Ohhhhhh no...... ! These guy's blew my mind years ago.... They got me into the music that inspired me to learn more....! We used to do Playing the Game... It was an honor to include them in our Prog Tribute Show. You'll see some of our work on my page.. We did not last long. But Ray and that entire band were admired by all of us... RIP sir..!
I'm sad to hear that Ray has passed. He was a fabulous musician. He would be hard to replace, but I hope Gentle Giant finds a way to continue making their Music. RIP ❤🙏
Nice work. Dreamt of Gentle Giant this morning. In a concert hall, they were on stage, at ease, probably during intermission. At one point, Ray Shulman approached the audience with some sort of tuned percussion instrument in his hand. Roughly 25x25x25 cm cube, with several irrational geometric figures on each side, each playing a specific note as Ray struck with his mallet. Occasionally, he filled the hollow of the instrument with sparkling water, which made the object even more mysterious. A young girl crawled towards him, trying to get a closer look. Needless to say, Ray was smiling all the way.
As a bassist, he was technically proficient and melodic at the same time, a rare trait in music. Besides being, of course, one of the band's main composers and arrangers, something many fans don't know. He was really one of a kind.
Agreed, he seemed to use his technical chops not for show but to accomplish his melodic goals (which is completely new as far as I'm concerned) Much like Chopin said that he needed extreme technical proficiency to bring to life the music in his head, unlike say, Paganini who used his extreme technical chops mostly for show and wrote music to indulge his skills
I can't believe me it took me so long to hear of Ray's passing. This is, so far, the only song of theirs I've even attempted to learn. My love for their music, and this album particularly, is hard to express. I think they are fantastic and did a really good job of fiddling with conventions and being weird while still having things flow and cohere. I'm glad to know that I'm not the only one to hold them as dear.
Excellent job! Not the easiest of bass lines, but you played it impressively. I grew up listening to Gentle Giant and King Crimson in the early 70s, and couldn’t get enough of both bands’ music. As a bassist back then, I was proud when I learned the intro bass line to Wreck from Gentle Gisnt’s Acquiring The Taste album. Curiously, more than fifty years later, the notes have remained ingrained in my brain and I can still play it. 😅 Thank you for sharing this video. It reminded me of the exceptional talent of all the GG band members, and how brilliant a bass player Ray Shulman was. 🙏🏻
that's really sad he passed :-( he was so talented, but then all of them in the band we amazingly talented. got to see them live at the Roxy Theatre in West Hollywood, which held only about 550 people, so it was a rather intimate show. long story short, ended up getting to meet them between the two shows they played that night. they were as cool and as enigmatic as you'd expect...lol. Ray...RIP.
Thanks for the suggestion. I'll prepare a version and post it on my MuseScore account. I have a transcription of the bass part from King Crimson's Larks' Tongues in Aspic Part 2 up there now, if you're interested in that: musescore.com/user/7834166/scores/6053149
Here it is! blog.room34.com/archives/8637/ I went a bit overboard - not just correcting the obvious mistakes from the original transcription, but also adding chord changes, dynamics, and fixing the interpretation of the time signature. (I feel like, given the pattern, there's a section where it's a measure of 3/4 and a measure of 5/4, rather than just straight 4/4 until that one odd 3/4 measure in the second ending… which is now 4/4!)
