All in the wrist

It goes without saying that Geddy Lee is one of the most accomplished bass players in the history of Rock music and has left a lasting mark on the industry that will continue long after he has left this world. His amazing dexterity and playing style have been marveled at for decades and his influence can be heard and felt in the generations following him.
His has always been a style that was formed from using a more melodic approach to composition and a much busier technique out of necessity. As a three piece rock combo, it was incumbent upon him to fill the missing gaps in the sonic structure of their music. Not having a dedicated rhythm guitarist to carry the melodic weight of the middle while Alex Lifeson played his virtuoso guitar leads, Geddy's style not only filled the missing space but created a new paradigm for bass players everywhere.
After they broke on the music scene it became clear that he was not a bass player who would simply hold the bottom end in place with the customary thump of playing root notes only as was so common in the rock music of the late seventies. There were notable exceptions of course in the music of Yes, The Who, and a few others but Rush began blazing a trail into an area of music that heretofore had not been explored. Yes, they were progressive rock but they had a much harder edge than most of their counterparts in the genre.
Instead of just relying on Alex to provide the melodic structure their music needed, Geddy picked up the baton and carried bass playing to a place that no one had even heard before. He was combining the roles of bass player and rhythm guitarist in one instrument with often times staggeringly brilliant results.
He was mind boggling to listen to as he shredded the bass in a way that defied understanding.  He was fierce and fearless on bass and in the early days the most common comment anyone had about him was, "How the hell does he DO that?"
It's not really that he was doing things no one had done before, he was doing it so much faster that you simply couldn't keep up with how amazing he truly was.
Over the course of their first three albums, his own personal style evolved in such a way as to be a thing of wonder but with the release of 2112 he cemented his technique as one of complete mastery on the instrument with his melodic approach and aggressive playing. You could actually sing along to the melodies he would create on bass in a way that was unheard of for rock bassists.
He had the fastest hands that had eve been heard on AOR radio and as with anything truly unique and new in the music business, he was dismissed at first as just another flash in the pan with more speed than taste.
He would go on to prove his critics wrong with album after album of music and bass playing that would confound the critics and leave them speechless and stewing in their own bitter juices.
His technique was more than just speed though. He was deadly accurate on the fretboard with hands that seemed to be made of solid steel but with the gentlest of touches at times.
While his right hand technique has been examined and talked about for decades, it's his left hand technique that I write about today.
His right hand was so amazingly strong and dexterous as was his left but that right hand could do things that most guitar players couldn't do with either hand.
The bass is not an easy instrument to play by any stretch of the imagination for many reasons but the most of which is the amount of strength it takes to smoothly fret those notes on strings that can feel as thick as anchor cables at times.. Geddy could hammer on and pull off notes with his left hand so cleanly that at times you were never sure if he was even using his right hand.
For me, that was the real mystery. How could anyone who played bass have a left hand that strong?
Hammers and pulls, as they are more commonly known, are usually the domain of guitarists and a technique that one must master to become adept at guitar but here was a bass player who could do it better than anyone on the planet.
In my own training as a guitarist I learned to be precise with hammers and pulls and make them as distinct as picked notes but that was on guitar strings that aren't really all that thick in comparison to bass strings.
Geddy's real magic for me was in his left hand technique and as the years went by I learned to marvel at how good it was. I began to work hard to get my own left hand technique as smooth and as strong as his in hopes it would help me to become a better guitarist.
Yes, his right hand is a thing of wonder for how fast and precise it is but that left hand baffled me for years. I have a bass at home that I use for writing and recording and I can say from practical application that it is not an instrument you pick up unless you are prepared to suffer pain and humiliation during the learning process.
Geddy set a new standard that I have not heard except in fleeting instances in the likes of Flea from RHCP and Les Claypool from Primus and while those two personify what Geddy started in his quest to make bass a focus of rock music, they have evolved their own styles that differ greatly from what Geddy accomplished.