Innehållsförteckning för January 2021 från Bass Player

NEIL BATEY, THE JONESES WHAT WAS YOUR WAY INTO BASS? As a music-mad teenager, a friend had an electric guitar and he let me have a go. It was such a crushing disappointment—it sounded so feeble, shrill, and totally lacking cojones. Dejected, I picked up a bass which was collecting dust in the corner. I hit an open E string, and there it was—love at first pluck—and I learned to play the riff from Fleetwood Mac’s ‘The Chain’. My first bass was a cheap and poor-quality short-scale Les Paul copy, bought second-hand for $60. The action was as high as the Golden Gate Bridge and only one pickup worked. More importantly though, it looked badass! Now, in retrospect, being physically challenged to learn on a piece-of-crap bass helped me get…

Hello, bassists! In this issue, we’re going to talk about stealthy ways of helping to lead during a live performance—as well as subliminally guiding the listener or audience. This approach to leading can be baked into your part from the point of inception, long before you hit the stage, or it could be an adaptation you make purely for live shows. Either way, we’re looking at the use of subtle musical figures and concepts in order to signpost. To give you an example, when creating or altering a bass part you might mark every four bars during a verse section by putting in a small fill, variation, or run at the end of it. From a band perspective, this now helps us to view the structure in phrases, and so…

“To my surprise, I kept seeing members of Deep Purple showing up at Trapeze’s gigs in March 1973. They’d recently lost their singer Ian Gillan and their bassist Roger Glover, and were looking for replacements, but I didn’t know they were actually courting me. “Make no mistake: In 1973, Deep Purple were the biggest band on the planet” “Now, I’d seen Deep Purple when they played at the Wolverhampton Civic, and I thought they were pretty good and that the guitar player, Ritchie Blackmore, was a bit eccentric. They were all good musicians, but it wasn’t soulful. To be honest with you, if it wasn’t soulful and funky, it didn’t interest me. My experience of funk was Sly & The Family Stone, so when I heard ‘Highway Star’ or whatever,…

BLACKSTAR AMPLIFICATION www.blackstaramps.com $1,099 The new Unity range from Blackstar has been much discussed over the past few months—and looking at this rig, from the outset it’s clear why. The lightweight amp comes in a durable carry bag along with an FS-13 footswitch: The FS-12 version, with added features, is also available at an added cost. The unit can be rackmounted if you wish—again, a rack adaptor is available for a fee—and boasts an impressive 700 watts output. In its armoury is a tube-emulation Response control and three types of drive and chorus, plus octave and compression options. We’re only scraping the surface here—read on for the full low-down. Build Quality The U700 Elite weighs in at 9.3 lbs and its dark, brushed-steel chassis features a fan on one side,…

I SPY... RYAN MADORA Dig into your favorite bass parts... and discover treasure! Ryan Madora is one of Nashville’s most sought-after touring and session bassists. Recent touring and session credits include Robben Ford, Kyshona Armstrong, and her instrumental trio, The Interludes. For the past five years, she has served as musical director for Bobby Bones and has played with Garth Brooks, Darius Rucker, and Carrie Underwood. In addition to instructing at Nashville’s campus of Musician’s Institute, Ryan has taught at Gerald Veasley’s Bass Boot Camp, Rock’n’Roll Fantasy Camp, and at universities across the USA. She has contributed columns to No Treble for over a decade and in 2019, published her first book, Bass Players To Know: Learning From The Greats. Ryan offers online education at TrueFire and through her website.…

Welcome back! If you remember from previous columns, my number one rule with learning music is ‘contextualize everything’. There’s absolutely zero value in being good at playing exercises, after all. An exercise is simply a way of distilling a principle into a memorable, repeatable version so we can train our hands and ears in that basic version and then apply it. Knowing the pattern is solely a means to an end, which is deploying the knowledge and skill in a musically meaningful way. So, we’re going to take the scale fragment ideas from the last two months and apply them to a two-chord progression, and in order to make the music satisfying, we’ll experiment with some rhythmic possibilities, too. Our progression for today is going to be A Major to…

No. 1: The Cure, ‘The Lovecats’ (1983) A perfect example of the correct application of the upright bass in modern pop music, the bass-line which propels ‘The Lovecats’ is insanely catchy, based on a nifty ascending figure, and oozing the sound of wood. After the first 100 listens—remember, this song has been a radio and indie-club staple for 37 years—Robert Smith’s eerily wailed, appropriately feline vocals and the honky-tonk piano may start to set your back teeth on edge a little, but there’s no arguing with the slick quality of Phil Thornalley’s bass part.…

Jason Newsted was born in 1963 in Battle Creek, Michigan, and learned bass after becoming a fan of Gene Simmons of Kiss. After high school, he moved to Phoenix, Arizona and formed a thrash metal band called Paradox, then Dogz, and then Flotsam And Jetsam. This band became a cult success thanks to its ferocious 1986 debut album, Doomsday For The Deceiver, but Newsted gained worldwide recognition when he joined Metallica the same year, replacing that band’s late bassist Cliff Burton, who had lost his life in a coach crash in Sweden. Newsted’s 15-year stint with Metallica, now the biggest heavy metal band in the world, was commercially successful but also creatively inconsistent. While his bass playing was always exemplary, delivered on a range of basses including his beloved Sadowskys,…

