What's your approach to quickly adapting to different musical styles when working as a session musician?

My approach to recording bass for a wide range of musical genres is based on several key factors I’ve developed throughout my career.

First, I’ve always been an open-minded musician. Since I started, I’ve explored and immersed myself in a wide variety of musical styles, not just by listening but also by playing them. This has allowed me to understand and emulate the arrangements, techniques, and distinctive sounds of each genre.

Another important factor is my experience as a session musician recording karaoke tracks, with over 800 songs completed. This work was intensive training, enabling me to quickly identify the characteristics of various styles and adapt with precision and efficiency to replicate them.

Additionally, my versatility is enhanced by my primary tool: the bass. I work with different types of basses, strings of various gauges, techniques such as playing with or without a pick, specific tunings, and more. This gives me a broad sonic palette to professionally approach a wide variety of musical genres.

This work is my passion. I not only enjoy what I do but am constantly striving to improve and deliver the best results for every project.

As a drummer with 20 years of experience and a session musician for the past 7 years, I have recorded over 600 tracks for my clients. I can honestly say that my development as a drummer can be described as growth over time. I’ve listened to thousands of albums, played hundreds of live concerts, all with various bands across a wide range of musical genres.

When asked how to quickly adapt to different musical styles as a session musician, my answer is: you won’t do it instantly. It all comes with time. If you want to specialize in playing or recording different musical styles, simply listen to and play diverse music. Over time, you'll notice that music tends to be repetitive. However, listening to various types of music and following different musicians broadens your horizons tremendously.

When a band contacts me saying they want a drum track in the style of, for example, Chad Smith, I immediately know what they mean. Familiarity and experience come with time. And once it comes, you become a professional session musician.

Hello, Simeone here. I am. a producer/audio engineer from Greece.

As a guitarist. I start by listening to some of the genre I am working on. I might sit about 15 minutes max and just search and listen to music. After that I grab my guitar and start noodling around different things that come to my mind, which usually come from the latest thing I've been listening. 
Another thing that help a lot is finding the most famous song of the genre you're working on and jamming with it. Just to get the vibe and feeling of it. 
 

Hope this helps!

As a drummer, I make sure I listen to and am familiar with playing a range of different musical styles. I often look for the similarities that stretch across multiple genres as a starting point as I find that highlights the important differences that are required to adapt and execute a style authentically - not just in terms of physically playing the instrument but in sound choices as well.

It helps to understand that every style has it's cliches. Let me explain this from my perspective as a guitarist.

7 chords in Jazz (minor or major 7s for example) You can use these to instantly jazzify a song.

Or tapping technique on electric guitar in rock and metal. Any guitarist can actually do it, it't not actually that hard. Add that to a song and you instantly have a heavy rock - metal style solo. 

Or Nile Rogers style chicka chicka triad chords for disco music.

With every instrument in every style, you can find these small gimmicks. 

Naturally this doesn't work well if you are working with a pro in a genre and you are not a pro in that genre. They will see through your ruse. But for many situations finding these little additions I can make and implementing them has helped a lot!

In my case, I've been actively listening to music since I was 5 years old and playing songs since I was 12.
These years of training have given me the expertise to easily incorporate the structure and key elements of each song and search in my bag of resources for the best choices to enhance the song and give life to it from the drums.
This includes playing different music styles. I was always open to listening to a lot of genres and studied the fundamentals of each one to be able to adapt to every music situation.

For the last 24years I've been learning, exploring, practicing and performing in virtually any genre so that helps a lot. During one day in the studio I can record anything from traidional afro-cuban folklore, odd time prog rock, oriental jazz or breakbeats.

My approach is to reset my mind and ears before each session.

Understanding the stylistic language and concepts helps me to instantly dive in to the core of the song.

I try to be as open minded as possible not to fall into cliches unless that's what needed from the artist.

My mind is like a library so I always have in mind a couple of artist representing different approaches to the style I'm working with - puristic/traditional, modern/contemporary, alternative/art.

It's always helpful as I can suggest the possible directions of my recordings to the producer.

All in all it's the artist that calls for certain things, whether precise or abstract, so I try to be emotionally involved as if it was a session for my first album and decipher the needs of the people I'm working with 

I have always loved styles and enjoy feeling chameleonic or like a theater actor when I arrange and perform for piano. After so many years enjoying and studying such diverse genres ranging from academic to popular, added to my knowledge of musical analysis and aesthetics, this allows me to identify the various musical genres with ease and from there to build an emotional discourse according to the client's interests.