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Taking Off the Rose Tinted Headphones by Steve Gregory
I am fortunate to have an appointment to meet with an amazing teacher each week. This teacher has the remarkable ability to show me positives of my playing, flaws that need to be corrected, and specific situations that I can analyze. The lesson time is tough, but ultimately rewarding, because brutal honesty is an understood requirement. It is not uncommon to have a weakness exposed and unapologetically (sometimes relentlessly, it seems) examined. I leave each lesson with a catalog of things that are good, things that need work, and homework to do for the week. This teacher is one of the very best I have ever had! I am very happy to say that this teacher has immediate availability for students and I truly hope you will try to schedule a lesson time soon!
The teacher is your own playing, recorded, and then listened to with an honest and critical ear.
A recording is simply unable to lie; therefore, what you hear is what really happened. This is a revealing and sometimes humbling practice: flaws that weren’t realized during performance become evident and spots that seemed to be perfect fall flat in retrospect. Fortunately, there will also be moments that are wonderful and even some pleasant surprises that escaped the ear in live performance.
This practice is invaluable! With discipline and honesty, these listening sessions can accurately determine what is happening during live performance. Further, there is a great opportunity for playing refinement and becoming a better bass musician with every single lesson. Here is a suggested outline for doing this:
- Get a recording. This can be from the soundboard, from video, from a recorder placed in the audience or given to someone, or from a personal line out. The capture doesn’t have to be perfect, but it does have to have a level of clarity that allows for accuracy in playback.
- Use a good set of headphones or speakers. Make sure that the system used for playback is of good quality. It does no good to capture a performance, but not be able to determine later what was played. I personally like to use headphones for this, but I know of players that prefer to use quality speakers. Whatever the choice, audio quality is important.
- Perform an intention check and put your ego aside. The purpose of this exercise is to get better, not to prove worth or inflate a sense of self. Make sure that all listening is done with an honest and critical ear. If this doesn’t happen, the session is usually a waste of time.
- Listen to the entire recording and note the spots that are good, bad, and ugly. The first review is used to find the spots that should be explored in more detail. Just make notes with a time mark and a quick description, such as, “5:10, rushed chorus” or “18:11, locked with drums!”.
- Go back and listen to the specific moments listed and determine what happened and why it happened. Using our examples from above, in the section that was rushed, was it because of emotion? Lost focus with the drummer? Anxiety? Technique problems? Remember to do this for positive notes also. When there was a good lock with the drums, was it a part that was worked out in rehearsal? Had the section been practiced separately? It is just as important to figure out what is good as it is to discover what is not going so well.
- Determine the lesson and the homework for the moments you have studied. What can be done to either remedy the problem or repeat the positive? Continuing with our examples above, the rushed section may lead to more metronome work, increased practice of technically challenging pieces, or an emphasis on in-performance focus. The solid rhythm section example may reveal the good that came from practicing a specific song section or rehearsing the figure at slower tempos with a drummer.
I know from experience that this plan will lead to amazing results and transformed playing. This same process can also be applied to individual practice – record a session and listen back a later time. When I do this, I am constantly amazed at the wealth of information I gain. Also, if a video recording is used, there is another set of variables to study, such as hand position, body stance, technique, and much more.
Whatever your choice, I encourage you to sign up for a lesson with this great teacher today! I’d love to hear about your experiences – leave a comment below to share what you discover when you try this exercise.
Until next time, I hope that your bass playing is blessed and that you can bless others through your bass playing!
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Photo: Self-portrait by Melissa Auf Der Maur
Melissa Auf Der Maur is a Canadian bassist who played with Tinker, Hole, and The Smashing Pumpkins. She released her own work and is a photographer with photos published in Nylon, Bust, and National Geographic. She released her ‘90s Rock Memoir “Even The Good Girls Will Cry” on 17 March 2026.
KB: Did you always want to be a singer-musician growing up?
I’ve played music my whole life. In school, I played trumpet and sang in a children’s choir, so music was always within me. My mother was the first female disc jockey on the Montreal airwaves; her record collection played a huge role in my inspiration and love of music.
