Innehållsförteckning för September 2019 från Bass Player

Welcome back to Low Life! This time around, I’ll be talking about what to do when the structure of a track becomes compromised in a live setting. Let’s face it, it can be easily done. With multiple band members, there is certainly the capacity for someone to take a wrong turn or miss a section change—especially if new material has just been introduced into the set, or you have a new band member. Even competent structural navigators can suffer from a mental blank from time to time, so in order to get you and your band out of structural limbo on a gig, have a read through these top five tips… LEARN TO IMPROVISE This is a key skill as a musician. Not only for soloing purposes and bass-line creation…

“I’VE NEVER LIKED TO BE HIDDEN AND I DON’T LIKE TO BE PATRONIZED. I DON’T BUY INTO THE IDEA THAT THE BASS PLAYER IS THE QUIET ONE” I guess I was just lucky with the riffs,” reckons Peter Hook, the founding member of Joy Division and New Order, who now heads up his own group, The Light. Seated across the table from him in an upmarket Italian restaurant on the outskirts of Manchester, UK, this thoughtful nugget feels like a front-runner for understatement of the year. On Unknown Pleasures (1979) and Closer (1980), Joy Division’s two albums before the tragic death of their singer Ian Curtis, Hooky invented a style of bass playing that continues to register and inspire to this day, with his moody post-punk grit sitting at the…

Bass guitar became a passion for me at around the age of 11, but I started on string instruments at three with the violin. Then I moved on to cello and guitar at nine or 10. I also played alto sax a bit. Soon after I started playing guitar, I began playing only the lowest four strings, because I just loved playing bass-lines. I was always drawn to the sound of the bass, whether it was James Jamerson, Paul McCartney, ‘Duck’ Dunn, ‘Family Man’ Barrett, Chuck Rainey, Tina Weymouth, or Stevie Wonder’s left hand. That said, my decision to stop playing guitar and focus on electric bass was entirely John Entwistle’s fault. I liked his balance of thundering drive with sweet melodic lines, especially on Quadrophenia. I understood that I…

Basses | Ibanez BTB1906E with Aguilar DCB pickups, Ibanez BTB1606 Pedalboard A | (signal chain order) Shure GLX-D wireless, Darkglass Super Symmetry compressor, GNI Bass Plus Felipe Andreoli (signature), Darkglass Microtubes B3K, GNI Detune Chorus, Eventide H9, Boss ES-5 Effects Switching System, D’Addario Chromatic Pedal Tuner, TC Electronic Ditto Looper. Powered by Pedaltrain Pedal Power 1250 and mounted on a Pedaltrain Novo 24 Pedalboard B | Shure GLX-D wireless, GNI Compressor, GNI Detune Chorus and GNI Bass Shaper preamp. Mounted on Pedaltrain Nano+ pedalboard Amp | Aguilar AG700 head with DB810 or SL410X cabinets Also | D’Addario EXL165-6 strings, D’Addario Planet Waves American Stage cables, Gruv Gear Gig Blade bags and Fretwraps, Xtreme Ears in-ear phones with Shure SM900 IEM…

We recently reviewed a Fender American Performer variant of the Mustang—and despite our initial reservations about yet another iteration of the well-worn formula, we liked it. We’re now presented with the big brothers of the bass range. These keenly-priced instruments come in a fetching Metallic Penny shade that hints at a Seventies vibe—but do they bring more than vintage looks to the party? Build Quality All the features you would expect of a Precision and a Jazz Bass are on display, although you’ll note that the Precision has an additional single-coil pickup fitted in the bridge position. These basses share many features: Three-ply black scratchplates; nickel and chrome hardware; three-control layouts (volume, volume and tone); tapered-shaft elephant-ear machine heads; and slotted bridge saddles offering 19mm / 0.75” string spacing. The…

