Vic Wooten: Groove Workshop

Expanding on the groundbreaking concepts he introduced in his book, The Music Lesson” A Spiritual Search For Growth Through Music (Penguin), master bassist Victor Wooten lays out his unique philosophy of teaching and learning music in Groove Workshop, a new DVD from Hudson Music.

The 2-disc set features nearly five hours of material, including a complete master class where Victor ” along with bassist/educator Anthony Wellington and six bass students ” uses his personal experience and expertise to delve deeper into rarely discussed, yet vitally important, aspects of music making.

While traditional music education focuses primarily on developing technique and note-perfect performance, professional musicians like Victor know that there’s much more to making music than just playing the right notes. On Groove Workshop, Victor redefines the essential elements of music and demonstrates how to apply them in fresh, creative, musically relevant ways.

Chapters and content include:

“¢ Notes: Sometimes even the “right” notes can sound wrong. But applying chromatic scales and playing within the musical context can make “wrong” notes sound right.

“¢ Grooving: Why feel and emotion are important in music and an explanation of the elements that need to be present for a good groove to happen.

“¢ Articulation/Duration: How changes in articulation can affect the feel and help create a more professional sound.

“¢ Dynamics: How to use dynamics to connect with your audience. “¢ Rhythm/Tempo: Victor’s suggested rhythmic exercises along with the creative use of metronomes and drum machines will improve a player’s sense of time.

“¢ Tone: Understanding the role of tone quality and how to adjust it for different situations.

“¢ Phrasing: Utilizing singing, breathing and imagination to create more natural, more musical phrases.

“¢ Space/Rest: A discussion and demonstration of why space is such an integral part of playing music.

“¢ Listening: Learning to trust your ears and why listening may well be the most essential aspect of playing music.

Also featured on Groove Workshop are several solo performances by Victor, as well as duets with Anthony Wellington.

Victor Wooten redefines the word musician. Regaled as the most influential bassist since Jaco Pastorius, Victor is known for his solo recordings and tours, and as a member of the Grammy-winning supergroup, Béla Fleck & The Flecktones. He is an innovator on the bass guitar, as well as a talented composer, arranger, producer, vocalist and multi-instrumentalist. But those gifts only begin to tell the tale of this Tennessee titan. Victor is the loving husband and devoted father of four; the youngest sibling of the amazing Wooten brothers (Regi, Roy, Rudy and Joseph), and the bassist in their famed family band; the student in the martial art of Wing Chun and the nature survival skill of Tracking; the teacher of dozens of bass players at his acclaimed annual Bass & Nature camp; and the master magician. Victor Lemonte Wooten got to music early, growing up in a military family in which his older brothers all played and sang. By the time he was 3, Victor was being taught bass by his oldest brother Regi, and at age 5 he was performing professionally with the Wooten Brothers Band. He recalls, “My parents and brothers were the foundation. They prepared me for anything by teaching me to keep my mind open and learn to adapt.”? Working their way east from Sacramento, the band played countless clubs and eventually opened concerts for Curtis Mayfield and War.

Victor was influenced by bass mentors, Stanley Clarke, Larry Graham and Bootsy Collins, while learning about the music business at a wildly accelerated pace. By the early ’80s, with the family settled in Newport News, Virginia, the brothers became mainstays at Busch Gardens theme park in nearby Williamsburg, making numerous connections with musicians in Nashville and New York.

In 1988 Victor moved to Nashville, where he worked with singer Jonell Mosser and met New Grass Revival banjo ace Béla Fleck. A year later, Fleck enlisted Vic, his brother Roy (a.k.a. Future Man) and harmonica-playing keyboardist Howard Levy to perform with him, and the Flecktones were born. After three highly successful albums, Levy departed in 1993, and the band’s new trio format enabled Victor to develop and display a staggering array of fingerboard skills that turned him into a bass hero of Pastorian-proportions and helped earn the band a Grammy.

With the Flecktones in full flight, Victor set his sights on a solo career, first forming Bass Extremes with fellow low-end lord Steve Bailey (leading to an instructional book/CD and two CDs, to date), and finally releasing his critically-acclaimed solo debut, A Show of Hands, in 1996. Soon after, Vic took his solo show on the road with drummer J.D. Blair. Momentum and accolades built with successive tours and the release of What Did He Say? in 1997, the Grammy-nominated Yin-Yang in 1999 and the double CD, Live In America in 2001.

Wooten won two Nashville Music Awards for Bassist Of The Year and is the only three-time winner of Bass Player magazine’s Bass Player Of The Year. With the honors came sideman calls, leading to recordings and performances with artists like Branford Marsalis, Mike Stern, Bruce Hornsby, Chick Corea, Dave Matthews, Prince, Gov’t Mule, Susan Tedeschi, Vital Tech Tones (with Scott Henderson and Steve Smith), the Jaco Pastorius Word Of Mouth Big Band, and the soundtrack of the Disney film Country Bears.

Victor Wooten has the rare ability to continuously raise the bar, always growing as an artist, and he’s excited to have joined the Vanguard roster with the release of Soul Circus.