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Biography
Victor Wooten has been a part of Béla Fleck and the Flecktones, which won a Grammy, and has been awarded the Music Award for Bassist of the Year in Nashville two times and another one from Bass Player Magazine. He has won many other awards in the field of music innovation and talent. Victor also performs as a solo artist and has released three solo albums. Wooten uses a technique that no other bassist has ever used in addition to working with other artists. Victor says that his career is influenced by his family. "My brothers and parents were the foundation," he says. "They prepared me for just about anything by teaching me to keep my mind open and to learn to adapt. Musically, that means not being rigid and not having to play in a certain way." (Quote from Victor Wooten.com) Being the youngest of five brothers, Victor was encouraged to start playing the bass at age three, by his oldest brother. Wooten says that open-mindedness was what made his music career start off so well. "When you're older, you're more hesitant to try something because you're afraid it will look wrong or come out wrong. When you're a child it doesn't matter. We'd try anything. We'd do anything we could think of to try and duplicate the sounds we heard on records. I'd learn songs one note at a time by listening to records on the player, moving the needle back and then listening to it again. Playing the bass was like learning how to talk for me. It was just another language I was picking up." (Quote from Victor Wooten.com) Not long after he started learning the bass, he and his brothers played in a band that played covers and started touring. "By the time I was 8 we considered ourselves seasoned professionals. The routine was: Get up, go to school, go home and do homework, take a nap, then go play a gig from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. At a lot of places we couldn't even leave the stage because the place served alcohol and we were minors. It was a good time to grow up because where today you've got samplers and sequencers to copy anything, back then if we heard sounds on a record, we found ways to do them live with what we had." (Quote from Victor Wooten.com) After recording an album with his brothers, they all split up and Victor was recruited by Jonell Mosser. Shortly after this, he joined New Grass Revival's banjo ace Béla Fleck where he and his brother became the rhythm section. This eventually led to the Flecktones and many collaborations with various artists. Victor looks at music in one way, and that is, "overall it's about the music. Bass is just my way of playing the music."
Victor Wooten has to be the most talented bassist that I have ever heard. If I did not know any better, I could swear that there is another bassist playing with him and when he hits the high notes, a guitar there to make his complex and amazing solos. Wooten makes the bass sound so beautiful with such huge gaps between notes, its almost as if he were playing at the very bottom of the 'E' and the very next note, so close behind it, all the way up at the top of the 'G'. His music is so wonderful and complex that it could never bore anyone. Victor has a vast amount of musical talent and uses it very well and I am very glad he likes to share it, and I hope you appreciate it as well.
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