How to play like ThunderCat
You awaken, stretch yourself out and venture off from the den. Excited to announce your 20th birthday, you venture into Cats lair to find it unusually empty. Snarf, sweeping obediently away with his broom seems to be the only life around. You approach him and he explains that you have come of age, the mighty Lion-O has hit his peak performance and must now prove himself through trials to become Lord of the ThunderCats. After being instructed to eat a lot to keep up your strength, it’s a bloated walk over to Panthro for the first trial, the trial of strength. Lacking your badass sword with the shows logo on it, it’s down to claw and tooth to take down this chaos causing kitty and put his furry butt back in the litter tray. The fight is epic, maybe so epic it caused an earthquake, maybe it was just luck, either way a mighty tremor shakes the earth and big rocks tumble down on the ferocious felines. Using his strength, the grizzled, brave and strongest Thundercat Panthro uses himself to stop an oversized pebble from destroying a nearby village, you throw yourself in with him, knowing that saving innocent life and helping a friend is worth more than victory. In exchange, Panthro declares you the winner and gives you his badge, with the trial cleared the episode ends and you drift to sleep in the cartoon void, ready for whatever exploits episode 38 brings.
Gazing in awe whilst practicing bass runs, a young Stephen Lee Bruner watches from his parent’s sofa. Inspired for the rest of his life, a Thundercat hand tattoo would follow, along with an iconic stage name that would be stated as an influence by countless bassists to come. Bruner’s life began like many a famous musicians does, as part of a wealthy, well connected musical family based in LA. Bruner’s father was a renowned drummer who’d played for soul legends The Temptations and Diana Ross, his older brother had won a Grammy working with Stanley Clarke and his younger brother the keyboardist in Grammy nominated outfit The Internet. Stephen started performing at school, starting in a short-lived project called No Curfew, following this his brother secured him a position in the latest band he was playing for, the infamous Suicidal Tendencies. Young Bruner was replacing the mighty Robert Trujillo who had moved on to play for metal behemoths Metallica. During this time period, 2002-2011 Bruner would use his brother’s connections to play with Stanley Clarke, bringing him into the groups Young Jazz Giants and The Next Step, who featured artists such as Cameron Graves and Kamasi Washington. He enjoyed a successful session career in this time, playing for the likes of Erykah Badu, Bilal, Miguel and Sa-Ra, one of his first famous early recordings playing in an RnB/jazz style came from him playing live for Kamasi. Bruner became ThunderCat in 2010/2011 when he started working on releases by Flying Lotus and released his own debut album The Golden Age of Apocalypse.
Since then Thundercat has worked on numerous releases of his own and as collaborator, his most noteworthy definitely being his work on TPAB by Kendrick Lamar and his biggest single, Them Changes. We’ll discuss three of his most famous works, Them Changes, TPAB and Funny Thing.
Them Changes
“Nobody move, there’s blood on the floor” Them Changes is arguably TC’s biggest hit, a track off of The Beyond / Where the Giants Roam EP from 2015, around the same time he was writing and playing on TPAB with Kendrick Lamar. The track uses a non-diatonic slightly Charlie Parker style chord progression which roughly goes BM7, Gm7b13, Abm7, Fm7 and Ebdom7sus4. Now… there is some fairly complex harmony going on over that Isley Brothers drum sample, so let’s break that down and see what we can steal when writing our own chord progressions. The overarching key of the track is often seen as Gb, although for simplicity when labelling I chose to call the Cb a B. To my ear the Eb, that appears on some sheet music as a minor chord, sounds more like the recording as a dominant 7sus4 or a dom11 and the Gm7, which is sometimes described as diminished, for me worked better with a b13 to lead into the 5th of the Abm7. The F once again, for me worked as an F minor 7 but I believe a Db/F also sounded good, and this would bring us more into Gb land. Overall the track shows how non-diatonic passing chords and dominant substitutions can fit into a standard chord progression in a commercially viable song without sounding too fusion or obtuse. Live ThunderCat often performs as a trio, with a keys player and a drummer, and the keys player is often messing around super imposing different arpeggios, slightly changing the harmony, so this is a real song to listen to and see what works for you. There is a lot to borrow from a progression like this, we can try putting chromatic passing chords in our playing, like the Gm and try adding extensions to them to lead into diatonic ‘safe’ chords. When experimenting with this it can be interesting to try out different harmonies, for example a semitone below augmented chord will share the 5th as a common tone with the target chord, so can be a smoother movement. The same with dominant substitutions, maybe just try switching the 5th chord to a dominant in a minor key or a 4th chord to dominant in any key and just hear how it can open the door to different sounds, or with the dominant 4th chord, b7 movements, think a variation on Autumn Leaves. Another exciting movement in the song is the move between Abm7 and Fm7, a move where the tonalities remain the same that uses an interval distance of a minor third is very Charlie Parker and creates an ‘instant-wonky-jazz’ sound, diminished voicings can be worth trying with this to cool effect.
