@darkstar74 said:

@waxbanks said:

@darkstar74 said:

I agree with the premise: order vs disorder but that's about it. Lesh, to the best of my knowledge, was the only classically trained member of the Dead and I'm guessing he works with more than intuition.

Not on the bass - that's my point. He's got overall music technique but he was not a very advanced bassist by any stretch. Fantastic musician, middling technician.

I'm not a trained musician so I cannot comment on his bass technique - He was the one who got Mike playing with a pick though...so....his technique can't be THAT bad. ;-)

OK, maybe this is a loaded example - but do you remember the 1998 Phil'n'Friends shows with Page and Trey? They did Chalkdust, and embarrassingly, Trey and Page were the only ones to play any of the written arrangement. Lesh didn't even learn the unison part right before the final vocals...which is pretty much a straight descent down the blues scale! As in Guitar Patterns 101.

Meanwhile Trey and Page took, what, a couple of days to learn Terrapin?

And yet it's a good enough version of Chalkdust.

That's the difference between intuition and chops.