Indice dei contenuti per July 2022 in Bass Player

When Yes bassist Chris Squire died aged 67 in 2015, it took the bass community aback. Sure, Squire had made his name with recordings from close to half a century before his passing, but there was a sense with everything that he did that he was nowhere near finished—and that he had ideas for bass lined up for years to come. That’s the essence of the word ‘progressive’, right there, if you ask me. Progressive rock in the sense of the genre of music that Yes made doesn’t get that name just because the music is fiendishly complex: We call it by that tag because it doesn’t stop evolving. It’s restless, hungry for evolution, and unsatisfied with mediocrity. You can hear this in every bass part that Squire recorded. This…

NORM STOCKTON Grooves And Sushi (2021) “A testimony to the fabulous players on it” “Sushi is sort of a recurring theme with me. I’m half Japanese, born and raised in Japan, so it’s close to my heart. What was really exciting about this for me was that it was the first project I ever did as a leader where it was all tracked live. The idea was that we’d record for one day and it would be done. Then I thought, ‘If we’re gonna do that, how much harder would it be to have a camera crew there to shoot it so we’re able to actually see the performances?’ It’s a much more involved process, but I was already too far down that road by then, so we did four…

Bass players with dazzling technique and a tone that leaps from the stage—or, as is more likely, from your laptop speakers—are commonplace these days, fortunately for us. We at BPlove a thuddy Motown bass part as much as the next James Jamerson fan, but it has to be to everybody’s benefit that the bass is no longer hidden in the mix in most genres of popular music. We have an audible voice these days, and one of the bass pioneers who enabled this fortunate transition was Chris Squire of Yes, whose tones were completely new and disruptive in the late Sixties to a degree that we can barely comprehend today. It’s important to grasp this, though—so important, in fact, that Squire deserves the cover of this magazine many times over.…

HAMISH STUART needs little introduction to the readers of “Bass is my favorite instrument, because I love the connection with the drums” Bass Player. He first came to prominence with the Average White Band, whose 1974 hit ‘Pick Up The Pieces’ you know even if you think you don’t. After the AWB folded in 1983, he worked for six years with Paul McCartney, touring and recording around the world and swapping bass and guitar duties with his boss. In more recent years, he’s been a regular member of Ringo Starr’s All-Starr Band, as well as working as an in-demand solo artist and producer. Lorna Thomas plays bass in The Tomorrow Band and has built a resume as a stage, session and studio musician alongside a wide range of musicians including…

SPECTOR www.spectorbass.com $2099 he Dimension is the second of two new basses from Spector released last year, the first being the Ethos. Both are made in Korea and share a similar body shape and through-neck construction. We were particularly impressed with the Ethos, as its combination of superb craftmanship, top quality materials, and some of the very best pickups and electronics available made for a great bass. It came at a cost, but given the spec and superb sound, it remained very good value. How does its successor compare? Build Quality The Dimension is Spector’s first ever multi-scale bass and is available as a four- or five-string, with a finish that shows off the gorgeous figured burl poplar used for the top and headstock facing. The main body consists of two…

The Stave: Most music written for the bass guitar uses the bass clef. The example to the right shows the placement of the notes on the stave. Tablature: This is a graphical representation of the music. Each horizontal line corresponds with a string on the bass guitar, with the lowest line representing the lowest pitched string (E). The numbers represent the frets to be played. Numbers stacked vertically indicate notes that are played together. Where basses with five or six strings are required, the tablature stave will have five or six lines as necessary. PLAYING TECHNIQUES SLAP AND POP TECHNIQUE Notes slapped with the thumb are marked with a ‘t’, notes popped with the fingers marked with a ‘p’. ADVANCED SLAP TECHNIQUE Fretting hand slaps are marked ‘lh’ and double…

The role of chord tones isn’t something to be taken lightly by any musician. Although it’s possible to deliberate over a vast array of components in the melodic portrayal of chord progressions, it’s always the notes within the associated triads and arpeggios that prove definitive in outlining the harmony—and as being definitive in outlining harmony is the usual role of any bassist, I’m sure you can appreciate the importance of developing an understanding in this field. EXERCISE ONE Let’s examine chord tones with an initial look at major 7th arpeggios. First, we need to appreciate that arpeggios—like all diatonic structures—are the product of formulas. A major 7th arpeggio is constructed by stacking three intervals of thirds in succession. A major 3rd, plus a minor 3rd, plus another major 3rd equates…