RRP | $1,049 Made In | Indonesia Body | Alder, walnut burl top Neck | Canadian hard maple, 34” scale Neck Join | Bolt-on, four bolts Fretboard | Rosewood, 21 frets Pickups | 2 x Bartolini Jeff Berlin custom soapbar pickups Controls | Volume, balance, tone Electronics | Passive Hardware | Gold Hipshot tuners, Babicz Full Contact Hardware bridge Left-hand available? | Yes Case/gigbag supplied | Hard case WHAT WE THINK Plus | High-quality materials Minus | Tone range is a little narrow Overall | Excellent bass for high-register notes and soloing BP RATING…

Sometimes it’s easy to forget that Darkglass is a relative newcomer to the world of bass amplification. Launched in 2009 by founder/designer Douglas Castro, the company quickly built a solid reputation among the low-end community, through the success of pedals such as the Microtubes B3K distortion. Other well-received pedals followed, including the Microtubes B7K Ultra, and Hyper Luminal Compressor, each one acclaimed for its high-end aesthetics and superior tone. The company’s first bass amplifier—the Microtubes 900—was launched in 2016, and was followed by a 500W version a year later. It’s no surprise that in less than a decade, Darkglass’s stellar line-up of products has resulted in an enviable artist roster which includes old hands such as Tony Levin and Dave LaRue, session veterans such as Chris Chaney and Tim Lefebvre,…

Welcome to our lesson section, in which Bass Player collates the wit and wisdom of the crème de la crème of the electric and upright bass world. We’re fortunate enough to have some serious talent on the team, from world-class music educators to experienced touring musicians, who between them have laid down the low notes in every studio, club, and arena in the civilized world. Note that we’ve divided the columns according to Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced level for easy reference. Whether you’re looking to improve your playing technique, expand your awareness of theory, set up your rig to sound like your particular bass hero, or simply get on a bus and tour, we provide the answers you need here. What are you waiting for? Dive in... Kickstart your journey…

Welcome back! When we first start playing bass, the usual path is a mixture of pretty open exploration—basically making a terrible but really enjoyable noise!—and learning songs, either from tab, video tutorials, or notation. It’s usually not long before we first encounter the task of coming up with a bass-line for a chord progression to fit a particular song. The places where this might happen are many and varied. We could be working on original songs with a friend who writes music; playing covers behind singers at an open-mic night where getting the exact line is less important than playing something that fits how they’re singing it; or in a church or community situation, playing songs written for communal singing. In any of those situations, you are faced with that…

“THIS THING HAS BALLS, IT’S GOT PUNCH, IT’S GOT A SLICE TO IT THAT IS REALLY PARTICULAR” Small yet mighty, iconic, and punky, classic and fun—it’s the Fender Mustang, famously the last bass designed by Leo Fender before he split from the company in 1965. The Mustang’s 30” scale, bolt-on neck, and electric guitar-sized body, combined with a full-size headstock, give it the look of a baby Precision or Jazz. Players of note include Tina Weymouth of Talking Heads, Rolling Stone Bill Wyman, and Trevor Bolder of the Spiders From Mars, and Uriah Heep. Alan Lancaster of Status Quo, and endorsee Justin Meldal-Johnsen have also been known to doodle on this little firecracker. Short-scale basses can sometimes feel flimsy, with weird, flappy string tension, but the Mustang is weighted beautifully.…

NO TREBLE KEVIN JOHNSON What can the internet do for bass players? One of the greatest things about the internet is the proliferation of educational resources, and as bassists, we now have tons of access to lessons and music that was once hard to find. Those two aspects come together in the beauty of isolated bass videos, which let you hear your heroes in their rawest form to analyze their playing. Now you can more easily discern more difficult passages, pick up on techniques, or find that you’ve been playing your favorite bass line incorrectly your entire life. No Treble re-shared its top 10 isolated bass clips as part of our tenth anniversary celebrations. The most viewed was a spine-tingling version of Marvin Gaye’s ‘What’s Going On’ featuring only the…

