Innehållsförteckning för June 2021 från Bass Player

The singer-songwriter James Taylor makes sweet music—sometimes too sweet. More than a few critics have accused him of ladling on the sentimental treacle a little too lavishly at times, but when he hits the right balance—as he did 50 years ago, with his third album Mud Slide Slim And The Blue Horizon—he writes songs that will twang the heartstrings of even the hardest-hearted rocker. Twanging strings of a different kind, Taylor’s bassist Leland ‘Lee’ Sklar pulled off the tricky task on this album of laying down exactly the right kind of bass-line for the sleek, acoustic songs in which his boss specialized. On this 1971 record, the bass benefits from that luscious production that only crackly old vinyl can really reproduce. Neither inaudible nor hogging the limelight, Sklar delivers bass…

Welcome once again, theorists! This month we’re looking at some of the scales played most often over dominant chords. In many contexts, the scale we choose to employ over a chord is the choice of the player, but in some way it is also governed by the nuance of the particular composition and/ or by the genre. This can often be a case of convention, as opposed to hard and fast rules. One such convention may be if the original note found in the melody happens to belong to any one of the particular scales. Another may be the quality of the chord to which we’re resolving. For example, if we’re resolving to a minor chord, often a dominant chord which contains a b 13 or #5 may be preferable—as…

I began playing guitar as a teenager and started a band. Eventually, I bought a bass, intending to play just for fun. Then I heard of a band that needed a bassist, and I figured it might be fun as a side project. Fast forward a few years, and I was in a bunch of different bands playing only bass, and my guitar was gathering dust. My first bass was an inexpensive Ibanez; I think it was only around $200. Still, it was a surprisingly good bass, especially for the price, and I played it for years. After the Ibanez, I moved on to a special edition Fender Jazz bass with a quilted maple top. That bass has the best feel, and just felt comfortable from the moment I picked…

Art-rock is alive and well in the hands of Everything Everything, whose five albums to date have nabbed them a shelfload of awards. Holding down the low end is Jeremy Pritchard, who also toured with the indie band Foals in 2019. In both cases he is required to play major stages, and delivers the low frequencies via some suitably hefty gear, he explains. What’s your go-to bass rig? Live, I use an Orange AD200 head and a 8x10 cab. I’ve been using those for a couple of years. At first, I didn’t expect to take to it in the way that I have done, because in my head, I associated it with a vintage sound. What I really appreciate about it, though, is how simple it is and how high-quality…

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…

WILCOCK (LONDON) www.wilcocklondon.com $2500 Wilcock Basses have been building up a head of steam recently, with some familiar names taking their instruments to heart and achieving very impressive sonic results. The moment we open this BiSonic’s case, it’s clear that a great deal of love and attention has gone into its construction. As it’s equipped with Thomastik Infeld flatwound strings, and features a short scale length, we predict that the tones on offer are likely to be of the ‘rounded’ and ‘thick’ variety. Are we right? Build Quality Plucked from its hardshell case, the BiSonic feels solid, well-balanced and not especially heavy, all of which are good signs. Weighing in at eight pounds, this is not a bass with balance issues, and there are no headstock bias considerations to contend with.…

Price| $449 + sales tax Made In| Indonesia Power| 60 watts at 4 ohms, 45 watts at 8 ohms Features| Gain, master volume, low, middle, high, dual voltage switch, internal speaker on/off switch, ground/lift selector Speakers| 1 x 10” Markbass custom speaker, piezo tweeter Dimensions| 366mm (H) x 370mm (W) x 334mm (D) Connections| 1/4-inch jack input, 3.5mm auxiliary input, balanced XLR DI output, 1/4-inch jack speaker output, 3.5mm headphone output Weight| 25.35 lbs WHAT WE THINK Plus| Simple, effective, versatile Minus| Limited output—but this can be addressed with an extra cab Overall| A very impressive combo, well worthy of investigation BP RATING…

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! I hope you’ve had a fun month experimenting with pick playing and getting your alternating up- and downstrokes to feel more comfortable and controlled. Keep going—it’s important to maintain a foundational practice, even as you feel yourself moving onto more advanced concepts and applications. I remember the first time I toured with solo bass legend Michael Manring. I was surprised that his pre-gig warm-up mostly consisted of playing long, sustained notes, checking the intonation on his fretless and getting super-comfortable with controlling every aspect of his sound. He didn’t jump in and play all that incredible tapping and slapping stuff that we see him do so effortlessly. Instead, he built the foundations every time he picked up a bass. There was very evidently a direct correlation between making…

Welcome! An in-ear monitor or IEM is like a set of headphones, but by using a design that creates a barrier between your eardrum and the outside world, cuts down environmental—by which we usually mean on-stage or in-studio—noise. This means that IEMs can be run more quietly for better sound quality and less ear fatigue. Rock and roll is about massive amps and massive volume. Change my mind, Veall. It’s simple. Imagine being able to hear all the things you want to hear, with no distractions, no ear-splitting, headache-inducing ambient noise, and no struggling to hear through a poor stage mix... and no hearing loss after a few years. That’s fair. What types of IEMs are there? In-ear monitors can be as simple as a single driver in each ear,…

