by Michael Lazarus

In Part 1 of this series I outlined the mayor trends in the bass movement for the title track of Paulito F.G.'s classic timba album Con La Conciencia Tranquila. Now we'll see how these trends permeate throughout the record and also discuss some variations.

Mi Tentación - BASS - Audio track 7

Tune your bass to an A 440Hz with Audio Track 1.
Listen to the bass & piano montuno with Audio Track 7.

Here we see further use of the emphasis on the backbeat, accentuated by the space left on the fourth beat of each 2-side. It's really nice how the bass movement mimics the coro melody. Note how it links to the clave.

Llamada Anónima - BASS - Audio track 7

Listen to the bass & piano montuno with Audio Track 8.

In a similar manner as with Mi Tentación -where the same rhythmic figure is employed on every 2-side- Llamada Anónima uses the "leading up to the ponche" on every 3-side. Also notice the big fat low B on the one (1) of the last measure in this coro chord progression. Note that the open space (no music) during both strokes of each 2-side makes for extremely funky, call-and-response, bass movement in relation to the clave.

Para Volver - BASS - Audio track 9 & 10

Listen to the bass & piano montuno with Audio Track 9.
Listen to the bass & piano montuno variation with Audio Track 10.

Further proof in my proposition that the bass movement in timba music seeks to reinforce clave, the bass rhythm in Para Volver simply mimics the clave, albeit in a very tasteful way. Notice how the clave is emphasized by NOT playing on beat 1 of each 2-side -letting the note carry over the bar from the previous measure. These spaces are indicated below with a small red arrow.

De La Habana - BASS - Audio track 13 & 14

Listen to the bass & piano montuno with Audio Track 13.
Listen to the bass & piano montuno variation with Audio Track 14.

Akin to Llamada Anónima, the bass movement in the main coro and mambo sections of Paulito's anthemic hit De La Habana make excellent use of space over the 2-side to reinforce the "leading up to the ponche" trend over the 3-side. These key spaces in the first and third 2-sides of the 8 bar phrase are noted by the red arrows below. The red box indicated 2-side alignment with heavy emphasis on the backbeat stroke.

Con La Conciencia Traquila was selected for this analysis 1 because it was the earliest chronologically released album, within my collection, where several key trends in Timba were easily recognized as a collective -the presence of the gears, the song by song micro-composing of percussion parts, the reinforcement of clave by the bass, the classically and jazz influenced piano parts, the mid-mambo conga fill, etc. After further transcriptions and analysis of numerous albums within the genre, it became clear that the relation between the bass movement and clave was a consistent and marked general trend. Clearly different bands and players had idiosyncratic variations and touches, but the main idea remained throughout. .

My next article will kick-off reviews and analysis of the bass movement within other timba bands. Stay tuned mi gente.

credits:
- Audio tracks used by permission from Pyrale Music. - Transcriptions used by permission from Kevin Moore, editor-in-chief of http://www.TIMBA.com
- Article excerpts from TIMBA Style Bass Vol.1, an eBook I published on www.latinpulsemusic.com
- All content ©2009 Michael P. Lazarus