In many a musi­cal sit­u­a­tion, one can com­mu­ni­cate an entire play­ing style in a name. When it comes to the bass—in pop music, at least—one of the fore­most of those names is Paul McCart­ney, whose soul­ful basslines have giv­en us some of the most mem­o­rable melodies in music his­to­ry.

McCart­ney start­ed out—in the Quar­ry­men, then The Beatles—on rhythm gui­tar and piano, only tak­ing over the bass when Stu­art Sut­cliffe left the band in 1961. And while it’s true that he’s dis­tin­guished him­self in album after album over the past few decades on every instru­ment in the rock and roll arse­nal, as a styl­ist, Sir Paul has always best used the bass to express his instru­men­tal genius.

He became a bassist “some­what reluc­tant­ly,” Joe Bosso of Music Radar notes, but soon “proved to be a nat­ur­al on the instru­ment… The very image of McCart­ney with the vio­lin-shaped Hofn­er 500/1 bass is one that will for­ev­er be burned into the minds of music lovers every­where.”

The hol­low-bod­ied Hofn­er’s res­o­nant, woody sound is as rec­og­niz­able as its look. But in record­ings, McCart­ney also played a Rick­en­backer and Fend­er Jazz bass. (Spec­u­la­tion about which bass he used on which song spans many years, and can get pret­ty con­tentious.) Even so, his tone is ever dis­tinc­tive. Take Abbey Road’s sin­is­ter, seduc­tive “Come Togeth­er,” a song with one of the most rec­og­niz­able basslines in his­to­ry. At the top of the post, you can hear the solo track.

On its own, it car­ries all the ener­gy of the song, as does the iso­lat­ed bass track from “Dear Pru­dence,” just above. McCart­ney begins with one res­olute­ly plucked note that rings out for sev­er­al bars, then launch­es into the song’s famil­iar walk­down. In his base­line, we can hear both the song’s trance-like melodies and har­monies, the boun­cy rise and fall of its play­ful appeal. Here, the rhyth­mic tex­ture of McCartney’s play­ing mod­u­lates from a plucky thump to a mut­ed click.

“Speak­ing of mobile basslines,” writes Zach Blu­men­feld at Con­se­quence of Sound, “McCartney’s con­tri­bu­tions to ‘Some­thing’ are the most under­rat­ed aspect of the song. The bass “sets up a counter-melody” to the vocals and strings, “more like a low­er vocal har­mo­ny than a bass. It’s also one of McCartney’s busiest bass lines, show­cas­ing his dex­ter­i­ty on the instru­ment.”

Many of McCartney’s basslines work this way, cre­at­ing counter-melodies and act­ing like anoth­er voice in the song. But while he can be a busy play­er, he just as often opts for sim­plic­i­ty and gen­er­al­ly avoids what he calls “fid­dly bits” in a recent video les­son. But his restraint is all the more strik­ing when he does rock out, as above in “Hey Bull­dog,” a song that pos­es a chal­lenge to sea­soned bass play­ers. Even such a mon­ster play­er as Ged­dy Lee cred­its McCart­ney as a sem­i­nal influ­ence for his inven­tive­ness and melodies. (As Susan­na Hoffs says, “melodies just tum­ble out of him.”)

McCartney’s bass play­ing reached its apogee in the band’s best-known final albums, in songs like “Come Togeth­er” and “I Want You,” above, where the bass growls, moans, and throbs. But even in ear­li­er hits like “Paper­back Writer,” below, McCartney’s play­ing show­cased explo­sive riffs, con­fi­dent attack, and preg­nant paus­es and sub­tleties.

McCartney’s leg­endary melod­i­cism on the bass, and his sig­na­ture explo­ration of its upper ranges, is per­haps nowhere more evi­dent than on “Rain,” the B‑side to “Paper­back Writer” and, in gen­er­al a high­ly under­rat­ed Bea­t­les tune. While we don’t have the solo bass track from that record­ing, we do have the plea­sure of see­ing musi­cian Wes Mitchell demon­strate the bassline in the video below, play­ing along to a boot­leg ver­sion of the track with­out bass or lead vocal over­dubs.