Bill Withers, ‘Lovely Day’ (1978) You’ve probably never thought of ‘Lovely Day’ as being driven by a bass-line, as it’s well-known for its mellow vocal hooks, specifically the “lovely daaaaaaaaaaay” chorus which closes it. Well, think again: the song comes complete with a sweet, descending line that adds a funky fill each time it goes down a step and then adds a dexterous, sixteenthy turnaround on the way back up. Writer and producer Jerry Knight played the line, one of the most recognizable in the history of R&B, and perhaps the best-known Withers song.…

Hello bassists! As I did in our last issue, I want to look ahead to the return of live shows and tours post-pandemic, and what that means for us as performers. With it being over a year now since most of us last played live, there are going to be elements of our live performance skills that may have regressed, to some degree. This might mean learning to play and lock in with other musicians again; relearning and retaining material; anxieties around returning to the stage and playing in front of audiences—or even just having the stamina to play for an extended amount of time under gig conditions. I’ll be tackling all of these areas over the next few issues, but first we’ll start with endurance. It’s important to take…

When Prince died on April 21, 2016 at the age of only 57, the world was stunned. This prolific, clean-living, supremely creative mind had apparently succumbed to an overdose of the painkiller fentanyl, many years before his time. In the music-making community, we were deprived of the talents of a multi-instrumentalist and composer without parallel. In the specific tribe of bass players, we lost a musician whose grasp of groove and economy made him one of the finest of his generation. Most of us in the press never met Prince, and regret that fact. He didn’t exactly make himself widely accessible to us, preferring to maintain a mystique about his personality and private life that endures to this day. When he did allow interviewers into his private sanctum, Paisley Park…

Although it’s only natural that educational platforms will evolve, it’s rare that the academic principles they deliver follow suit. Revered as one of his generation’s more confrontational academic personalities, Jeff Berlin’s musical insights are now directly accessible through the worldwide web. But with the internet proving such an oversaturated environment for educators to make their mark, we sat down with the Jedi master to find out more about what’s on offer from the Jeff Berlin Music Group, and invited him to give us a brief synopsis of the platform’s principles. “Well firstly, I didn’t create these methods. These are academic principles that have history and are still in use by most other teachers teaching other instruments,” comments Berlin. “I just took them and used them myself. The principles reflect a…

Alex Webster is best known for his fleet-fingered lines in the death metal band Cannibal Corpse, a name which instantly unnerves many people even before they hear the group’s songs, which are relentlessly aggressive and much loved by millions of headbangers worldwide. He’s one of the band’s founder members, along with drummer Paul Mazurkiewicz, and does most of their press, as he’s doing now because their fifteenth album, Violence Unimagined, is out. Webster is also a respected educator, having authored the Extreme Metal Bass book in 2011 and written columns for Bass Guitar magazine from 2013 to 2015, and also plays progressive bass parts in projects such as Blotted Science and Conquering Dystopia. You might assume that Webster is a pretty extreme character based on the above, but meet the…

Bill, you’re celebrating 37 years since Conklin Guitars was founded. What was the spark that lit the fire back in 1984? My inspiration to get into guitar and bass building was fueled by everything that was going on at that time, combined with my love of art and music. All the triggers were firing together—bands like Van Halen were hitting the scene, ads were coming out for new guitar companies like Dean and Tobias, and my friends and I were starting to get into playing. At some point I began creating designs for wild, original guitar ideas. It was the late Seventies. I was young, I was intrigued and I was captivated. What was your first build? Towards the end of my high school years I decided to take some…

Price| $2500 Made In| UK Color| Olympic white, gloss finish Body| Alder Neck| One-piece flame maple, 30.5” scale, gloss finish Neck Joint| Bolt-on, four-bolt attachment Nut Width| 42mm Fingerboard| Indian rosewood Frets| 20 Pickups| Curtis Novak coil-tapped BS-DS pickup Electronics| Passive Controls| Volume, tone (pickup coil-tap via push/pull operation) Hardware| Chrome hardware, Hipshot adjustable bridge, Hipshot Ultralite machine heads Weight| 8 lbs Case/gig bag included| Hardshell case Left-hand option available| Yes, as a custom order WHAT WE THINK Plus| Simplicity, build quality Minus| Limited tonally Overall| Pricey but impressive BP RATING…

KORG USA www.korgusa.com $499 f you had asked me five years ago to play through any sort of modeling gear, I would have laughed and walked away—but that was before discovering Darkglass. I’ve been consistently impressed by the build and sound quality of their products, which led me to buy the ADAM—and after spending some time with it, I can tell you that the Aggressively Distorting Advanced Machine lives up to its name. I ran it through a Darkglass Microtubes 900 head and an Aguilar 412DB cab, and started by doing what I would normally do with any new toy, pressing all the buttons and spinning the five dials—Compression, Drive, Blend, Character, and Level—to see the range of extremes which the unit could produce. This turned out to be a terrible idea,…

