Bass
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Ed Lucie, Associate Professor
DEPARTMENT : Bass Department"I use a sports analogy all the time. Let's take a great baseball player, Kevin Youkilis. You rarely see him disappoint anybody. But just think of how many times he gets up and practices batting. Thousands upon thousands upon thousands of times. What does he do before the game, even when the season's in full spring? He goes to batting practice. Now it's the game. We're in the bottom of the ninth, there are two outs, bases are loaded. Kevin Youkilis comes up. The last thing he wants to think about is his swing. He has to just stand there and trust all of that preparation, that he can react creatively to the next pitch. And that's kind of how we have to play. We have to practice and practice and practice and practice, and now in the moment we have to let everything go and just play."
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Joe Santerre, Professor
DEPARTMENT : Bass Department"My approach to teaching is tailored to the individual student. Each student is unique in his or her strengths, weaknesses, goals, and desires. Therefore, I try to custom design each individual's private lessons, so that strengths are reinforced, weaknesses are strengthened, and every student's goals and desires are reached, or at least moved closer."
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Whit Browne, Professor
DEPARTMENT : Bass Department"I'm the jazz guy. Most of the students studying with me are coming from a jazz background, or they're interested in learning jazz. We don't have a set curriculum for the lesson. The lesson curriculum is based on the individual students' needs. We work on technique when the student is physically having problems on the instrument. Then there's what I call ear technique, when a student wants to study jazz but has never listened to jazz. I'll give a list of recordings they should listen to—that's a start."
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Barry Smith, Assistant Professor
DEPARTMENT : Bass Department"One of the main things I see the students need is to be able to play the instrument well. Their improvising will be limited to what they can do as far as getting around the instrument, so I'm concentrating on making sure they can comfortably play whatever they need to play—all the different scales and chords, how to arpeggiate their way through chords, the inversion of chords, that kind of thing. I get them started on that, then try to apply it to their playing, whether they're playing bass lines or soloing."
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Oscar Stagnaro, Professor
DEPARTMENT : Bass Department"Most of the people who come to my classes have little knowledge of what I'm teaching, so I try to open the door. I try to make it as simple as I can so they can feel close to the material, so that it's not impossible for them to learn. If I learned it, they can learn it. I have to prepare them for the real world. That's why I'm there. I always tell them, 'If you want to study with me, I'll prepare you, so when you leave here, you'll work.' That's my mission. You're gonna work. I play a lot of different styles, so I try to teach my students a little bit of what I do, music from all over the world. If they only play blues when they get out of school, for example, it'll be much tougher for them to find a gig."
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David Clark, Professor
DEPARTMENT : Bass Department"One of the roles of a teacher is to help students gain a panoramic awareness of music, and what to work on. I try to expand my students' awareness of being part of a rhythm section, which is like the shaman's drum. It's important to develop a rhythmic quality and robustness of sound that ignites the imagination of the performers and listeners, and a groove that has a transformative effect. A common pitfall is to play too busily, instead of understanding one's role within the group. I tell my students that we need to listen beyond our own performances in order to clearly hear and identify with the sound of the whole group."
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Fernando Huergo, Professor
DEPARTMENT : Bass Department"I think Berklee is a great meeting place for people from all over the world. They have a chance to meet and play together, and often they'll be playing with the same people they knew at Berklee for the rest of their lives. When I go to Europe or South America or Asia, I meet former students, I meet colleagues. I just met two weeks ago in Germany a Korean bass player student of mine. I was in New York last week and I met a Spanish former student. I was in Beijing and I met an Argentinean former student. It's great, meeting and connecting with other musicians. You get to learn from so many different cultures and sources of music. Berklee's a very inspiring place."
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Lincoln Goines, Associate Professor
DEPARTMENT : Bass Department"Some of the things I like to tell students I've learned: The bass is first and foremost the heartbeat of the ensemble. Playing the bass is only a part of being a good bassist. Showing up and working hard are the foundational keys to success as a music pro. In addition to helping students bring all aspects of their playing to the highest level it can be, I focus on sound, accuracy, vocabulary, and developing the critical ear necessary for 'seeing' music from the eye of bass. My goal is to help them find their voice on the instrument, and also to prepare them for the actual gigging world."
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John Repucci, Assistant Chair
DEPARTMENT : Bass Department"I'm an equestrian, and we learn that the harder you ask a horse to do something, the less you're going to get from it. It's the same thing with the bass, which is a very physical instrument. The idea is not to overwork to get the sound you produce—it's how to get the most for the least."
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Daniel Morris, Professor
DEPARTMENT : Bass Department"The typical bass student at Berklee is very much a novice when it comes to understanding the role of the bassist in a group. Many of them have developed skills, flashy skills, what I like to refer to as 'music store chops.' These musicians sound great in a music store. They do some very fast playing, very exciting stuff that you can actually use at the end of a solo and the crowd will go nuts. But they're spending way too much time on that, and they're not spending enough time on the fundamental maxim of bass, which is: The bass player's role is to keep time and to address the tonality of the moment."
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