The mighty Stuart Hamm, one of the most creative bassists ever to stalk a stage, has announced a new online study program. “With great innovation, we’re calling it the Stu Hamm Electric Bass Online Course,” laughs Hamm when we call him for the inside scoop. “You know, I’ve worked with a lot of bass camps, having done a lot of pedagogy, having run departments and been in education my whole life. When I teach, there are certain things that I’d like to see happen, but which I’ve rarely seen happen—until we put this course together.” The course is hosted by Artistworks, of whom Hamm explains: “The big difference and selling point in the Artistworks pedagogy is that you take one of my lessons—say, on how to create a walking bass-line—and…

Versatile bass maestro Norm Stockton has worked with a wide range of artists over his multi-decade career. He is equally adept at working with American Idol star Clark Beckham as he is in the field of smooth jazz-funk with Steve Laury of Fattburger. His rock chops are immense, and his thirst for exploring the possibilities of music in all its forms have led him to investigate the grooves in West African polyrhythms. As well as his bass adventures, Norm is an educator who has released a well-received series of instructional DVDs and the book, The Worship Bass Book: Bass, Espresso & The Art Of Groove. He regularly conducts masterclasses at music colleges in Los Angeles and London, and his website ArtofGroove.com boasts subscribers from around the world. Norm’s solo works…

Squire picked in a way similar to guitarists performing a pinch harmonic Chris Squire occasionally played fingerstyle, but he preferred to use a Herco heavy-gauge pick, hitting his strings either in front of or behind his bridge pickup, according to the tone he was seeking. The clever bit that makes his picking unique was that he picked in a similar way to guitarists performing a pinch harmonic—with the ball of his thumb hitting the string an instant after the pick. As he told BP’s Brian Fox, “I’ve developed a technique over the years where I hold the pick very close to my thumb. I hit the string with the pick, but then a millisecond later, I hit it with my thumb as well. That way I get the attack from…

“I begged my father to buy me a bass and became obsessed. It’s been a drain on my wallet ever since” Þórður Hermannsson What was your way into bass? TŪRANGA I picked up the bass in 2020 when Alien Weaponry asked me to audition for them. It probably sounds whack that they asked me to audition when I had no bass experience, but I’ve been a guitar player for 11 years and a piano player for 16 years. I am a big fan of flamenco, and it was great because the skills needed for that style on the guitar—like fingerstyle and triplets—translated really well to playing the bass. ARON I’m from a musical family, so I basically fell in love with music when I was born. My older brother is…

GEAR HERO www.gearhero.com $469 Compressor pedals for bass tend to fall between two camps: The basic type that squashes your sound in a really obvious way and is way more of an ‘effect’ than a tool, and the more fully-featured tone-shaping variety that acknowledges the variance in compression need between fingerstyle, pick, slap, and overdriven bass sounds. The fact that so many of us are now using plugins at home that emulate the great studio compressors of the past has put pressure on compressor builders to up their game—and even at first glance, it’s obvious that Becos have taken the challenge head on with their new Stella pedal. Housed in a standard-sized pedal, the Stella meets the modern pedal design aesthetic. Twenty years ago, a pedal with this many features…

Hey there, bass players! I’m doing the beginners’ lesson this month, so let’s take a look at some useful pattern exploration that will serve you well as you move along your bass journey. If you studied last month’s instalment of my I Spy column, you’ll know that we featured a ubiquitous pattern in the world of classic soul, R&B and Motown—the soul finger sixth. Commonly played alongside a major chord, the soul finger sixth combines the root, fifth, and major sixth. These notes can be assembled in any which way, and serve as the basic ingredients behind bass-lines like ‘I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch)’ by The Four Tops and ‘Rescue Me’ by Fontella Bass. Commonly played alongside a major chord, the soul finger sixth combines the root,…

Paul McCartney’s Liverpool home at 20 Forthlin Road is set to become a songwriting location for unsigned artists. The plan is to open up the house, where he lived between 1955 and stardom in the early Sixties, as an inspiration for musicians. The Forthlin Sessions is being run by McCartney’s brother Mike, in conjunction with music journalist Pete Paphides and the Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts (LIPA), and will be up and running by the time Macca turns 80 on June 18. Mike says: “We’re inviting young people to this house and giving them the opportunity of doing the same as us, coming from nothing and seeing where it takes them.”…

