My Defense of the Bass (Mega Ukulele)

It really is stunning how your phone can practically hear you and provide content fit for your interests on social media. The outcome of this, for me at least, is a barrage of guitar content, clips from my favorite artists, and weirdly, slanderous content on the bass. In Korea, at least, the bass is often called the "mega ukulele" because of its four strings and allegedly limited versatility. I laugh at this content, often in the form of skits, not because I agree with them per se, but because I used to think like this before I began working with proper bands. 

As a bedroom guitarist whose musical focus was solely on the guitar and its role in bands, I did not think much of the bass and practically disliked it out of all of the instruments I played with. It seemed like an extension of the guitar, having the same first four strings but lower. I felt as if in a mix, the bass player was in a position in which they had to constantly justify their instrument, willing to stand out and cement their importance, especially in the rhythm section. 

However, as I have broadened my musical catalogue and discovered the bass's immense potential and talent as an instrument, I stand corrected on my previous remarks. The bass, though an instrument primarily used to build rhythm, can shine regardless of how minimal its contributions are to the piece. Which is why I have decided to introduce three bassists who have completely shifted my view on the instrument. 

Marcus Miller

Marcus Miller, though not as well known as other bass players, is a bassist who has been on most people’s favorite records. Whether it be Herbie Hancock, Beyoncé, or Luther Vandross, he has played and written for multiple renowned artists, enhancing the track with his expertise in building groove. 

Sporting decades of expertise since the 1980s and a Fender Jazz Bass, Miller is a true session musician who knows when to start and when to stop. His bass booms with volume when he slaps, but at the same time, it provides the crisp highs when he pops the higher strings with his index finger. 

If Miller's bass playing could be described in a single word, for me it would be "dexterity". His sound has what us guitarists call "bone tone"--a sound that comes not from expensive gear, but from the fingers. I have heard Miller on countless songs, such as David Sanborn's Run for Cover, or Lee Ritenour's Rio Funk. Despite the differences in genre and style, his playing does not sound alien or unnatural in either track. Somehow Miller brings his slap bass formula, pastes it onto the song, and makes his instrument pop. What a legend. 

If I learned anything about bass from Marcus Miller, it would be that the bass can be funky in whatever track. As long as it complements and benefits the track like Miller does, and remains punctual the whole way through, there is nothing wrong with keeping the groove. 

Phil Lesh

Phil Lesh was perhaps the best for his contributions on bass with the Grateful Dead. Although not as prevalent as Marcus Miller within the music community, he was well known amongst Dead Heads (or fans of the Grateful Dead) as the second lead player of the band, along with lead guitarist Jerry Garcia. 

With the Grateful Dead, Lesh was anything but conventional. As soon as the music starts, Lesh quietly joins in with the rest of the musicians, setting the tone with his deep, staccato-like bursts. Then, as soon as Garcia steps into his solo, Lesh jumps out of the rhythm section and begins playing with Garcia, filling in the spaces Garcia leaves empty with his own melody. Unlike most bassists, Lesh never seems to care about the downbeats. He is perfectly comfortable with playing on the upbeats, where in most tracks, the bass would largely be absent. 

What is so interesting about Phil Lesh's playing is how his experimental approach to sound was conceived. Growing up as a kid on violin and trumpet, and an avant-garde jazz artist as an adult, Lesh had a near-perfect understanding of musical arrangement even before he joined the Dead. Learning bass for the first time, weeks leading up to his first performance with the band, he was told by fellow musicians to "always play root notes on the downbeat". However, seeing the improvisational nature of the Grateful Dead, Lesh changed his perspective on the instrument completely. 

Frankly, Phil Lesh sits on a slightly different plane than most bass players, sporting a six-string bass in his later years to play both rhythmically and melodically. As a guitar player, I found versatility on the bass with Phil Lesh. Though he will be one of the weirder bassists of modern music, there is still plenty to learn from his approach to the instrument. 

