You have heard him on Grammy-award-winning albums by Outkast. You have heard him provide the low-end to the sombre crooning of Citizen Cope. You have heard his groove-filled basslines on information by Raphael Saadiq. Dr. Dre, Future’s Baby, TLC, and Earth, Wind and Fireplace. To realize his targets as a soul-oriented sideman, Preston Crump’s bass playing skills have needed to match his willingness to please his artists. “Fingerstyle has all the time been my most comfortable approach,” he informed BP. “Although I got deep into slap bass for some time when it was still funky. Then it began getting too technical for its personal good. I stopped slapping when it turned all about triplets. Theres nothing too funky about triplets to me.”
Regularly including new strategies and approaches to his device bag is one thing that Crump takes delight in as a scholar of the bass guitar. “Ever since I examine Gary Willis and his approach I have been making an attempt to loosen up my contact. In some conditions you get actually into it, and earlier than you understand it you’ve got the hammer grip across the bass! However I’m making an attempt to be taught to calm down extra.”
Crump got his begin playing as a youngster and shortly labored his means by a slew of gigs in Atlanta, which finally led him to the celebrated Berklee School of Music in Boston. “I began on drums when I was a child, however I knew I needed to play some type of guitar after I noticed some stay reveals. My mom purchased me a Kay bass and a Mel Bay tutorial e-book, which I tried to get by. My fingers have been all blistered and I was simply hacking away at it, listening to a ton of information. Then Bootsy got here out. I went to see him stay and my jaw dropped. Even again then I knew that was the vitality I needed to place out.”
Crump’s vitality discovered the outlet he was in search of when his band shared a showcase with two rappers who have been additionally from Atlanta. The duo was Antwan Patton and André Benjamin, who’re higher generally known as the hip hop legends Outkast. Upon assembly Crump, the rappers invited him to a recording session, which led to an ongoing collaboration that resulted in six Grammy Awards and over 25 million albums offered, together with Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik, ATLiens, Aquemini, Stankonia, and Speakerboxxx/The Love Beneath.
“At first I was only a session man who labored his ass off for them. They began recognising my sound and then they needed it on all the pieces. These guys are Southern soul superheroes, for actual, and they have been concerned in each a part of the method. They have been already rock stars, however they still needed to be taught. Because the bassist, I would simply preserve kicking out concepts till I got the response I needed from them. As time went on, we’d have entire writing days the place we might kick out a ton of concepts till we felt we had one thing particular.”
After gaining fame for his work with Outkast, Crump was recruited by different main artists within the business. But it was a name by a fellow bassist that landed one in every of his favorite gigs up to now. “Working with Raphael Saadiq is still one in every of my favorite tasks. I had been listening to the Tonys (Tony! Toni! Tone!) without end and they have been one in every of my favorite bands. So I truly got within the room with him and noticed him play bass and heard the sounds he was getting on these information. I simply felt fortunate that he selected me to play bass for him. Even in rehearsals it was out of this world, the issues we’d do. It was wild. Working with Raphael I actually developed a extra percussive bass sound with some thump behind it.”
Searching for a change from his traditional routine of studio hopping and touring, Crump determined to take on extra of a relentless gig when he joined up with indie songwriter Citizen Cope, changing into his common touring and studio bassist. “Cope was working with an engineer who I knew and I got a name from him to say that he beloved the entire Outkast stuff and may I go in. I bear in mind Cope was sitting there with his guitar, and we vibed properly and simply took off. Somebody like Cope desires their factor simple, so I’d wait till the music opened as much as put little inflections in. I tried to get him within the zone and let the music construct.
“I do not wish to practise issues. I do not wish to get a disc that I go house and examine and write to, that is not how I work. I wish to see what comes out of the air. While you meditate on one thing too laborious you get caught with slender concepts. I wish to be within the second. Typically it’s a dead-end road, however you gotta preserve on. If I’m trapped on one thing I simply put the bass down and wait till I hear one thing. Your ears have muscle reminiscence that’ll inform you what must be there.”
With no scarcity of distorted and envelope filter-laden funk strains at his disposal, Crump continues to experiment with totally different bass guitars. “I all the time get new gear and promote gear simply to modify issues up, so I in all probability began out with a completely totally different set-up than I have now. The principle basses I use are my Yamaha 5000, my Sizzling Rod P-Bass, a 70s P-Bass with flatwounds, my Spector Kramer that I used for the entire Outkast stuff, and a 77 Fender Jazz Bass. Man, when I picked up that Jazz Bass I knew it had some songs in it for me and I needed to get them out.”