Mitchell nails McCartney’s tone and style. See him do so again here with the Abbey Road med­ley “Mean Mr. Mustard/Polythene Pam/She Came in Through the Bath­room Win­dow,” a ver­i­ta­ble buf­fet of McCart­ney styles, tech­niques, and moods.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Paul McCart­ney Offers a Short Tuto­r­i­al on How to Play the Bass Gui­tar

John Lennon’s Raw, Soul-Bar­ing Vocals From the Bea­t­les’ ‘Don’t Let Me Down’ (1969)

Musi­cian Plays Sig­na­ture Drum Parts of 71 Bea­t­les Songs in 5 Min­utes: A Whirl­wind Trib­ute to Ringo Starr

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

We can all sure­ly recite some ver­sion of the dif­fer­ence between lis­ten­ing and hear­ing. It’s usu­al­ly explained by a par­ent or guardian, with the intent of mak­ing us bet­ter at fol­low­ing instruc­tions. On the whole, it’s for our own good as chil­dren that we pay heed to our elders. But gen­uine, crit­i­cal lis­ten­ing is about so much more than per­ceiv­ing ges­tures of author­i­ty. The avant-garde com­pos­er Pauline Oliv­eros, who died this past Thurs­day at 84, would argue that true lis­ten­ing, what she called “deep lis­ten­ing,” opens us up in rad­i­cal ways to the world around us, and frees us from the sociopo­lit­i­cal con­straints that hem in our sens­es. “Take a walk at night,” says one Oliv­eros’ 1974 “Son­ic Med­i­ta­tions,” a set of 25 instruc­tions for deep lis­ten­ing, “Walk so silent­ly that the bot­tom of your feet become ears.”

“Son­ic Med­i­ta­tions” emerged after “a peri­od of intense intro­spec­tion prompt­ed by the Viet­nam War,” writes Steve Smith in a New York Times obit­u­ary, dur­ing which Oliv­eros “changed cre­ative course” to begin favor­ing impro­visato­ry works. “All soci­eties admit the pow­er of music or sound,” she wrote in the pref­ace.

“Son­ic Med­i­ta­tions,” wrote Oliv­eros, “are an attempt to return the con­trol of sound to the indi­vid­ual alone, and with­in groups espe­cial­ly for human­i­tar­i­an pur­pos­es; specif­i­cal­ly heal­ing.” Her approach rep­re­sent­ed the com­pos­er giv­ing up con­trol and the pri­ma­cy of author­ship in order to play oth­er roles: heal­er, guide, and teacher, a role she inhab­it­ed for decades as a col­lege pro­fes­sor and author of sev­er­al books of musi­cal the­o­ry.

As you can see in her TEDx lec­ture at the top of the post, Oliv­eros always returned from her son­ic explorations—such as the 1989 record­ing titled Deep Lis­ten­ing (hear an excerpt below)—with lessons for us in how to become bet­ter, more engaged and empow­ered lis­ten­ers, rather than dis­tract­ed con­sumers, of music and sound. Even before the 70s, and her turn to music as a med­i­ta­tive dis­ci­pline informed by Bud­dhism and Native Amer­i­can rit­u­al, Oliv­eros’ work dis­rupt­ed the usu­al hier­ar­chies of sound. An ear­ly adopter of tech­nol­o­gy, she “was quick­ly at the van­guard of elec­tron­ics,” wrote Tom Ser­vice in a 2012 Guardian pro­file, but her “rela­tion­ship with tech­nol­o­gy is philo­soph­i­cal­ly ambiva­lent” giv­en the role of research and devel­op­ment in cre­at­ing weapons of war.