Pino Palladino

Pino Palladino, like Marcus Miller, is a true session musician. Drawn to Motown records and jazz at an early age, Pino started playing jazz fusion and neo soul for artists such as Gary Numan, Paul Young, and Ryuichi Sakamoto. Inspired by Motown bass legends as well as various other genres such as reggae and funk, Pino is a true master of endless melodic playing as well as keeping things in the pocket and staying in the groove.

Characterized by his thick flat wounds and often sporting four and five-stringed fretless basses, Pino's sound can be characterized as thumpy and yet melodic, reaching higher notes with the fifth string. He is also incredibly versatile, filling in for John Entwistle as the bassist for the Who, and recently working for artists such as John Mayer in his power trio. 

Although fusion is not a genre I vibe with all the time, there is still so much to be learnt from his playing. He is a melodic virtuoso, playing not just the low notes, but embellishing chords, musical voicings, and higher range into his playing. Though fusion and in-the-pocket grooves have always been the love of his musical life, you can hear Pino everywhere: from Beyoncé to Miley Cyrus. It goes to show how much of his knowledge of the neck of his bass, as well as sound, contributes to our favorite records today. 

Sure. Even after listening to these three bass players, all incredibly talented and brimming with creative genius, some, especially musicians, may feel that they are desperately trying to shine and reach for the spotlight. However, the musicianship of Marcus Miller, Phil Lesh, and Pino Palladino is that they are willing to stay in the background. The only difference between the mega ukulele player and these bassists is that Miller, Lesh, and Pino are aware that their instrument is not all about the low notes. So, to all aspiring musicians, give your bass player some slack. 

Science of Text Abbreviations

It seems like in this world, where we are moving in a world faster than anybody has ever seen, we are forced to do multiple things at once, texting while showering while brushing your teeth, for instance. But as a person who has actually attempted to text while showering while brushing my teeth, it is extremely hard to do these things all at once.

You might have heard someone speak like this: "It is in a world like this, so fast-paced and busy, and so many things happening through online spaces, that we have developed a culture of abbreviating the things we have to say. Grammar and proper sentences are abhorrently ignored and set to the side, being replaced with phrases such as "laugh out loud" and "be right back". And we reduce our lives even further to letters: "lol" and "brb". If one stage of abbreviation wasn't enough."

I used to be one of these people. Even as a kid, I hated times when my friends would respond in these ways, even in scenarios where their hands and time were fully available or reasonable to type out a full word or sentence. For instance, I remember learning what "smh" meant for the first time. When I realized that "smh" was widely used to replace the word "no", I scoffed. "Smh" had one more letter than "no", which, unlike the former, would be a straight answer for everyone. Was it cooler to type in abbreviations, even if it meant costing rationality and even more characters? As much as I despised text abbreviations, I also wanted to learn more about the dawn of their existence. Although I had lived through abbreviations in texting, my parents had lived through abbreviations in paging, where they had to use similarly nonsensical abbreviations to fight the numerical barrier that was ingrained in the technology of paging.

The SMS Language, or the texting language, has been used for centuries, even before the dawn of computers and the texting age. In the age of telegraphs, many words were shortened as telegraph messaging was charged based on character count. Instead of reducing words to letters, however, messengers often removed unnecessary vowels or consonants that served no purpose in denoting the word itself. This often resulted in words such as "about" and "week" being shortened into "abt" and "wk".

As telegraphs were the most advanced and widely used form of communication at the time, besides mail, the changes in language were quite significant in terms of how they shaped the culture of communication. With that said, however, all of the alterations made in this era were based on practicality, such as limiting the number of characters as much as possible to fill the limit and pay less. 

The same principle applied to paging. Since the first pagers only had a numerical keypad, messages that would normally make sense as words were forced to be converted to expressions formed entirely of numbers. In contrast to telegraphs, the "booms" of which differed by region and were mainly used in Europe, the use of pagers globalized much more quickly. This resulted in many more "phrases" in multiple different languages. In English, most phrases consisted of numbers, which denoted the number of letters in each word. For instance, the phrase "I love you" was "143" as there is one letter in "I", four letters in "love", and three letters in "you". Singular words, such as "Hello", were often represented in letters that resembled the word flipped upside down, resulting in "07734". In Korea, the sounds of the words themselves contributed to the translation to pager speak. For instance, the phrase "Come on, quick" is "8282", which resembles the pronunciation of the actual Korean phrase: "빨리빨리".