Hello again, beautiful bassists and gorgeous groovers! This month let’s begin where we ended last month, and continue with a piece of mine titled ‘Sexually Active’ from my very first solo release, Radio Free Albemuth. Last month was the first in what will be a series on tapping for electric bass, so this month let’s look at some different techniques used to create fun and inspiring bass riffs! Start by tapping the E on the 9th fret of your G string with your right hand. I prefer to use my middle finger here, as it has the most strength. While you do this, use your left hand to fret the Bb and C on the same G string below the E that you are tapping. I use the first finger…

Mastodon are a unique band: Definitely heavy metal in flavor and progressive in nature, but a million miles away from anything that would usually be associated with the familiar ‘prog-metal’ tag. Partly this is due to their expansive sound, epic rather than granular in focus, but it’s also a lot to do with the Atlanta foursome’s classic rock influences, as we found out when Mastodon recently covered Led Zeppelin’s ‘Stairway To Heaven’. You’d think a band would need serious cojones to dare to cover the most iconic heavy rock composition of all time (okay, maybe ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ comes close) and indeed you’d be right, says bassist Troy Sanders. “We know that people consider it borderline illegal to cover ‘Stairway To Heaven’, of course,” he tells us. “In the real world…

If you were a metalhead in the 1990s, but you were too fond of slow, stoner grooves to enjoy caffeinated headbangers like Metallica, you might well have been a fan of Sleep, the amazing band from California, who released a clutch of all-time classic albums. The first, Sleep’s Holy Mountain (1992), featured Al Cisneros on bass and vocals, and was a truly immense album, loaded with planet-sized riffage and soundscapes, that extended far into sub-bass territory. The second, the monstrous Dopesmoker, appeared seven years later and was a thematic and sonic homage to the band’s preferred backstage pastime. By 2005 Cisneros was also active in a duo (occasionally a trio) called OM, in which the bass supplanted the guitarist’s role with massive, progressive panache. We meet Al in London the…

At the moment, I play the bass mostly as a solo musician in several free improvisation formations. This means that I don’t have a fixed band that I tour with and play the same songs every night. Instead, I have a few solid bands that I play with, such as my duo with the great Steve Noble, an amazing drummer from the UK. I met Steve at the Summer Bummer festival in Belgium in 2017. We were both playing in different bands, and we had a great discussion and laughed the whole evening. The day after, I got an email from him, asking me if I wanted to play in the UK; he had been looking for an electric bass player for 20 years. Now, we have a few recordings…

RRP | $1,199.99 Made In | USA Color | Metallic Penny, gloss finish Body | Alder Neck | Maple, 34” scale Neck Joint | Bolt-on, four bolt attachment Nut Width | 42mm / 1.65” (Precision), 38mm / 1.5” (Jazz) Fingerboard | Maple Frets | 20 Pickups | Fender Yosemite split-coil/ single-coil pickups (Precision) / single-coil pickups x 2 (Jazz) Electronics | Passive Controls | Volume, volume, tone Hardware | Chrome and nickel hardware, tapered-shaft elephant-ear machine heads, standard bridge Weight | 8.8lbs (Precision), 8.4lbs (Jazz) Case/gig bag included | Deluxe gigbag Left-hand option available | Yes WHAT WE THINK Plus | Attractively modified tones, classic features Minus | Attention to detail in the setup Overall | A reasonable update to the perennial favourites BP RATING…

Adam Dolan is a luthier based in the northwest of the UK—and judging from the initial visuals of the Proteus Legacy, eye-pleasing lumbers and high-level electronics specs are definitely his forte. The Proteus’s pricetag is steep, but not out of reach of many professional players—so what do you get for your money? Build Quality The Proteus’s deeply rounded black korina and walnut-topped body is a joy to look at, although the extended top horn and limited cutaway limit fret access. Fortunately, its lower cutaway provides more accessibility. A thin dark wood veneer between the body core and top wood is dyed black maple, and if you like your timbers visible, the satin finish shows them off to the max. Using a five-piece korina and rosewood laminate that extends to the…

