Interview with Michael Manring

IWDC: What/who first influenced you to start playing bass?

Michael Manring: I fell in love with the bass when I was about 9 years old. I had heard it on a TV theme song and just loved the sound of it. It took a while before I could figure out what instrument was making that sound, but as soon as I did, I talked my folks into buying me a little $50 hollow body for my 10th birthday.

IWDC: What led you to start experimenting with alternative tunings?

MM: I have always been fascinated with trying to create a wide variety of sounds and expression on the bass. One of the things I love about the bass is that it is still a very young instrument and, in my opinion at least, much of the canon for it has yet to be established. I had always goofed around with some simple re-tunings -- drop D, drop C, etc., and the more I experimented, the more I found I could open up the voice of the instrument by working with different tunings. I worked hard to understand the bass well in standard tuning first, but once I felt I had a reasonable grasp of that I really threw myself into looking for ways to use tunings to expand the scope of the instrument. It still amazes me at times how much changing the tuning of the instrument opens up the possibilities.

IWDC: Michael Hedges was another great musical explorer. How did your collaboration with him influence your own explorations?

MM: Michael was a big influence on me. I was 19 when we met and started playing together and at that time he was just beginning to come up with his innovative concept of finger-style guitar. Certainly the freedom with which he pursued altered tunings was an inspiration, but mostly it was just great to have a co-conspirator in the search to find new possibilities for our instruments that would enable us (hopefully!) to express something meaningful about our generation -- who we were, what we believed in and where we were going. We both had felt a little like misfits because of our desires to find new approaches and the fact that we liked a wide variety of music, not all of it so popular!

IWDC: What musician, living or dead, with whom you have not yet played, would you most like to jam with?

MM: That’s a difficult question to answer because I learn different lessons from playing with different musicians and I value them all. It’s a bit of an apples and oranges dilemma; for instance, I’m sure I’d learn a lot about bebop if I somehow had the incredible good fortune to be able to play with Charlie Parker, but I might learn an enormous amount about phrasing if I could somehow play with Glenn Gould, or amazing lessons about Carnatic music if I could play with L. Subramanium. I’m not sure which would be the most valuable lesson.

IWDC: Tell us about your bass rig. How important is that rig to your sound?

MM: I generally think of the sound I want primarily coming from the instrument itself with the rig there just to amplify it. I do like a slight bit of coloration from the amplification though, and the SWR stuff I have does a nice job of being transparent, but not too transparent! I tend to change my rig around a little depending on the situation, but for most gigs I can drive to I take my SWR stereo 800, Baby Blue and Son of Bertha cabinets.

IWDC: Is it your gear or your technique that defines your sound? If you come over to my house, pick up my Peavey G-Bass and plug into my little practice amp, are you still going to sound like Michael Manring?

MM: I think sound is a combination of gear and technique which interact in complex ways that are often hard to describe. I apologize if this seems flippant, but I think if I were to play your bass, I’d sound like Michael Manring playing your Peavey bass!

IWDC: Take us through a typical Michael Manring practice session.

MM: More than anything else, I spend time trying to focus on the most basic, fundamental skills I can -- trying to play single notes in time, in tune, with good tone; being able to move efficiently and musically from one note to the next; achieving fluidity and clarity of technique. I always spend time first on some simple exercises I’ve made up for myself to focus on these skills, then if there’s any time left over I’ll work on scales or other harmony-based exercises, additional rhythm exercises, improvisation, tunes, repertoire, etc.

IWDC: How important are theory and sightreading? Isn't it enought to have good technique and a good ear?

MM: It depends a little on what your goals are as a musician, but I’d say having a good ear is the most important of these. Presumably, if you could understand everything you hear well enough (and by that, I mean being able to play back anything you hear regardless how complex, and being able to memorize it indefinitely) then theory and sight-reading would be fairly tangential skills. I don’t know anybody who’s at that level though, so in the real world theory is a powerful tool for helping us to understand and broaden our enjoyment of music. Sight-reading is also a very useful skill and more or less necessary depending on the professional avenues you want to pursue. Personally, I find I’m rarely asked to do any really challenging sight-reading in professional situations, but if you want to play in pit bands or do a lot of jingles or film/TV work, it’s a must. In general, good ears are the most appreciated of these skills; if you can learn and remember a lot of music on one hearing without anyone having to go to the trouble of writing it out for you, they’re going to want to hire you more often! Technique is kind of a sticky subject, because many people seem to think of technique as primarily a way to play fast. If this is what you mean by technique, then I’d say it’s generally a detriment to advancing your career, because folks who might hire you are often afraid that if you have the ability to play a lot of notes you will try to do so at every opportunity! On the other hand, if you think of technique as the ability to play what you hear efficiently, expressively and with control in such a way that is healthy for your hands, I’d say that’s an indispensable skill.

IWDC: What are some of your interests outside of music? Do your non-musical interestes influence your music?

MM: To the latter question, definitely yes, as what makes music meaningful, in my opinion, is its resonance with life as a whole. I have a lot of other interests, but unfortunately, not much time to pursue them! I’m interested in art, philosophy, food and nutrition, yoga, literature, history, physics, religion, economics, poetry, culture, architecture, biology, etc. I’ve been learning to mountain bike and am trying to improve my 5K run time as well as trying to duplicate a few Italian dishes that I’ve had on my travels there, keep up with current events and spend time with my family.

IWDC: What discs are you currently listening to?

MM:
Egberto Gismonti, Alma
Alban Berg, Lyric Suite
Murray Periah, Bach English Suites
Sly and the Family Stone, Greatest Hits
Meshuggah, Destroy, Erase, Improve
Paul Galbraith, Haydn Keyboard Sonatas transcribed for 8-string guitar
Ngyuen Le, Tales from Viet Nam
L. Subramanium, Live in Paris
Gonzalo Rubalcaba, Inner Voyage
Various artists, Bossa Nova Brasil
Medici String Quartet, Complete Beethoven Quartets
James Taylor, live in Boston
Harry Partch, Delusion of the Fury
Morton Feldman, For Franz Kline
Gyorgy Ligeti, Lontano, San Francisco Polyphony
Bill Evans, Exploration
Tarika Sammy, Beneath Southern Skies
Oscar Peterson, A Rare Mood
Solas, The Hour Before Dawn
Ned Rothenberg, Intervals