When text messages came around, they possessed the same sort of limit. At the dawn of SMS messaging, a single message was limited to 160 characters. Like telegraphs, this meant that fitting this limit as well as getting a point across using the fewest number of characters possible was always the priority. However, with the advent of smartphones, text messaging reached many more younger people, especially teens and those in their 20s, resulting in a much more modernized shift in language that suited this demographic. Common phrases such as "laughing out loud" and "rolling on the floor laughing" turned into "lol" and "rofl". But this still does not explain why, even after the disappearance of the character limit, the text abbreviations used still stay the same.

The truth is, text messaging is somewhat different from other forms of communication. In truth, paging only existed for about 10 years. Not many older people, part of the mail generation, knew about it at the time. However, unlike paging, texting has remained unchanged for the last 25 years. As more and more of the older generation pass, and more of the new generation adopt text messaging as their primary source of communication, the language used at the dawn of messaging, when limitations existed, continues to be used. Thus, text abbreviations take a natural course of evolution, where the abbreviations themselves orient themselves to the faster-paced and media-focused world of today. In a quite uncanny example, I found "TLDR", or "Too long to read", to be directly related to the faster days of today, where most people are invested in other tasks to be reading long passages. It is almost eerie and scary to think that text messaging is aging and developing with us. 

But perhaps the most crucial part of why abbreviations in messaging sit on a completely different plane is the linguistic differences. While telegraph and pager speak were abbreviated to shorten or convert a word or phrase, SMS speak exists purely to simplify. Unlike previous forms, it has no strict pattern, follows no rules in terms of practicality, and can even be nonsensical. While pager and telegraph speak have certain purposes, a person can abbreviate their text without having a specific purpose. It is this unbound and free form of speech that makes it so widespread and such a staple in communication.

Sure, this doesn't quite explain why receiving text abbreviations is so annoying, even to people who partake in them all the time. But at least we know that the fault is not ours; it is the changing world, the flexibility of language, and the changing standards of norms in communication that allow us to speak like this.

The (Un)usual Suspect

WARNING: THIS PIECE CONTAINS HEAVY SPOILERS ON THE 1995 FILM "THE USUAL SUSPECTS". I ADVISE YOU TO WATCH THE FILM BEFORE READING.

One of the definitive factors that influences my choices on Saturday movie night is looking at the poster and the Netflix description and figuring out through my pure intuition, what I think the plot twist might be, or if there is even a twist. However, not all of these twists are quite the gut-punching, satisfactory roller coaster they advertise themselves as. Some of them leave a bitter taste in your mouth, a blow of contrivance to your brain. If there were to be a perfect plot twist, there is one movie that stands above all other moments of plot twists in pop culture. It is the infamous ending of Bryan Singer’s The Usual Suspects. 

The Usual Suspects follows the interrogation of a crippled con artist in New York named Verbal Kint, who details a criminal operation on a boat that only left two alive, including himself. Verbal claims that urban legend and presumed crime lord, Keyser Soze, was the one who controlled him and four others: Fenster, MacManus, Hockney, and Keaton. He details his journey, from a meeting with a “fence” named Redfoot, an underling named Kobayashi working for Keyser Soze, and Soze’s promise to spare their lives if they destroy a shipment of cocaine and the gangs related to them on a boat. 

The twist? When Agent Kujan, the US Customs agent investigating the case, realizes the only man who recognizes Keyser Soze was killed on the boat, he becomes certain that Keaton, the most experienced member in the group and a former NYPD officer, was Keyser Soze. Verbal gives in and confesses with teary eyes that Keaton was the one who orchestrated the heist on the boat and manipulated the other four. Moments later, Kujan realizes that Verbal made up his story on the spot using pieces of information he found on a bulletin board: Kobayashi from the bottom of Kujan’s coffee cup, and Redfoot from a mugshot on the board in front of him. While Kujan rushes out to find him, Verbal slowly straightens his crippled foot, unclenches his crippled hand, and leaves in Kobayashi’s car, certifying that he was, in fact, Keyser Soze. Brilliant.