Good times, bad times: Jerry Barnes reports on the recent Concert For Ukraine and sad events in Colombia On March 29, the perennial disco masters Chic shone brightly at the Concert For Ukraine, a benefit concert held in Birmingham, England and headlined by Ed Sheeran, Snow Patrol, and others. Anchored by Jerry Barnes’ huge but dexterous bass parts, Chic brought a sense of uplift to a fairly sombre occasion, with the man himself surprised by the presence of the low end in the mix, not usually a feature of TV broadcasts. “The show was awesome,” he tells BP. “Even though we were jet-lagged, having flown from Columbia and changed planes in America to come to the UK, we were all really focused because we knew we were doing live TV…

We’ve covered a common use of diminished chords in recent columns—those which occur on any of the chord tones of a diminished chord built on the tonic. This month, let’s look at an equally common example: that of chromatically ascending diminished chords. Put simply, when a diminished chord is ascending by a semitone, it’s actually functioning as a dominant chord resolving up a fourth or down a fifth. For example, a Bdim7 resolving to Cmaj is actually just a rootless G7 b 9 chord resolving to Cmaj. The notes in a Bdim7 are B, D, F, and A b , and the notes in a G7 b 9 are G, B, D, F, and A b . You will encounter this concept in countless tunes and across many genres and…

The classic Chris Squire bass tone is best described as ‘clanky’, ‘clacky’, ‘brittle’, ‘hollow’ and so on, but rather than deciphering endless adjectives it’s probably best to listen to ‘Roundabout’ and marvel at its prominent, treble-loaded tone, delivered with startling picking speed and agility. Squire referred to the bass part as “quintessential” with some humor, having been asked about it so many times over the years, but he was right—it perfectly sums up his approach to the bass. Squire was best known for playing a 1964 Rickenbacker bass with the serial number DC127, often thought to be a regular 4001S model. It was actually an RM1999, in other words an import into the UK by Rose Morris, Rickenbacker’s official British importer at the time. Asked by Nick Beggs why he…

he Chilean bassist Roberto ‘Ra’ Díaz is an early riser, taking a call with Bass Player at 9am his time while on tour with Korn, whose bassist Reggie ‘Fieldy’ Arvizu he’s replacing while that musician takes a break from life on the road. In a circular move typical of today’s never-busier music industry, Díaz’s regular spot in Suicidal Tendencies—with whom he’s played since 2016—has been filled by Tye Trujillo, the son of Metallica bassist and fellow Suicidals alumnus Robert Trujillo. Tye also filled in for Fieldy a couple of years back, completing the overlap. Confused yet? Good morning, Ra. Most touring musicians don’t do interviews this early, in our experience. Well, I’m not a fan of being at the hotel. I’d rather come to the venue and hang out with…

Jerry Barnes of Chic on recording at Abbey Road “It’s a home from home as far as studios go. The people are so nice and so accommodating, and the engineers are so trained and ready to do whatever you need. That’s one of the things that makes it memorable. I work a lot out of the Power Station in New York, and the Abbey Road staff are all up there with the Power Station as far as having the right gear together, having the trained engineers, having good maintenance. Of course, it has history, too. I did a recording in Studio Two a while back: I was producing an artist where the echo of the room is on the recording, and it hit me that you can’t get this sound…

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. Let us know what you think of our conclusions.…

BEGINNER 64 RYAN MADORA Kickstart your journey to the top of the bass world here 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…

The Boss OC-2 Octave pedal is an all-analog pedal that produces one tone an octave below the note you’re playing and a second tone an octave below that. With just three dials setting the levels, one for each sound—including the direct bass sound—a wide range of interesting effects can be produced. For instance, by turning the direct signal down and favoring just the first octave, a softer, more synth-like bass sound is produced. Bassists often blend this sound with fuzz and envelope filter effects to crush the bass tones to mimic the sound of analog synth keyboards. The OC-2 arrived on the scene in April 1982, originally called the Boss Octaver, and manufactured by Roland in Japan. It sold well until September 2003, when it was replaced by newer models.…