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As a bassist in search of improving your ability, you've probably been advised to imitate the work of other musicians. Over the years, I've heard many bass teachers recommend that their students learn saxophone solos, vocal melodies, and even drum rudiments. I agree that this can be extremely valuable, and I've done it many times myself. Anytime you explore territory that's outside the realm of the bass, new sounds will come to you.

But what about exploring territory that's outside the realm of music?

A little background: There was a point in my life when I felt my musical education had smothered my creative energy, and I was bummed. Yes, I had the ability to play through tough changes and my ear training allowed me to transcribe tricky solos-but my expression was like that of C3P0 from Star Wars. Frustrated, I became keenly aware that musical ability without emotional expression was artistically useless.

Fortunately, I found fresh inspiration in sounds that occurred outside of what we think of as "music". At that time, I was trying to write a melody for a mournful tune in 6/8. As usual, I was practicing in front of the television, and the Discovery Channel was on. As I struggled to wring something meaningful from my knowledge of harmony and melody, something that would express loneliness and loss, the exact emotion I was desperately trying to evoke came right out of the TV set.

"What was it?" you ask. It was a wolf, howling somewhere in the distance, as the camera panned across a dark and lonely mountain range. That was it! That was the feeling I wanted. In a heartbeat, I had a tape in my VCR and was capturing these sounds so I could learn from them.

Instead of trying to manipulate a diminished lick to evoke loneliness, I began to imitate the wolf. I found that bending a note up in stages, rather than in one smooth motion, sounded good. I also discovered that they way you release a bend back to its starting point (or to another tasty tone) radically altered the effect. Then I had to find a melodic way to play these sounds over the chord progression of the tune I was writing. I soon discovered which intervals were good to bend to and from, and how to blend the bends into other melody notes. Within an hour, I had the complete melody written and recorded.

From that day on, I began recording wildlife shows and buying CDs of animal sounds. Since then, I've imitated chickens, whales, horses (both rhythmically and melodically), falcons, cows, and other beasts. As you can imagine, the potential is just about endless. One point I'd like to emphasize, though, is that creative explorations such as these are best done when you have enough musical education to know how to incorporate the ideas into your playing effectively. If you don't know how to analyze the melodic and the harmonic effect of the animal sounds you've created, then they'll be no more than gimmicks.

Also, don't limit yourself to striving for "perfect" imitations. If you're trying to whinny or oink and a burst of inspiration takes you in a different direction-go with it.