Table of contents for October 2019 in Bass Player

Welcome back to your regular dose of the Low Life! In this issue I will be discussing the benefits of warming up before playing and giving you tips on what to do pre-performance. Warm-ups are often neglected, but without them we risk our potential longevity as performers—it is therefore vital to look after ourselves and keep our bodies, joints, and hands healthy. A proper warm-up regimen will also enable you to accomplish greater dexterity during play, and result in a more relaxed approach. This leads to improved endurance, and prevents your hands from tiring during longer sets. A lot of bassists appreciate the value of warming up, but are not disciplined in actioning it—myself included, once upon a time! To combat this, it is key to establish a good regimen…

Bootsy Collins creates funk so fresh it must have come from outer space. Born in Cincinatti in 1951, the supremely talented Rock And Roll Hall Of Famer is a legend not just for his interstellar playing, but also for his star-shaped basses and off-the-planet style. The band he formed with his big brother ‘Catfish’ Collins, the Pacemakers, debuted in 1968 and took over as James Brown’s backing band for around a year in 1970—not bad grounding for a subsequent career alongside George Clinton in the peerless Funkadelic and Parliament. Hugely in demand as a sessionist and performer, Bootsy has lent vocals and bass to countless other projects, working with the likes of Fatboy Slim, Buckethead and Deee-Lite. In 2010, he opened the online bass school, Bootsy Collins’ Funk University, giving…

World Domination Tour jumpsuit The blue jumpsuit Gray wore on Slipknot’s World Domination Tour in 2000, with the barcode number from the demo album Mate. Feed. Kill. Repeat as an embroidered graphic and his number 2 on the left arm. Warwick 1998 Thumb, serial number L 054882-98 Gray’s second Warwick bass, which he toured for almost seven years. He broke the neck clean off this instrument. It was taped up but for all intents and purposes, it rendered the guitar unplayable. Warwick 2002 Streamer Stage I Gray’s first Warwick five-string. Before 2002, he exclusively used four-string bass guitars but was persuaded by this natural oil-finish bass. He used this bass on the road, as well as in the studio. Tour Road Case, 2004 Used on the Vol. 3 world tour…

Sadist have been together since 1991, with eight full-length records behind them—the most recent one is called Spellbound, and is a concept album about Alfred Hitchcock’s movies. My story as a bassist is a classic one: I was finishing middle school, and a friend of mine suggested that we play some songs by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. He already had a guitar, so I picked bass completely out of the blue. From that moment on I’ve paid attention to bass-lines, which are easy to identify on every RHCP record. I was lucky enough to met a friend and guru, Gianni Serino, who showed me how many things you could do with a bass guitar, and so I was hooked. “PLAY AS MANY DIFFERENT GENRES OF MUSIC AS POSSIBLE, KEEP…

Price | $2,499 Made In | USA Body | Walnut Neck | Maple, 33.25” scale length Neck Joint | Neck-through Fingerboard | Maple Frets | 20 Pickups | 2 x single coil Controls | Bass Volume, Bass Tone, Treble Volume, Treble Tone, three-position pickup select Hardware | Schaller Deluxe tuners, Schaller 3D-5 bridge Weight | 9 lbs Case/gig bag included | Vintage hard case Left-hand option available | No WHAT WE THINK Plus | Classic clanky tones, amazing playability Minus | That hefty pricetag is a little hard to justify Overall | A great bass in every way, although purists might rebel BP RATING…

The Atelier Z brand from Japan has been predominantly used by Japanese bassists over the years, but now Jerry Barnes, globetrotting with the reinvigorated Chic, has one of his own. Filling the late Bernard Edwards’ considerable shoes requires a lively, groove-laden bass tone, capable of shaking the foundations of venues worldwide. This fiver adds a low B-string to the mix, but does it warrant a pricetag of just over $3,000? Let’s see! Build Quality This instrument is steeped in vintage Jazz Bass vibes. At 9.5 lbs, it’s not the lightest Jazz on the block, and it certainly feels substantial. It sports all the usual Jazz features—offset body, chrome control plate, single-coil pickups, block inlays (of abalone, no less)—and it projects an air of class from the off. The deep lower…

Bergantino Forté Price | $1,059 inc VAT Made in | USA Power | 700W RMS at 4 ohms, 800W RMS at 2 ohms Features | Gain, Master Volume, Aux Line in, VRC variable ratio compressor, EQ (Bass: +/- 10dB @ 63Hz, Lo-Mid: +/- 10dB @ 250Hz, Hi-Mid: +/- 10dB @ 1kHz, Treble: +/- 10dB @ 3.5kHz), Bright switch (+6dB @ 6.5kHz), headphone out, pre/post XLR DI, ground lift, effects send/return Dimensions | W x D x H: 267mm x 213mm x 95mm / 10.5” x 8.4” x 3.7” Weight | 6 lbs Bergantino HDN-210 (HDN-112) Price | $949 ($859) inc VAT Made in | USA Power | 400W (350W) Impedance | 8 Ohms (8 Ohms) Speakers | 2 x 10” neodymium magnet woofers plus High Intelligibility HDN Series tweeter (1…

elcome 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! This month, let’s dig a little deeper into the things that help round out our musicality while we’re practising. So much of learning an instrument is about developing a level of dexterity and control over a sequence of notes or chords. We learn scales, arpeggios, and new techniques, and we practise being able to repeat them consistently—because that’s a massive part of being a bassist in almost all pop music formats around the globe. But what we don’t often talk about is the control that’s needed when we’re not playing. Is there a skill to leaving gaps in the music? Does a gap mean we get to switch off for a moment or two and then re-engage when our fingers need to start twiddling again? Or can we…