In terms of the out and out bass playing on the track, when performed live TC plays in his classic style and no space is left unfilled. The vocal melody mainly uses notes from Eb minor pentatonic or B major, and most of his blazingly fast fills also utilise Eb minor shapes. A lot of the runs use standard scale shapes with note patterns, groups of 3 or 4 for example to achieve that ‘outside’ sound ThunderCat sometimes uses that simple trick of playing in key, shifting the pattern a semitone up or down and moving back into key to resolve on a target note. Thundercat also relies heavily on the altered scale to create out lines. TC is known for his flair and playing a lot of notes, and obviously has a slight advantage with the six string, a player who has a similar approach of using the bass as more of a lead instrument whilst being limited to four strings would be Jaco Pastorius, who is often cited as ThunderCat himself as a big influence.
TPAB
ThunderCat had the biggest influence on two songs on TPAB, Wesley’s Theory (which featured his long-time collaborator Flying Lotus) and These Walls, although was present during the whole recording and played on multiple tracks like Alright, King Kunta and the song I. These Walls won TC his Grammy, so let’s look at the chord progression and bass line. The song follows a great jazzy progression Abmaj7, Gm7, Gm7/C, Fmaj7, Dbmaj9, Dbmaj9 and Cm7, so I’d view it in Ab major with just a Gm and a non-diatonic Fmaj. The bass line is obviously very squelchy sounding and plays heavily on arpeggio’s of the extended chords, a similar theme to when he tackles Wesley’s Theory, which a great live version of can be found below. In that live version of Wesley’s Theory, you can see and hear two bassists playing, this could be add even more thump, or it could be to free up ThunderCat so he can play more of the futuristic sounds from the record. Having two bassists in a setup is an interesting move, but can really benefit a more creative, 6 string player who can now fill the more low mid spectrum. Looking at these two tracks, we can see how a bass can fit into a hip hop project whilst using complex progressions and harmony. Watching Kendrick’s live setup could be really worthwhile for anyone playing in a hip hop/live pop project that needs guidance on where their instrument could fit.
Moving to King Kunta, this song has the most recognisable and famous bass line from the album being the main riff and focal point of the instrumentation. It harks back heavily to old funk bass lines, like a Labi Siffre or Funkadelic track. It’s a very standard simple bass line that uses the E minor scale, going up from E to the 2nd and 3rd, then to the 4th and 5th intervals. The real genius here comes in the timing and groove of the line and just how easy it is to singalong with, once again stemming from its simplicity and mostly pentatonic nature, as people can always sing pentatonic lines easier. This track is a great example of groove being everything, and we can learn and copy this idea to our own bass lines. A good exercise is to play from different intervals of the pentatonic or minor scale over a groovy floor to the floor backing track, messing around with displacing note patterns or adding syncopated chromatic shifts to your lines.
Funny Thing
Funny Thing is a short but sweet slice of ThunderCat, which exemplifies his style of music and the typical material which makes up his albums. Funny thing is in G major and is the perfect track to experiment doing fast fills and TC style lines, as he rarely plays the bass line the same twice anyway. The song follows a four bar pattern which has two bars of melody and two bars of C, leaving plenty of space for variation. Live he takes full advantage normally leaving loads of space whilst he sings and adds the fills in at the end of each vocal line. The bassline is fairly straightforward to learn, so I’d definitely work out the parts and then steal lines from his live performances and practice over the track.
Tones and Takeaways
In terms of tone, ThunderCat uses a lot of modulation, I saw him a few years back in London and I couldn’t tell what was squelching synth or bass during most of the solos, but that was probably the sound guys fault. When playing with this amount of moist mud squishing emulation it’s very forgiving in terms of note cleanliness, and some sloppy technique can be covered up, a positive for your speed and also a negative for when you play those lines clean and hear some un-pleasantries. This is why it’s always worth practicing clean and then adding the effects later so nothing slips through the cracks.
In terms of takeaways, ThunderCat is definitely a vast inspiration for creative bass usage, illustrating numerous ways a bass can fit in a mix and showing the full range of the instrument from playing the bass parts to soloing up in the higher registers. The progressions used in his music and the music he helps write for other people demonstrates a huge understanding of music theory, providing a plethora of ideas that we can incorporate into our own progressions and song writing.
In terms of recommended listening, ThunderCats album Drunk is a tour de force of wonky-hip hop-funk and provides a great entry point to his back catalogue. Kendrick Lamar’s TPAB is probably album of the decade and features some of TC’s best playing, darting over melodic jazz chords on some tracks to thumping bass riffs on others. Similar artists who are worth a listen would be Hiatus Kaiyote, who also channel heavy jazz influences and the Internet, which happens to also call ThunderCats brother a member. Let’s now look at the gear ThunderCat uses to create his iconic tones.
