Innehållsförteckning för July 2021 från Bass Player

Queen & David Bowie, ‘Under Pressure’ (1981) It’s D. And it’s A. And it’s D again! One of John Deacon’s most instantly recognizable bass-lines ever, the ‘Under Pressure’ riff was perfectly counterpointed by a piano stab, a weird, live-sounding vocal and guitar and a cheesy rapper from Dallas. That’s right—the song and its iconic bass-line were given a whole new life in ‘Ice Ice Baby’, the dreary 1990 hit by Vanilla Ice, who sampled it and repackaged it for a younger generation of consumers.…

This ridiculously-titled LP, released by Sam Phillips’ famous Sun label, the home of rock’n’roll, was the debut album of the greatest country singer of them all, the late Johnny Cash. Possibly the most troubled country musician ever to strum a guitar in anger, Cash went on to a fruitful career, surviving speed addiction, several turns of the wheel of fashion, and a reinvention as a harbinger of doom by Rick Rubin in the years before his death in 2003. One of the key features of this influential LP was Marshall Grant’s double bass. While production technology was still in its infancy in those primitive times, a careful listen through the bathtub-level clarity will enable you to pick out Grant’s solid, fluid bass parts. The ‘boom-chicka-boom’ sound that permeated Cash’s work…

Welcome back, bassists! Let’s continue with our theme of post-pandemic live performance and how to re-establish the necessary performance skills after a year out. This month, we’re talking about re-learning and retaining material—whether it’s your own band’s songs, a covers band set, or for a tour this year that you’ve booked in with another artist First off, get started now. Do this prep while the pace is less pressurized. I doubt we’ll ever have a time like this again to regroup, establish, and develop wider skill sets, or embark on thorough preparation. If you don’t already do it, start labeling your repertoire with their key signatures. This has a whole host of benefits, from helping to relearn the bass parts more quickly, through getting the relevant theoretical structures under the…

“We were told if we had a single we’d sell 800,000 copies. We said ‘no’ and sold 800,000 albums instead” Anyone who enjoys the cranium-crushing sound of heavy metal and its slightly more refined accomplice, hard rock, owes a debt to Led Zeppelin. Alongside their contemporaries Deep Purple and Black Sabbath, Led Zep were one of the unholy trio of British rock bands responsible for the evolution of popular music into a heavier, more high-volume direction. Without these three acts, the music of a whole generation would have been more lightweight in style and significance. Where Sabbath pioneered heavy metal with their downtuned riffage, and Purple focused on streamlined power rock and classical virtuosity, Led Zeppelin’s approach was based on folk, acoustic and world elements, and epic soundscapes just as…

The Holland-born, Hawaii-raised bassist Benny Rietveld is no stranger to demanding gigs, having played with the late Miles Davis towards the end of the late jazz icon’s career, and holding down the low end with the mighty Carlos Santana since 1990. His most-heard bass part is undoubtedly the line anchoring the inescapable ‘Smooth’ in 1999, but he has also delivered miraculous contributions to recordings by Herbie Hancock, Eagle Eye Cherry, John Lee Hooker, Sheila E, and as a solo artist. Let’s find out what he’s up to... What’s happening, Benny? We just came back from a week of doing some recording with the Santana band—just personal projects that Carlos wanted to do. That’s what all the rock stars are doing now: They can’t play live, so they want to record.…

Patrick ‘Putter’ Smith, now 80, has a resume as a jazz bassist going back as far as the Fifties, and has amassed a huge list of recording and performance credits alongside Thelonious Monk, Art Blakey, Duke Ellington, Billy Eckstine, Lee Konitz, Art Farmer, Erroll Garner, Gerry Mulligan, Art Pepper, Bob Brookmeyer, Diane Schuur, Ray Charles, Burt Bacharach, Sonny and Cher, the Beach Boys, the Righteous Brothers, and many more. In his later career, he also became a respected teacher of upright bass at the Musicians’ Institute in Los Angeles. Smith is also known outside the music world for his acting role in the 1971 James Bond movie, Diamonds Are Forever, in which he played an affable hitman, Mr. Kidd—but acting was not for him, as we discover in this rare…

As a teenager I was a big rock fan, so I started on drums, but moved to guitar, then bass. I discovered fusion, and that is how I ended up listening to jazz. I wanted to move on to acoustic bass in high school, but I didn’t have the guts—so I played fretless instead! I eventually attended McGill University where, a few months short of my 20th birthday, I started on acoustic bass as they did not allow electric. I was fine with it, and has become my main instrument. My first bass guitar was a copy of a Fender Precision. I don’t remember the brand, but it came with a small practice amp. On electric, I’ve played mostly Fender Jazz basses, Japanese, or the then-current American models. I was…