In ear­ly com­po­si­tions like 1965’s “Bye Bye But­ter­fly,“ the com­pos­er “manip­u­lat­ed a record­ing of Puccini’s opera ‘Madama But­ter­fly’ on a turntable,” Smith writes, “aug­ment­ing its sounds with oscil­la­tors and tape delay.” In the beau­ti­ful­ly mov­ing results, fur­ther up, she aimed for a cri­tique that “bids farewell not only to the music of the 19th cen­tu­ry,” she wrote, “but also to the sys­tem of polite moral­i­ty of that age and its atten­dant insti­tu­tion­al­ized oppres­sion of the female sex.” Music has always been pro­duced and con­sumed with­in the social con­struc­tions of gen­der bina­ries, Oliv­eros main­tained. In a 1970 New York Times essay “And Don’t Call Them ‘Lady’ Com­posers,” she observed that “unless she is super-excel­lent, the woman in music will always be sub­ju­gat­ed, while men of the same or less­er tal­ent will find places for them­selves.”

Through­out her long career, Oliv­eros cre­at­ed a place for her­self, with as much the­o­ret­i­cal rig­or, play­ful­ness, ele­gance, and sophis­ti­ca­tion as her friend and con­tem­po­rary John Cage. That her sub­stan­tial body of work has received a frac­tion of the atten­tion as his may offer an instruc­tive gloss on her con­tentions of per­sis­tent bias. But Oliv­eros’ work was not reac­tive; it was con­struc­tive, such that her con­cepts gave rise to what she called a Deep Lis­ten­ing Insti­tute, an “ever-grow­ing com­mu­ni­ty of musi­cians, artists, sci­en­tists, and cer­ti­fied Deep Lis­ten­ing prac­ti­tion­ers,” who strive “for a height­ened con­scious­ness of the world of sound and the sound of the world.”

But you don’t need spe­cial­ized cer­ti­fi­ca­tion or train­ing to expe­ri­ence the med­i­ta­tive, con­scious­ness-expand­ing tech­niques of Oliv­eros’ music. On the con­trary, she sought to fos­ter “cre­ative inno­va­tion across bound­aries and across abil­i­ties, among artists and audi­ence, musi­cians and non­mu­si­cians, heal­ers and the phys­i­cal­ly or cog­ni­tive­ly chal­lenged, and chil­dren of all ages.” In the Spo­ti­fy playlist above, hear—or rather lis­ten to—20 hours of Oliv­eros com­po­si­tions, many fea­tur­ing her ear­ly exper­i­ments with ana­log elec­tron­ics, her “expand­ed instru­ment sys­tem,” and her sig­na­ture instru­ment, a dig­i­tal­ly-enhanced accor­dion.

As in the orches­tral move­ment of Deep Lis­ten­ing, the album, Oliv­eros fre­quent­ly dia­logues with musi­cal tra­di­tions, but she refused to allow them any par­tic­u­lar­ly ele­vat­ed author­i­ty over her work. “I’m not dis­mis­sive of clas­si­cal music and the West­ern canon,” she said in 2012, “It’s sim­ply that I can’t be bound by it. I’ve been jump­ing out of cat­e­gories all my life.” As lis­ten­ers, and read­ers, of her work, we can all learn to do the same.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Meet Four Women Who Pio­neered Elec­tron­ic Music: Daphne Oram, Lau­rie Spiegel, Éliane Radigue & Pauline Oliv­eros

The Music of Avant-Garde Com­pos­er John Cage Now Avail­able in a Free Online Archive

Hear Steve Reich’s Min­i­mal­ist Com­po­si­tions in a 28-Hour Playlist: A Jour­ney Through His Influ­en­tial Record­ings

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

First built in Paris by Charles Marenghi in 1905, the organ above quick­ly found a home in a Bel­gian restau­rant. And there it remained for many years … until 1967, when it trav­eled abroad, to a Texas fair­ground. Imag­ine the cul­ture shock it must have felt. But that’s not where it ends.

