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Jazz Studies With Bill Harrison: The Next Best Thing: Using Play Along Tracks
Meet Bill Harrison –
Some musical skills are best learned alone – technique, scales and arpeggios, the layout of your fingerboard and so on. Bass Musician Magazine offers some great lessons to help you with slapping, tapping, left hand gymnastics, etc; and we all need to put our time in to get ourselves ready to perform physically.
Then there are all the other skills that can only be acquired in the context of playing with other musicians, namely: listening, dynamics, groove, accompanying a singer or soloist; in other words, all of the intangible aspects usually referred to as “ensemble”. Great word, that – it signifies “all the parts of a thing considered together”, which is about the best definition of a musical group I’ve come across.
So, its simple: musicians get together and play. We go to music school, join or create a group, jam informally with our friends or rehearse with various professional ensembles. But what can we do when there aren’t any other like-minded peers available for any of these activities? And, how can a lesser experienced player get ready to play with other people on their own and at their own pace?
We can opt for the next best thing: play along or backing tracks. Every jazz musician I know has used Jamey Aebersold’s infamous play along recordings. I’ve still got LP and cassette (!) versions of some of the first albums I used to figure out what a 12 bar blues or an “I Got Rhythm” form is.
For most of my career I’ve been helping my students get comfortable with playing in an ensemble by developing the specific skills necessary to become accompanists and soloists. It is crucial that bass players know how to play various grooves (including walking), interpret chord changes, internalize song forms, etc. A few years ago I became aware of the fact that if you’re not in school, or are a little bit past your 20’s, or don’t live in a larger urban area it can be very challenging to find appropriate people to play with.
So I went on the hunt for good backing tracks. I bought a ton of book/CD sets and unearthed some of the recordings I’d used as a young player. I became quite frustrated, because the material I found, including the Aebersold recordings, was lacking in so many ways. The tracks were either poorly played or recorded, they were only available in limited keys and tempos and many of them didn’t have a way to “turn off” the bass track so a student could really hear and feel what it might be like to be the bass player in that particular setting.
After much consideration, I bit the bullet and started creating my own sets of play along tracks, which I now sell at PlayJazzNow.com. Since this is not an infomercial, I won’t go into the details, but you can check out the site if you’re interested. There’s all kinds of cool stuff there (and not just for us bassists, either!).
I’ve been invited to write a regular column on using play along tracks to improve your skills, and that is exactly what I’ll start zeroing in on next time. Meanwhile you can view these videos to see how I explain some elementary walking techniques:
Here’s the same lesson on ebass:
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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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