Price| $999 MAP Made In| Korea and Indonesia Body| Mahogany Neck| Five-piece mahogany/walnut, 34” scale Neck Joint| Neck-through Fretboard| Macassar ebony Frets| 21 Pickups| EMG 35P4 humbucker (neck), EMG 35J humbucker (bridge) Electronics| Active Controls| 2 x volume, tone Hardware| LTD Vintage tuners, Gotoh bridge Weight| 11 lbs Left-hand option available| Yes Case/gig bag included| No WHAT WE THINK Plus| Build quality, price Minus| None Overall| A well-constructed, no-nonsense instrument that sounds as badass as it looks 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 her website. www.ryanmadora.com…

Welcome! To finish off our exploration of pick playing, we’re going to look at a couple of things related to playing bigger intervals. As we’ve noted before, every technique takes on a whole new level of difficulty when we start to move it across the strings, but it can get even harder when we want to be able to control how long each note lasts. To start with, we’re going to look at how to play open strings as a drone note underneath fretted notes higher up the neck. This is a technique that’s been used to great effect by a number of rock greats, including Doug Pinnick, Justin Chancellor, Julie Slick, and Jason Newsted. It can be a great way to keep the low end present while also adding…

What is it with bass books at the moment? There’s loads of them coming out. Two more essential reads are on the way, the first from Ron Carter and titled Chartography—Reinvented Transcriptions.It includes five of his performances of the jazz standard ‘Autumn Leaves’ with the Miles Davis Quartet from 1963 to ’67. The maestro explains the concept with the words: “This is the first book that explains all the factors that go into what has made the greatest bass-lines in history so great. And that is context... By looking at how a bass-line evolved over multiple choruses and performances, you will understand that a one-chorus transcription cannot help a bass player find out how that bass-line was actually built, much less how to write one like it himself.” Next up…

Billy Sherwood, bass player for prog-rock legends Yes, is also a noted producer, guitarist, and keyboard player. His songwriting chops, technical nous, and sonic explorations have led him on a long journey through prog and its boundary-pushing, complex compositions. Sherwood’s other bands include World Trade, Lodgic, Asia, and Arc Of Life, who he formed along with Jon Davison of Yes. The bassist was born in 1965 in Las Vegas, Nevada, and is from a solid background of musical performers. His father was an actor and musician, and his mother a singer, as was his late brother Michael, who also played in Lodgic. Sherwood’s setup includes basses from Spector, Fender, Turner, and more, and he uses a relatively hefty Dunlop 1mm pick, which he prefers for its texture and versatility, using…

here’s no way around it... Despite being right under their fingertips, a lot of us have a difficult time understanding fretboard radius. Today, let’s pull out our high-school geometry textbooks and slide-rules to take a closer look at radius... Wait! Don’t turn the page yet—there is an easier way to conceptualize the difference between one fretboard radius and another, without breaking out a scientific calculator. As you will recall, a radius is the distance from a circle’s center to its edge. A bass fretboard’s radius refers to its convex playing surface. The curvature of the fretboard is relative to that of a cross-section of the circumference of a circle with a specific radius. The smaller the radius number, the more sharply curved the surface of the fretboard. The accompanying graphic…

Born in Israel in 1970 and living in St. Louis, Missouri as a teenager, Avishai Cohen was introduced to the world of bass by the music of Jaco Pastorius. After studying at the Music and Arts Academy in Jerusalem, he moved to New York City in 1992, where he continued to study and performed with the Panamanian pianist Danilo Perez. By ’97 he was a member of Chick Corea’s New Trio and a co-founder of Corea’s ensemble, Origin, where he remained for six years. A series of acclaimed solo albums followed, with this magazine numbering him in a poll of 100 Most Influential Bass Players of the 20th Century, and he has worked in collaboration with over 25 orchestras. In 2020, Cohen planned to play 50 concerts in 50 cities…

One of the most successful British bands of the Eighties, Level 42 are also arguably the ultimate fusion unit, streamlining their energetic early jazz-funk sound into slick, effortlessly soulful pop music. Encompassing 11 studio albums, including 20 UK top 40 hits and two US top 20 singles, their catalogue in many ways defines the decade, but also reflects their musical virtuosity and vibrant eclecticism, peppering tracks with influences from Herbie Hancock, Return To Forever, Jimi Hendrix and the Mahavishnu Orchestra. 1985’s World Machine ‘plan’ had worked superbly. The album had been a solid success and the follow-up was set to push Level 42 into the major leagues—but writing hits was a lot easier said than done. Mark King opened up to David Hepworth in Q magazine about some of the…