Darkglass Microtubes v2 Price | $1,099 Made In | Finland Power | 900W RMS @ 4 ohms Features | Microtubes distortion engine, six-band EQ, compression Dimensions | 26.7cm (L) x 25.5cm (W) x 7cm (H) (10.5” x 10” x 2.75” ) Connections | 2 x Speakon combo jacks, load switch, FX send and return, aux in, headphone input with dedicated volume control, pre and post DI, MIDI, footswitch and USB Weight | 6.4 lbs Darkglass Alpha Omega 900 Price | $1,099 Made In | Finland Power | 900W RMS @ 4 ohms Features | Alpha Omega engine, active/ passive mode, Distortion, Bite, Growl, Drive, Level, Mod and Gain controls, six-band EQ, compression Dimensions | 26.7cm (L) x 25.5cm (W) x 7cm (H) (10.5” x 10” x 2.75” ) Connections |…

Inspiration and motivation: two things that each have a dramatic effect on our musical progress. Without a goal or deadline to work towards, finding fresh catalysts for inspiration can be tedious. However, two studies that have never let me down in my hour of need are permutations, and time signatures. The former allow me to rediscover habitual vocabulary and view it from a different melodic perspective, and the latter prevent me from overusing the same old rhythmic patterns. Over the last six months the primary emphasis of our intermediate studies has been on odd time signatures. Although we’ve used a variety of different melodic platforms to keep things interesting, our principal goal has always been to become more familiar with an array of contemporary time signatures ranging from 3/4 ,via…

NEW ALBUM Jeff Hughell, Sleep Deprivation (2019) Insane levels of bass mastery from Six Feet Under’s seven-string maestro. Put aside half an hour for stunned silence after listening. OLD ALBUM Steve Lawson and Michael Manring, Language Is A Music (2012) Available from the boy Lawson’s website, this feast of duelling fretless basses is an object lesson in musical telepathy. REALLY OLD ALBUM Johann Sebastian Bach, St. Matthew Passion (1727) The best bass in history was the late JS Bach’s left hand. Luckily, it’s available on modern wax cylinder, and possibly even 78rpm LP.…

Some people are whirlwinds, aren’t they? From hardcore to pop, R&B, to jazz and funk, on bass, on keys, on vocals, on drums, Stephen Lee Bruner has packed a hell of a lot into his career—and he’s still only 34. You and I know him better as Thundercat, the bassist and producer who first enjoyed time in the sun at the age of 15 as part of a short-lived boy band, No Curfew, big in Germany. Typically, he immediately bettered that dubious achievement by joining LA thrashers Suicidal Tendencies. Since then he’s worked with Kendrick Lamar, Erykah Badu, Wiz Khalifa, Louis Cole, SZA, and countless others. In 2013, Thundercat was a producer and bassist for the breakthrough second album by Childish Gambino, the alter-ego of Donald Glover, aka the young…

“I’VE WORKED FOR ALL THIS—BUT YOU DON’T ALWAYS GET WHAT YOU’VE WORKED HARD FOR. WHEN IT HAPPENS, IT’S A BLESSING” Life is good—but music is like a Shrek movie for me,” quips Bobby Vega. “I have to go far, far away, to the UK and Europe. Music is treated more like art there. Music is an art form, but in the US, musicians aren’t necessarily revered as artists—in other countries, they are more appreciated. Jazz musicians would leave the US to be treated like artists.” Bobby is a world traveller, of course, but usually in the role of side-man for artists such as Etta James. His résumé shows no shortage of impressive names—how does Sly & The Family Stone, Tower Of Power, and Santana grab you? Vega is very appreciative…