KB: When did you start playing bass, and why this instrument?
When I was 19, the early 90s music explosion began to percolate in tiny clubs around the world. I was lucky to be a ticket girl at Montreal’s underground music club. In one year, I saw Hole, Sonic Youth, Smashing Pumpkins, White Zombie, and The Breeders – all had female bass players. That’s when the seed was planted. By the age of 22, I was the bass player of Hole.
KB: Which brands of basses have you used in your career, and which one are you using now?
The first bass that I learned on was a vintage Squier Precision. Hole was sponsored by Fender guitars, so I upgraded to Fender Custom Shop Precisions. That is all I play, but I have a cool vintage 8-string Greco that I use on recordings to thicken up guitar parts.
KB: What equipment do you use or have you used with your basses?
Ampeg SVT amps and cabinets, a couple of Sans-Amp pedals, and that is it.
KB: How did you become a member of Hole, and what is your fondest memory of that time?
Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins was helping scout a replacement for (RIP) Kristen Pfaff, Hole’s bass player. My band, Tinker, opened for them on the Siamese Dream tour, so Billy had seen me play and could vouch for me. Courtney trusted her talented friend, and that was it. I initially said “no thank you” due to my commitment to my photographic studies and the drama and chaos surrounding the band during the “Live Through This” album release. Courtney took it as a good sign that I said no, so convinced me to reconsider, and soon after, I accepted their invitation, in the name of helping put females in the male-dominated landscape of rock music. My fondest memory is every show we played as a mostly female band, symbolizing what a woman could do in a rock band. Every show had a purpose: get more women to play music.
KB: You are a photographer as well. What makes a great picture? Do you shoot in color or b/w?
I started shooting photographs at age 15. Initially only shot black & white and worked in the art school darkroom. In university, I took a color photography course, and shifted mostly and forever to that, because it was easier to process film on the road when I joined a rock band. I experimented with many cameras, point and shoots, manual, polaroids, medium format, and vintage finds. The trick to a good photograph is to shoot many and all the time – the magic is in the edit and selection process.
KB: Are there artists you would love to collaborate with or wish you had?
??I’ve been lucky to collaborate with some of my favorite musicians in my career. I would still love to collaborate with a new generation heavy electronic artist on an analog bass, heavy electronic drums, and synths collaboration project. Take me out of my usual zone, merging the past and future: my love of 80s dark new wave and new artists exploring that genre. It was very futuristic back then, and we are now, after all, living in the future. I am in the mood to play bass to heavy beats I want to dance to.
KB: What are your 7 favorite bass lines in music across all genres? And why these 7?
“Mountain Song” – Jane’s Addiction (love a rambling, rolling bass line – feels like the ocean waves)
“Black Top – Helmet” (was the first bass line I taught myself)
“Gold Dust Woman” – Hole from “The Crow 2” Soundtrack (it was my first bass line contribution to the band)
“Get Ready” – The Temptations (Motown just feels so good, because of the bass)
“Lucretia My Reflection” – Sisters of Mercy (makes me want to hit the dance floor and play bass simultaneously)
“Be My Druidess” – Type O Negative (full chord bass playing at its best by iconic, demonic, Peter Steele, RIP)
“Romantic Rights” – Death from Above (1979 – unique distorted overdriven tone, combined dance rhythm and melodic intelligence, all in one shot – also! Shout out to a bass & drum only band, which is awesome, and we should have more of, but the bass player needs to be a killer to fill that role.
KB: What are you currently up to?
Releasing my ‘90s Rock Memoir “EVEN THE GOOD GIRLS WILL CRY”. Visceral healing process, it was to get it out of me and write it, but I suspect the real magic will begin by putting it into the world and reflecting with others on what the magic of the ‘90s was all about. Powerful music decade that carried us into what is now a brave new world of digital corporate weirdness – may the past shed a light on our future. That’s my hope for this book release and tour.
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