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Postal address: Høgskolen i Agder Serviceboks 422, 4604 Kristiansand

Visiting address: Gimlemoen 25, 4604 Kristiansand

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Phone: + 47 38 14 19 20

Fax: + 47 38 14 10 01

E-mail: per.e.drablos@hia.no

Background/education

Previous assignment

Teaching and tutoring

Ph.D.-project

From Jamerson to Spenner – a study of the melodic electric bass

The subject of this thesis is primarily an attempt to identify, isolate and define a kind of electric bassplaying I will call the melodic electric bass.

The term melodic bassplaying is characterized by an improvised, not necessarily repeated bassline, where the artist during a chord progression plays melodic lines – also in the higher register, and simultaneously look after the instruments originally role; focusing on the root and keeping the groove. This in an accompanying, non-solistic situation.

From the middle of the nineteen sixties, and well into the middle of the nineteen seventies, this kind of bass playing was the convention in several popular music genres, and mainly so in pop/rock/soul. So my main focus is: How did this melodic bassplaying come into being, and why did it disappear?

The thesis is divided into four parts: Definition of musical genres, qualitative interview, music analysis and music transcription, and I will through the project emphasize the term sound.

Selected publications 

Artistic practice