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Finding Your Own Voice: Range by Jimi Durso
Finding Your Own Voice: Range by Jimi Durso… I read an interview with Paul McCartney where he was asked why he played the bass line to Day Tripper in the same octave as the guitar, instead of an octave lower. He said that AM radio had terrible bass response, and he knew if he played it that low the bass line would be lost to most listeners.
What range you play in can be a very important aspect of how you approach the instrument. Most of us are playing the bass line as far down as we can and leaving the upper range for melody, chords, solos, basically for everyone else in the band. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Here are two things you can do to open your mind and fingers up to the full range of your instrument.
First is to simply observe how some other players have used range creatively. A great example is Flea’s line on “Give It Away”. The main line is only four notes, but it covers almost an octave, from the low A to the octave G. Or John Paul Jones on “Ramble On”, Where the verses are in the upper range (and he plays what could best be called a counter-melody to the voice), but for the choruses he drops into the lower register (now playing much more supportive lines, and making the sound much heavier).
When you’ve observed some of these ideas, the next step is to try them out yourself. Try playing the verses in one area and the choruses in another. I played a gig on my six string where for one song I stayed in the conventional bass range until the very last chorus, where I dropped down onto the low B string to give a sense of finality to the song. Or, as a fun experiment, write a line (either to someone else’s song or as a potential song of your own) and see if you can use the entire range of your bass. Or when soloing, solo where you normally don’t (like in the low positions rather than jumping up high for your solo spot). Or see if you can answer yourself, playing a phrase in one area and then the next phrase in another. At this point, you might be thinking of other things you can explore that I haven’t mentioned yet. Great! Try those things out first.
Try creating a bass line that spans more than an octave. Then try making one up that spans at least two. Think of all the ways you can do this, pulling off from high notes to open strings, tapping high pitches with your right hand, using harmonics, especially those under the 5th fret, or just conventionally playing across the range of the instrument.
To get more familiar with the entire range of your instrument (whether it be acoustic, electric, 4, 5, or 6 string), here’s a great exercise I got from Marc Johnson (with some variations I created): solo on a 12-bar-blues starting with the lowest note you can play in that key and ending (at the end of the 12th measure) on the highest. Also, do the opposite: start on the highest note you can play in that key and work your way down over the course of 12 measures to the lowest. Then, try starting at the lowest, playing up to the highest and back down before the 12 bars are up. Reverse this and start at the top and play to the bottom and back in 12 bars (you could do this over a form other than a blues, if you like). This is a great exercise as it not only gets you thoroughly familiar with the full range of your instrument but improves your phrasing as well.
Twang!
Also, my rock & roll duo is working on putting out our first CD. Find out more at: CoincidenceMachine.net
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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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