But what makes this final ten-minute segment so great?

First, the presumed truth makes sense and is plenty reasonable on its own. Five criminals start bonding after the NYPD falsely suspects them of being perpetrators of a truck heist, seeking revenge on the police officers who accused them. The five begin to work as a team, mostly stealing jewels with the help of a transporter named Redfoot. When one of these heists goes wrong, it is revealed that Kobayashi was the one who arranged its failure. Kobayashi, speaking on behalf of Keyser Soze, claims that all of them have stolen from him and threatens to kill them and their loved ones if they do not destroy the boat. Those alive after the mission will be given a sum of $91 million.

There are many reasons why we should believe Verbal’s story. According to his narrative, all five members have stolen from Soze in some way. We also witness the death of Fenster, who is found dead in a cave after he tries to escape from Kobayashi. Though the story is told discontinuously, there seems to be no noticeable error or trouble with continuity in how Verbal narrates the story. We can only assume that, as crime veterans in their own right, MacManus does have a connection with a fencer off the radar named Redfoot, and that Keyzer Soze sends dispatches or underlings such as Kobayashi to negotiate on his behalf. The story is not over the top, nor is the dialogue itself unnatural in any way. It flows like any other story.

There is also reason to believe that Keaton is the mastermind behind the operation and the identity behind Keyser Soze. From the inception of the team of usual suspects, Keaton becomes the dominating member of the group. Although he is not in the planning stage, he asserts himself as a good leader as well as a skilled tactician. From the way he treats and uses Verbal, such as asking him to accompany his visit to his girlfriend, Edie Finneran, Verbal seems like a pawn to Keaton. Keaton is the first to know there is no cocaine on the boat, and the last to be “killed”, after the deaths of Hockney and MacManus. 

The beauty of the presumed truth in this film is also supported by the fact that the interests of Agent Kujan and the gang do not align. While the members of the gang simply choose to board the boat out of survival and profit, the NYPD also runs a joint investigation on who Keyser Soze actually is. We, as the audience, are forced to follow both, heightening the significance of this presumed truth.  

Second, yet less importantly, the plot twist does not operate for the sake of the exposition or presumed truth. Although some twists tend to convolute or degrade the efforts of the characters done previously through a massive yet simple twist, The Usual Suspects expertly ties the narrative together. We see how Verbal improvised the story, as well as the reasoning behind his facade as a cripple, choosing to be weak while incriminating a friend.

But perhaps the most important element of the twist is its execution. Unlike most movies, where the twist is revealed towards the end, and there is about half an hour more screen time where the twist produces new action, The Usual Suspects ends on a high note when Verbal is revealed to be Keyser Soze all along. The buildup to the reveal is also done expertly. It starts with Kujan, proudly yet absent-mindedly looking at the bulletin board. Then he starts seeing elements of Verbal’s story unfold in front of his eyes. Bricks Marlin from the fish that Rabin, the owner of the office, caught. The barbershop quartet from a metal plate in the left corner. The Guatemala story from a large coffee poster. And finally, the name Kobayashi, coming from the coffee cup that has been hovering over his head for hours. Then, there is a short montage, with a shot of Verbal as Soze that only appears for a split second. The deaths of Hockney, MacManus, and Keaton soon follow. Then, a faxed drawing from a witness at the hospital that looks oddly like Verbal. And then there’s the infamous scene with his feet, which completes the movie. 

It’s short and sweet, but it also takes its time. The scene does not immediately start with the faxed drawing of Verbal, but instead focuses on Kujan’s hubris and his fallacy of having completed the mission when it is far from over. Although abrupt and having no advancement of plot afterwards, this serves as a better ending to the film itself, considering the attention the name Keyser Soze has gotten until this point.

It's simple, yet effective. And in my mind, no twist will ever be better than this one.