Thiago Espirito Santo

Thiago Espirito Santo is a bassist, guitarist, producer and educator with over thirty years on the road. The career was built playing: stage, studio, recording, backing other artists — the kind of routine where deciding what to play has to happen in real time, with nothing to look up.

As a producer he was nominated for a Latin Grammy. As a player he ranked among the top three Electric Bass Players at the Prêmio Jazz Station.

More than 8,000 students have gone through the programmes he created, among them Música Sem Mistérios and Bass Evolution.

Since 2011 his method has been applied across the 360 units of Projeto Guri, Brazil's largest socio-educational music programme — which means it has been tested with thousands of students at very different levels, not only with advanced players.

HIT — How I Think was not born at a desk. It came from the attempt to explain, in plain words, what he was already doing automatically: look at a chord, know where it came from, know which notes fit, and know which of them sounds best at that precise point of the song.

The conclusion was that three pieces of information are enough — field, key and degree — and that mode names only get in the way. Everything VERMUS shows follows that design.

Any software can calculate which scales fit a chord. What cannot be calculated is which one to use. That part depends on an ear shaped by decades of music actually played.

In a blind audit, Thiago reviewed 275 analysis lines across 10 songs he had never seen. In 274 of them, the choice he would make was already on the screen.

“Improvising is not guessing. It is deciding fast, with clarity.”