Guitars;
1. For many years ThunderCat has only really played Ibanez, having a monolithic six string, hollow body signature model. The signature model called the TCB1006, not only follows the tradition of catchy Ibanez model names, but is a heavily custom, tailored signature which shares distant DNA with an Ibanez Artcore bass that ThunderCat was seen with prior to the first prototypes. The bass features a special wider 5 piece neck to help support the extra strings whilst still keeping a smooth playable heel for the join to the truly enormous 13lb hollow body, which itself is specially designed to work with the feedback incurred from his volume and effect usage. It is powered by two passive EMG’s with a Piezo, a jack input with MIDI and a plethora of controls so every pickup/MIDI combination is possible. The bass sold in limited quantities back in 2018 for around £8,000 and every now and again appears on Reverb for anywhere between 6k to 9k depending on the condition of the model. So what about alternatives? Barring a few special edition Ibanez models released now and again, it looks like one would have to choose between a hollow body or a six string as only a few boutique brands offer both and at a price point where you might as well just get the TCB. Looking at more sensibly priced Ibanez built six strings models, they vary anywhere between £300 and £2000 with obviously the spec changing with the price, so a look through them could be worthwhile. Warwick do some great models at around the £800 mark and as with most signature instruments, EMG sell six string pickups separately so in the majority of cases a pickup swap will get you close tonally. If it’s the aesthetics and tonal nuance, as opposed to range and flexibility that we’re after then maybe going for a hollow body 4 string, then maybe adding EMG’s is the best bet. Guild, Hofner, Grestch and Ibanez all make amazing instruments under a thousand pounds, with the Artcore range being accessible from a few hundreds.
2. A few online videos exist of Thundercat at jam sessions or doing online interviews where he plays Fender models, having not really used them live it’s hard to gauge the model, but nearly every bassist owns a jazz bass or a P bass or both so just adding that sound to your tool kit is a great idea. Squier make amazing models to get you started at around £300 and it only goes up to the custom shop at around 3k, so ideally just look through the catalogue and see which is right for you.
Amplifiers;
1. ThunderCat has said multiple times that he felt he found his match when he started using Aguilar amps. Almost an industry staple at this point, Aguilar are known for providing some of the best solid state bass amps on the market, having punchy and warm tones. Aguilars give an old school flavoured sound that doesn’t add any of the inappropriate grit that an Ampeg or a Mesa sometimes does, making it a perfect match for ThunderCats jazz fusion sound. Aguilar Tone Hammers used to be priced a lot lower, but about 5 or 6 years ago saw a massive spike in popularity due to artists like Pino using them, these days they price between £500 and £900 coming in 350, 500 and 700 watt flavours. All of them will get you in the ball park so it’s worth just going for the one which fits your overall needs and budget, although for true authenticity after watching some live videos, it looks like the Cat uses the 700.
Pedals;
1. Probably the most infamous part of ThunderCats rig, the part which makes him sound like a moist alien ray gun, his effect units are an integral part of the sound. The most important element is probably his modulation, the phaser and bass synth effects. ThunderCat uses pedals from the Moog MoogerFooger analogue units, the Pigtronix envelope phaser and during his NPR tiny desk used a boss phase shifter. The Moog pedals ceased production in 2018, so it’s a case of stalking reverb for any examples that pop up though be prepared to pay some insane 1k+ for pristine units. The exact Pigtronix pedal has also been discontinued, so for a new unit it will be the EP2 which demands a £250 price tag. Luckily the Boss pedal remains in production, priced at around £100, with vintage models fluctuating around that mark depending on scarcity, age and condition. For a cheaper alternative TC electronic make a Blood Moon phaser that sells for a ludicrous £30 providing great value for money, although it will probably sound a little different to a Moog, well one would hope…
2. Another pedal in TC’s armoury is the Digitech Whammy Pitch-Shifter, which pops up on nearly every musicians rig at some point. The Digitech and the Boss were the only two pedals on his tiny desk board, and is responsible for those octave up slightly harpsichord style sounds he creates. The pedal can be attained online for a reasonable £130-140 online and is seriously versatile so is worth the investment, it may also be worth just picking one up second hand to save the money.
3. ThunderCat once said in an interview with a Bass magazine that it’s a Boss SYB-5 Bass Synthesizer that can be heard on “oh sheit, it’s X” and “Them Changes”. The pedal can be found new for around £130 but second hand for £80 from some sellers. Pedals like this I’d definitely recommend saving a little bit as they can be a little niche and might not appear on your work horse board which gets used in the pub every Friday evening.