In relation to our previous discussions on how to maintain strong, unadulterated output through a signal path, I believe we have finally arrived at our destination—the amplifier input. But wait! Not so fast. Spin that bad boy around to see if your amplifier has an effects loop, as many do. While lots of bass players have begun adopting signal processing devices, few are taking advantage of their amplifier’s effects loop. If you’re committed to delivering the strongest source signal to your amplifier’s input, its effects loop is an asset you really should be exploiting. Using an amplifier’s effects loop makes it possible to place a chain of effects between the preamp and power sections of the amplifier. This essentially relocates the preamp section, saving it from being relegated to the…

How are you dealing with a year off the road, Rhonda? Well, Jeff has a record that they were going to release, and his tour is rescheduled until April 2021, so while we’re waiting for that to happen I’ve been playing a lot of bass and writing a lot. I have Pro Tools here at home, so when I want to record, I can just bang it out right here. I have a record of my own in the works too, so I’m looking to get some singles done and get them released in the best way in the current climate. Is a Paul Reed Smith still your go-to bass? Yes it is—I’m still rocking that Gary Grainger PRS. Those Private Stock one-piece basses are so incredible, and mine is…

As what can only be described as the craziest year in living memory comes to a welcome close, we’ve rolled around to our yearly Gear Of The Year round-up, featuring our recommendations for the best new bass products released in the last 12 months. Despite the current pandemic’s grip on the planet, there has been a considerable amount of new gear launched this year, some of which we first encountered at Winter NAMM back in January. With finances becoming increasingly stretched for everyone, value for money has become even more important, and here at Bass Player, value is very much a primary consideration when we’re reviewing gear and equipment. Extra costs to the player in the form of cool paint jobs, or irrelevant amounts of bling, don’t cut the mustard…

Dave Markee, the bassist with a large number of important musicians from the Seventies and Eighties, died in October at the age of 77. Dave, who in his later years was the senior pastor and worship leader at Folly’s End Christian Fellowship in London, had played alongside the Rolling Stones, Frank Zappa, Joan Armatrading, the Who, and Bing Crosby among others. He was most visible alongside Eric Clapton from 1979 to 1982, playing on the Just One Night (1980) and Another Ticket (1981) albums. Midnight Oil’s bassist Bones Hillman also passed away in November, aged 62. The New Zealand-born musician had been a member of the Australian rock band for the last 33 years. As the group said in a statement: “He was the bassist with the beautiful voice, the…

Welcome! When the subject of improvisation comes up, very few of us fully understand the three concepts of acquisition, assimilation, and application. This is very important, because when learning arpeggios and scales, you must take it beyond the first stage of acquisition. Acquisition simply means the learning of a skill. Many people stop their progression at this level, and never really understand how much of what they have learned is woven into the core fabric of improvising music. The second phase is assimilation—which means fully absorbing and understanding information. Applying this to learning how to play the bass guitar mainly revolves around solving technical hurdles that are holding you back, such as proper left and right-hand positioning, spatial awareness, speed (or ‘chops’) and clarity of mental focus. In this phase,…

Progressive metallers Dream Theater, now 31 years into their career, are about to release their ninth live album—an impressive statistic, given how hard it is these days to get a single studio release out, let alone a live one. Distant Memories—Live In London was recorded last year at the quintet’s sold-out live show at the Apollo Theater in London, UK, when the band were touring their latest studio album Distance Over Time and celebrating the 20th anniversary of their concept album Metropolis Part 2—Scenes From A Memory. The live sound is punchy and clear on the album, a fact that bassist John Myung attributes to taking the right staff along with them. “Our main engineer, James ‘Jimmy T’ Meslin, did a great job of overseeing everything,” he says. “He came…

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. BPis the last English-language print magazine devoted solely to bass in the world, and we have readers all over the planet, 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 answerable to advertisers in any way, and our tests are independent of the views of musicians, manufacturers, and distributors. When you read about a product here, you’re getting…

SIRE www.sire-usa.com $499 Marcus Miller’s Sire J-Bass model has been widely admired since its launch for its practical playability and no-nonsense price point. It doesn’t seek to refine the J envelope or stray away from the 60-year-old template, and it doesn’t break the bank either—which begs the question of how far it can evolve, now that it’s been established. This short-scale variant may be the answer to that question, with a 30” scale that guarantees a rather different feel to that of its grown-up sibling. Get your thumbs ready—we’re going in... Build Quality The passive MM U5—a four-string, despite its name—is built in Indonesia, enabling its relatively low pricetag, but that doesn’t mean it plays like a cheap bass. On the contrary: its alder body features a flamed maple top…

Price| $1,099 Made In| China Power| 800 watts @ 8 ohms Speakers| 4 x 10” Eminence Beta-10A ceramic speakers and 1 x Eminence APT:80 tweeter with HF Level control Dimensions| 660mm (H) x 620mm (W) x 405mm (D) / 26” (H) x 24.4” (W) x 16” (D) Connections| 2 x 1/4-inch Speakon combi sockets (Input and Thru) Weight| 61.7 lbs WHAT WE THINK Plus| Solid, lightweight Minus| Nothing comes to mind; this is a cab for all seasons Overall| Connect this box up and play loud. Your neighbours deserve it BPM RATING…