“I PULLED OUT MY 1968 TELE WITH RONNIE, AND PLUGGED IT INTO MY AMPEG SVT, AND JUST LET IT RIP. HE SAID, ‘THAT’S IT! PUT ALL OF THOSE OTHER BASSES AWAY’” Listening to the two latest high-profile releases that feature the bass playing of Ricky Phillips, one thing becomes immediately apparent: Together, they represent a testament to his versatility. Whether he’s blazing trails through the 70s-inspired prog rock concept album that is Styx’s 2017 release The Mission, or laying down thunderous grooves on the equally retro, guitar-driven riff rock of Ronnie Montrose’s 10X10, Phillips is clearly comfortable navigating both musical realms. And while his tone may change between the two projects, the style is clearly, and uniquely, all his own. As a matter of fact, before he even cut a…

Behold our world-beating bass gear review section, where we bring you the crop of each month’s new, interesting, or otherwise relevant bass guitars, bass amplifiers, bass cabs, and bass effects. Occasionally we’ll review a guitar effect if it’s useful for bassists, but generally speaking, this zone is reserved for bass-specific gear. We take our reviews seriously. BP has readers all over the world, so we’re responsible about our conclusions. If a product is worth your time, we’ll say so; if it’s flawed, we’ll make that clear. We’re not beholden to advertisers in any way, and our tests are independent of the views of manufacturers and distributors. When you read about a product here, you’re getting a balanced review from an experienced bass tester. Value for money is at the top…

Jeff Berlin is known for several things—his forthright views on music education, for once being the possessor of the best mustache in bass (apart from Geezer Butler), and for his astounding fluency on the bass guitar in a variety of solo and band contexts. The third of these is our focus today. Any bass bearing Jeff’s name needs to enable his smooth chordal work, expert staccato picking, and fluid soloing, all of which Cort’s existing Rithimic four-string can do. How does the bass fare when extended with a low B-string? Build Quality The Rithimic V occupies a not-cheap, not-that-expensive price point, manufactured from top-quality components, but built in Indonesia. Aside from its tasty walnut burl top, the lumbers are standard—alder for the body, maple for the neck, rosewood for the…

Price | $2,650 Made In | UK Color | Natural, natural oil finish Body | Black korina core, walnut top Neck | Black korina and rosewood five-piece laminate, 34” scale Neck Joint | Bolt-on, five-bolt attachment Nut Width | 40mm Fingerboard | Ebony Frets | 24 Pickups | Delano humbucker and single-coil pickups Electronics | Glockenklang active three-band EQ Controls | Volume (active/passivepush/pull), pickup pan, bass, middle, treble, coil tap switch for humbucking pickup coils Hardware | Black hardware, Hipshot Ultralite machineheads, Grainger bridge Weight | 8.8 lbs Case/gig bag included | Hiscox case Left-hand option available | Yes, as a custom order WHAT WE THINK Plus | Good looks, solid tones and attention to detail Minus | Considerable competition at this price Overall | A fine instrument BP RATING…

Witnessing the evolution of Rush from a curious band of prog wizards with a niche audience (the 70s), to mulleted tech geeks (the 80s), and finally to classic-rock avatars (the last 20 years or so) has been a gratifying ride. Along the way their music may have risen, fallen, and risen again in mainstream acceptability, but one constant has been the bass community’s appreciation of Geddy Lee’s playing and tone. His trajectory has taken him to Fender via Rickenbacker, with detours into Wal, Steinberger and elsewhere. Along the way Lee has evolved a signature overdriven tone that is easy to recognize, but tricky to describe in words, so it’s just as well they invented YouTube. In 1996 Lee decided to stop touring with amps and cabs, a decision that was…

Welcome to the third and final instalment in my mini-series covering sweep picking and tapping on the bass. Over the past two issues we’ve examined the basics of the technique, and used it to play some single octave, and two-octave arpeggios. As many sweep picking lines are based around arpeggios, this has been a logical place to begin, but there's more potential to sweep picking that we're yet to explore. If you’re comfortable with the examples we’ve covered so far, you’ll likely be hungry for more—so with that in mind, we’re now going to put everything we’ve learned to use in some more involved lines. We’ll be looking at three examples in this column, each one longer, and more complex than the lines we’ve looked at in the previous two…