Price| $999.99 street Made In| Korea Body| Maple Neck| Maple, 30.25” scale Neck Joint| Bolt-on Fretboard| Rosewood Frets| 22 Pickups| 2 x Black Top FilterTron humbuckers Controls| 2 x pickup volumes, tone, pickup switch, master volume Hardware| Die-cast tuners, Adjusto-Matic bridge, G-cutout tailpiece Weight| 6 lbs Left-hand option available| No Case/gig bag included| Yes, at extra cost WHAT WE THINK Plus| Attention to detail, authentic sounds Minus| Big body, headstock dive Overall| There’s no better bass if you’re after this look and sound BP RATING…

“To this day I don't know how it happened, or how I got through that gig...” I play in the heavy metal band Angel Witch, and after trying out a few different basses, I use a Fender Jazz these days. When I first joined, there was quite a bit of overdrive on the bass parts and I tried a Rickenbacker copy, but it just didn’t match up to the Jazz, although I did change the Fender bridge for a hi-mass unit, because I need my setup to be as functional as possible. I want to be very self-sufficient, and a Jazz bass is really good for that, because the tone is great—the sound man has to work really hard to screw it up. “When we play live, obviously not under…

The Los Angeles quartet Rage Against The Machine is that rare thing—a protest band that isn’t faintly embarrassing. Mainstream acceptance and chart success have not taken the intimidating edge off their political rants, which target a combination of corporations and governments, and there’s no denying their jaw-dropping musicianship. As for the bass playing by Tim Commerford—it’s absolutely world-class. Although Commerford has had his moments—he once climbed a gantry during a TV awards show, disrupting the event, and is on a mission to cover as much of his epidermis as possible with blue ink—the way he approaches and delivers his bass parts is second to none. A fingerstyle player who somehow sounds as if he’s using a pick, he has a percussive, economical approach which everyone could learn from. On RATM’s…

Together with his younger brother Fred, Richard Fairbrass was a fixture of music TV throughout the Nineties and beyond, thanks to the massive success of his band Right Said Fred’s singles ‘I’m Too Sexy’ and ‘Deeply Dippy’. As he recalls, the duo were often dismissed as ‘gym queens’ by critics—but the truth is that the brothers had earned their stripes as musicians in the Eighties, touring in support of Joy Division and Suicide, and working with Mick Jagger and Bob Dylan. He also appeared as a bass player in three David Bowie videos: ‘Blue Jean’ (1984)—also released as a Grammy-winning 20-minute film called Jazzin’ For Blue Jean—‘Loving The Alien’ (1985) and ‘Underground’ (1986). Right Said Fred continue to record and tour to this day, although no-one has ever asked Fairbrass…

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…

RRP| $529 Made In| Indonesia Body| Mahogany Neck| Neck Maple, 34” Neck Join| Bolt-on, five bolts Fretboard| Ebony, 24 frets Pickups| EMG MMCS humbucker Electronics| Active BTS preamp Controls| Volume, treble, bass Hardware| Nickel Weight| 8.8 lbs Left-hand available?| No Case/gigbag| No WHAT WE THINK Plus| Plays like a dream Minus| Not overly versatile tone-wise; tuning heads are a bit clunky Overall| The D-1’s understated aerodynamics and powerful bark punch well above its pricetag BP RATING…

MXR M282 DYNA COMP BASS COMPRESSOR Price | $149 Features | Attack switch, clean, output, sensitivity, tone MXR VINTAGE BASS OCTAVE M280 Price | $159 Features | Mid switch (+6dB @ 800Hz), octave 1, dry, octave 2 MXR SUB OCTAVE BASS FUZZ M287 Price | $199 Features | Bypass switch, octave switch, bass, treble, gain, fuzz switch, fuzz, sub octave, dry, mid level Made In | USA Weight | 0.4 lbs (M287: 0.8 lbs) Power | 9v DC (M287: also 9v battery) Dimensions | 40mm x 90mm x 56mm; M287: 127mm x 90mm x 56mm WHAT WE THINK Plus | Solid build, usable sounds Minus | Similar options available at these prices Overall | MXR pedals continue to impress BP RATING…

Hello! Your ears are way more delicate than you think, and it’s all too easy to take good hearing for granted. We may have excelled in our ability to make a lump of wood rumble at levels that can not only move us emotionally, but physically—but human evolution hasn’t quite caught up with technology enough for us to withstand these electronically elevated conditions. Take heed! Go on then, Veall—please illuminate us about our ears. The outer, fleshy part of an ear, the pinna, directs energy down the ear canal to an eardrum, the tympanic membrane. This is vibrated by this energy, and in turn vibrates a delicate set of bones—the smallest in the human skeleton, in fact: The hammer (malleus), anvil (incus), and stirrup (stapes). The last of these is…