Nowa­days, you can watch the 81-key organ play Queen’s 1975 hit “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody,” quite dif­fer­ent than what­ev­er it was play­ing in Antwerp a cen­tu­ry ago. Alex­ey Rom wrote the arrange­ment for the song, and pro­grammed it using the strip of cards being fed through the instru­ment. Hope­ful­ly this isn’t the last stop on this organ’s grand jour­ney.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Expe­ri­ence Queen’s “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody” in Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty: Down­load the Free App Cre­at­ed by Queen & Google

Inside the Rhap­sody: A Short Doc­u­men­tary on the Mak­ing of Queen’s Clas­sic Song, ‘Bohemi­an Rhap­sody’ (2002)

Gui­tarist Bri­an May Explains the Mak­ing of Queen’s Clas­sic Song, ‘Bohemi­an Rhap­sody’

Queen Doc­u­men­tary Pays Trib­ute to the Rock Band That Con­quered the World

The Music of Queen Re-Imag­ined by “Extra­or­di­nary” Clas­si­cal Pianist, Natalia Pos­no­va

Gayageum play­er Luna Lee has been on a bit of a viral video roll recent­ly. First it was her cov­er of “Space Odd­i­ty” by David Bowie that earned her 110,000 plus views, and just two days ago we fea­tured her cov­ers of Pink Floyd’s “Anoth­er Brick in the Wall,” “Great Gig in the Sky,” and “Com­fort­ably Numb.” Back in her archives from a year ago, we’ve also found the above video of her cov­er of Leonard Cohen’s “Hal­lelu­jah.”

Although Lee’s rock cov­ers add bass and drums to keep the ener­gy up, this ver­sion just fea­tures three over­dubbed gayageums and a very sub­tle synth string line, leav­ing the bit­ter­sweet melody to come to the fore. No pyrotech­nics here.

The best known of Cohen’s songs and the most cov­ered, thanks most­ly to Jeff Buckley’s ver­sion, “Hal­lelu­jah” was not con­sid­ered a clas­sic orig­i­nal­ly. In this fine sto­ry of the song told by Mal­colm Glad­well on his Revi­sion­ist His­to­ry pod­cast (stream it below), it took 15 years for its genius to be unveiled, by which time it just seemed obvi­ous, like we had known it all along.

Glad­well inter­views Alan Light, who wrote an entire book on the evo­lu­tion of the song, the com­po­si­tion of which “bedev­iled” Cohen the most, result­ing in 80 or so vers­es that Cohen wrote and reject­ed until he found the per­fect com­bo. The song took years to com­plete. (This seg­ment of the pod­cast starts at 18:54 in, but you should real­ly lis­ten to the whole thing as it also explores Cezan­ne’s art and Elvis Costello’s writ­ing meth­ods.) The sto­ry also involves Bob Dylan, a failed orig­i­nal record­ing described as “turgid”, and the end­less tin­ker­ing in Cohen’s live con­certs. The twists and turns that fol­low are both coin­ci­den­tal and trag­ic, and we will let you dis­cov­er all of them by lis­ten­ing to the pod­cast.

Alan Light also spoke to NPR about the song fol­low­ing Cohen’s death ear­li­er this month.

“Sep­tem­ber 11 comes,” he says, “and Jeff Buck­ley’s record­ing of “Hal­lelu­jah” real­ly became sort of an anthem in the after­math, emo­tion­al short­hand for melan­choly and for sad­ness.”

Sounds like that time of dark­ness has come around again, and we still have “Hal­lelu­jah,” need­ed more than ever.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A‑ha’s “Take On Me” Per­formed by North Kore­an Kids with Accor­dions

Pak­istani Musi­cians Play a Delight­ful Ver­sion of Dave Brubeck’s Jazz Clas­sic, “Take Five”

With Medieval Instru­ments, Band Per­forms Clas­sic Songs by The Bea­t­les, Red Hot Chili Pep­pers, Metal­li­ca & Deep Pur­ple

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.