Revered bass guitar player Victor Wooten has opened up on his current struggles with a neurological movement disorder that impacts the way he plays his instrument.
Speaking in a new interview with Charles Berthoud, the Béla Fleck and the Flecktones bassist discussed his ongoing battle with focal dystonia, a condition that causes involuntary muscle contractions.
In Wooten’s case, it causes three fingers on his fretting hand to curl up, which is forcing him to adapt his style. It’s a condition that Wooten says he has been living with for 25 years, but only now is it really starting to take its toll.
Fortunately, while on the surface it sounds like a rather nightmarish condition, Wooten is seeing the silver lining – and has gone as far as to label it a positive for his playing.
“My hands work fine. When I literally pick up the bass, these three fingers curl into a ball, and they curl under the neck,” he demonstrates in the video below. “That's what they're trying to do. So for me to get them on the neck is a struggle.
“When I get them on the neck, they curl and pull the strings off the fingerboard or pull all my notes sharp. I can use one finger very well. I can use my index and pinky pretty well, so it's very, very tough. I play a lot of stuff on one finger. If I can use two and keep them straight, I can play pretty well. It's a struggle.”
Despite the playing obstacles his focal dystonia pose, Wooten is seeing it as an opportunity to go back to the basics and hammer home some more foundational aspects of his playing.
“It has totally affected me in a positive way,” he continues when asked how it’s impacted his playing, “by focusing again on what the bass is really supposed to do, one note at a time.
“You know, it's also turned me into a beginner again. It's forcing me to do all the things I tell students to do. I'm so used to being a teacher – I teach at Berklee, I do clinics, I'm writing books, I'm telling people what to do – and it's like life is saying, ‘Okay, prove it. You do it.’
I really don't need all that technique to play a good bassline. Uptown Funk, I could do with one finger
“I really don't need all that technique to play a good bassline,” he goes on to observe. “Uptown Funk, I could do with one finger. Especially now that I'm touring with the Wooten Brothers I get to focus on being a bass player. Not the soloist, not the trickster, I get to play one note at a time.”
With the help of some professional medical advice and plenty of exercise, Wooten is determined to get his chops back, and by speaking up about his struggles he hopes to inspire other bassists or guitarists who may be going through a similar thing.
“I want to get it back, and I believe I'm going to help a lot of other people,” he notes. “And it's because I have not been silent about my focal dystonia. I'm not ashamed of it. It doesn't stop me from playing.”
“I hope I can get through it enough to where I am going to be able to help others with it, because people tell me there's no cure, and I know there is. If it can go wrong, it can go right. There's a lot of people out there who have been reaching out about dystonia. I say, ‘Don't let it stop you from playing.’”
Last year, Wooten took Guitar World on a deep-dive into his playing, and revealed the secrets behind his unique style.
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