Junior Brooks Sargent enters his jazz-funk-reggae band practice, sets down his rectangular bass case and leaves through the multicolored door of Waldo Guitar on Wornall. He returns with three amplifiers he had been keeping in the back of his car for gigs and other band practices that he attends throughout the week. It takes about an hour for the drummer Darrell Haramoto, the guitarist and East alum Brian Frantz and Sargent to set up for their practices: each member brings their own amplifier and multiple recording devices, as well as their own instruments.

When their band practice begins, they come to the consensus to play a reggae tune. Sargent’s fingers dance over the strings of his bass and the melodic beat plays out of the multiple amplifiers. Sargent stands up and uses his left leg to keep the beat while playing. During the song, he easily changes the volume of his bass to mesh with his musical counterparts.

Sargent began playing the bass in elementary school, when he and a few of his friends created a band whose name was constantly fluctuating. He began messing around on the guitar, but one of his band members had previously began taking lessons and thus was more experienced, so Sargent switched to the bass. He taught himself simple songs by punk rock bands like Blink 182 and Green Day.

Sargent was inspired by numerous bass players to play a technique which is dubbed “slap,” which produces a percussive sound generally used in jazz or funk. There are numerous versions of how to “slap” but generally it entails using the thumb and pinkie finger to pluck the strings in rhythm.

“I’ve been learning songs and watching lots of YouTube videos to get the technique, and I have been playing a lot because practice makes perfect,” Sargent said “It’s a saying that goes for a lot of things––I am not saying that I am perfect at all, but playing a lot helps.”

He started taking bass lessons two years ago with Frantz who owns the Waldo Guitar shop, plays professionally and is generally a well-known guitarist in the Kansas City area, according to Haramoto. During these two years, Sargent practiced extensively on mastering the bass. He also joined various bands to increase the amount of time he could play.  After only two years of taking lessons with Frantz, who said that Sargent had surpassed him in his ability to play the bass, but desired to continue learning new skills. Frantz had previously been approached by Darrell, who had heard Frantz playing and wanted to create a band. Frantz replied that he had a bass player who he considered to be a prodigy who he was looking to create a band with.

“I had nothing else to teach him,” Frantz said. “So I asked him to join my band.”

At Waldo Guitar, Sargent plays with his band mates who are approximately twice his age, although he doesn’t acknowledge the difference while practicing. Haramoto and Sargent have had competitions to see who can play the quickest: Sargent more often than not wins, even though Darrell has four limbs at his disposal and formerly played the drums professionally in Hawaii.

The band records their practices on a sound mixer and Sargent’s laptop, part of the reason is that it takes the members an hour to set up their equipment before practicing. Since they record every practice, they can mix their songs together post-practice and create CDs to send out to friends and possible gigs.

“We record all of our practices so that we can listen to them, and pick songs out of our recordings or parts that we liked, and then make them into songs,” Sargent said. “It’s not the traditional way of writing music, but when we jam together at practices it just flows really well.”

Sargent also records himself playing on his laptop at home. He purchased a recording device off of amazon.com, which he connects a USB cable to that transfers the recordings straight to his laptop. The microphone is supposed to record the bass the same as if they were recording in a professional studio.

“[Recording] is a world that requires a lot of funds and a lot of knowledge of the music world,” Sargent said. “Just about as much as pure talent when it gets as technical as recording.”

Sargent has become extremely committed to the bass through his extensive practicing and recording. Playing the bass is his passion and he plans on continuing to improve and pursue a professional career in music.

“It’s scary how good [Sargent] is going to get,” said Darrell. “The boy can hit it big if he keeps growing on [his] instrument.”

 

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