One is Regina Spektor, who’s a singer and songwriter – a newer kind of folk-inspired
pop. And the other is a guitar player named Bumblefoot. Both of them have the same creative process, even though they make totally different music. They work very, very, very
quickly. To get a fresh idea into a fully-fledged composition for them takes very little time. The bulk of what they do is at such a high level - to write one verse of a song like
Regina writes would take me a year, and it takes her two minutes. Along the same line, even though it’s crazy instrumental guitar music, you’d have to study for years and years
and years to get the amount of knowledge that Bumblefoot has, and he just spouts it out and makes these incredibly complex, polyrhythmic, harmonically dense songs, and he’ll write
them in ten minutes. So, just being able to watch people of that caliber and interact with them musically has been a tremendous experience. It’s awe-inspiring, and it’s humbling, and
it gets you going – it inspires you to do what you’re going to do. I play with this girl Ingrid Michaelson who writes these great pop songs. It’s totally different than playing with Regina,
but it’s very rewarding in different ways.
Have you ever had a really great teacher? What made him/her so good? I like to think that I’ve learned from every teacher I’ve had and
from every person that I’ve played with. But I’ve had some really great teachers: - Peter Prisco, the amazing jazz guitar player who was my first teacher; - I took one lesson with
Michael Manring that totally changed the way I play music; - John Faddis was a trumpet player that I studied with in college, and his approach to jazz was pretty intense. I learned
a lot from him; - a pianist named Charles Blenzig; and - a bass player named Kermit Driscoll. I’ve studied with some really amazing people, but I find that I’ve learned just as much
from people that I worked with who weren’t teachers.
How do you learn best? Just by experience. I’ve learned more about writing music by being around great writers than I have in a classroom.
Do you have any practice tips we can share with our subscribers? If you can sing, then sing it. If you don’t feel comfortable singing it, then
try and hear every note that you play before you play it. Let your ears guide your fingers and not the other way around. Even when you’re practicing a scale, try and hear the next note
before you play it. The way that I practice is that I’ll sing a solo as I play it. I rarely do it in my performances, but it gets your mind working faster than your fingers.