The renowned Joy Division and New Order bassist Peter Hook will be performing the former band’s music alongside the Manchester Camerata orchestra in September. These events sold out the Sydney Opera House and London’s Royal Albert Hall in 2019, and involve over 50 artists, musicians, and guest vocalists. “This has to be one of the most nerve-wracking things I’ve ever done!”Peter Hook “This has to be one of the most nerve-wracking things I have ever done,” says Hooky. “To sell out the Royal Albert Hall before anyone had even heard it was a fantastic compliment, it has to be said. The reaction has been wonderful and this time around I’m looking forward to being able to enjoy it myself. To bring it to [Joy Division’s home town] Manchester for the…

New Orleans bass legend Tony Hall has worked with a host of top names over a stellar career. He’s been hugely in demand for his work from the likes of the Neville Brothers, Bob Dylan, Herbie Hancock, Maceo Parker, and Harry Connick Jnr. His latest group project is the mighty Dumpstaphunk, a classic funk-fusion band that also features Ivan and Ian Neville, trombonist Alex Wasily, and drummer Deven Trusclair. Oh, and the small matter of another bass player—the storied Nick Daniels. It’s a modernization of the Neville Brothers’ groove along with the ingrained old school R&B, rock ,and down-and-dirty New Orleans funk, and it is fantastic. Hall’s natural syncopation and elasticated swing playing are instantly recognizable, though of course he’s equally happy playing in the pocket when the material demands…

Fraxinus americana, more commonly known to the guitar community as swamp ash, has been a coveted material for electric guitars since Fender began using it over 70 years ago on the original 1950 Broadcaster. However, with North American ash species at risk, limited availability has put its future as a wood for guitars in limbo. Swamp ash grows in swampy areas around the Mississippi river in the south central United States. While seasonal flooding is not unusual in these areas, local flooding has become more frequent and severe over the past 150 years, with 2018 and 2019 the wettest on record. The U.S. National Oceanic And Atmospheric Administration reported that spring flooding along the Mississippi in 2019 was also among the most damaging in modern history. Annually, when the Mississippi…

arl, your Prince interview was an absolute milestone for BP, but also for bass fans and in a wider journalistic sense. I read it at the time and I’d never seen him allow this kind of access. Did it feel that way at the time, or was it just another great BP cover story? I knew it was a big deal, and even more so to be flown to Minneapolis to interview him in person, which was pretty rare for us even then. I don’t think I realized at the time how big it would be, though, both personally and professionally. I loved the way you included the details about the stenographer. It sounds as if you were jerked around a lot by Prince’s handlers. I found out later that…

What was your way into bass? Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World. That movie showcased how integral to a narrative a bassist could be, but seriously, I bought a bass guitar and learned all Scott Pilgrim’s parts soon after. Beck did a great job capturing teenage angst in musical form, and it was just for a movie. I still go back and listen to the movie soundtrack to appreciate different parts of the music, and I was recently gifted a ‘Sex Bob-Omb’ T-shirt for my birthday by my partner. What was your first bass guitar? A beaten up Aria P/J bass. I sold my PSP for it —a sound investment. I was going through a phase when I had her, so she’s all covered in stickers and tape nowadays, though I’ve…

Did the gig with The Who come about because you’d already played with Roger Daltrey, Jon? Yes. I’d been playing with Roger for eight years, and obviously that included playing songs by The Who. What does it feel like to step into the shoes of John Entwistle and Pino Palladino? No pressure, right? Ha ha! I try not to think about it too much. I’m not trying to be either of those guys, because I can’t be either of them. I feel like I do me, with a large tip of the hat to John, but I’m not trying to be a replica of him. Nobody can be, and Pete [Townshend] and Roger absolutely don’t want me to be. Do you try to replicate Entwistle’s tone, though? To an extent,…

Price| $1549.99 Made In| USA Body| Alder Neck| Maple, 34” scale Neck Joint| Bolt-on Nut Width| 41.3mm Fingerboard| Maple or rosewood Frets| 20 Pickups| V-Mod ll humbucker Electronics| Passive Controls| Volume, tone Hardware| Fender chrome Hi-Mass bridge and lightweight fluted tuners Weight| 8.4 lbs Left-hand option available| Yes Case/gig bag included| Yes, deluxe moulded hardshell WHAT WE THINK Plus| New pickup and heel joint add up to a small but significant improvement Minus| Another price hike over the previous version Overall| Subtle improvements keep the Fender Precision as relevant as ever BP RATING…

Price| $499 Made In| Finland Controls| Touch slider EQ, three dual push button and rotary preset switches, Compression, Drive, Character, Blend, Level, headphone out with independent volume control, ground lift Features| Three presets, DI, USB-C audio interface Weight| 1.5 lbs Dimensions| 178 x 119 x 58mm Power| 9 volt, not included WHAT WE THINK Plus| Completely transparent clean signal Minus| Costly, and that is a lot of buttons Overall| All the quality you’d expect from Darkglass BP RATING…