SHOW TIME We are delighted to announce that the great John Patitucci will be performing at the London Bass Guitar Show in the UK in September. John, an acclaimed fusion artist and songwriter since the Seventies, joins Ariane Cap, Nick Beggs, and Cody Wright at the event, to be held at the Business Design Center in Islington. Bass Player’s long tradition of recognizing excellence in our field, we’ll be presenting John with the Bass Player Magazine Lifetime Achievement Award, an honor shared with a short but elite list of bassists including James Jamerson, Stanley Clarke, and Billy Sheehan. We hope to see you there—it’s going to be the bass event of the year! www.ukguitarshow.com, www.facebook.com/ukguitarshow, www.instagram.com/ukguitarshow, @UKGuitarShow BOXING CLEVER Aguilar have announced the latest addition to its line of Super…

NO TREBLE KEVIN JOHNSON Kevin Johnson meets the greatest living Canadian This month on No Treble, we were honored to have the one and only Geddy Lee on the Groove Podcast. Mitch Joel caught up with the Rush bassist in Montreal during a Canadian book tour in support of his Big Beautiful Book Of Bass. Their conversation included talk about the history of Fender basses, Lee’s first encounter with Jaco Pastorius, and what he’s been up to since the end of Rush. When asked about his current bass playing, Lee said he still plucks the low notes every day. “I have a bass in every room, [though] I need to get my fingers back in shape,” he said. “I go down to my studio and jam with myself. I put…

Right then legends! This month’s column is leading on from the one two months ago, which featured an introduction to slash chords. You’ll hopefully remember that we included a dominant chord presented as b VII/I, which is really just functioning as a dom9sus4 chord. This is a really common sound in contemporary music, and as such we have to be familiar with seeing it written as a slash chord, in addition to being able to recognize it by ear. In the key of C, the diatonic dominant chord would be a G7, but if the composer or arranger wants something to function as a dominant chord while creating a more modern sound, they may well opt for an F/G (G9sus4) instead. We’ve spent time in the past looking at upper…

At a secret rehearsal facility in the UK Midlands, where roadies and assistants are busying the corridors in final preparations for Slipknot’s European tour, bassist Alessandro ‘VMan’ Venturella is looking primed for victory. Masked up in a black boiler suit, he switches on the green lights of his favored Status Graphite bass to full beam, and starts tearing into the instrument with the same aggression that landed him one of the most highly coveted metal gigs in recent history. Since joining the American giants in 2014, the English musician has only performed on main stages and in arenas as the headline act—it’s a lifestyle that goes hand-in-hand with being among the biggest and best in an ever-flourishing genre. The group will be unveiling their sixth full-length album, We Are Not…

There was an audible strand of heartfelt but understated balladry in the British indie-rock of the 90s that started with Radiohead’s ‘High And Dry’ in 1992, traced its trajectory through the Verve in the Britpop era, then was carried along by Travis at the turn of the millennium and Keane shortly after, before finally being claimed forever by Coldplay. Many of my colleagues in the rock journalism community derided this form of huge-selling pop in public but sang along with it in private, the hypocrites; fortunately, neither the bands concerned nor the massive audiences who filled their gigs gave a damn what we in the press thought. You may recall the long sequence of hits enjoyed by Travis, the Glasgow foursome made up of singer Fran Healy, guitarist Andy Dunlop,…

“I’D TAKE CHARISMA AND CHARACTER IN BASS-LINES OVER PERFECTION AND SPEED ANY DAY” Our band formed in 2013 around the International Women’s Day show that my bandmate Ren Aldridge and her friends were putting on at their house. She had already performed as an anti-folk singer-songwriter for some time at that point, but wanted to do a way heavier project. She teamed up with a friend of ours, May Monsour, and had a drums, acoustic guitar, and shouting rehearsal, after which they reached out to me, looking for a bassist. At the time, I was only occasionally messing around on an acoustic guitar in the safety of my bedroom, and didn’t have any experience of being in a band. I really just threw myself into the deep end in regards…

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…

he violin bass design is what Höfner is best known for, everybody knows that—but that doesn’t mean it can’t move forward with technology, does it? Here we have two new variants on the classic template. One of them is as close an example of the classic violin bass as you are likely to see, while the other is a more unusual addition to the portfolio, the recyclable Greenline. In the latter, any plastic elements that can’t be reused or broken down to constituent parts have been replaced by lumber and metal. How do they measure up? Build Quality The Relic model totally looks the part, with a traditional violin burst finish over spruce and flame maple with black/white/ black binding—the lumber figuring is quite something! Attention to detail is paramount…

Price | $3,065 Made In | Japan Color | Natural, gloss finish Body | Ash, three-piece body Neck | Maple, 34” scale Neck Joint | Bolt-on, four-bolt attachment Nut Width | 47mm Fingerboard | Bound maple Frets | 21 Pickups | Atelier Z JBZ-4/70 Premium single-coil pickups x 2 Electronics | Atelier Z/Bartolini EQ-M active two-band EQ Controls | Volume, volume (active/ passive push/pull), bass (boost only), treble (boost and cut) Hardware | Chrome hardware, Gotoh GB-528 machine heads, Atelier vintage bridge Weight | 9.5 lbs Case/gig bag included Deluxe padded gigbag Left-hand option available As a custom order WHAT WE THINK Plus | Highly playable; a tone to die for Minus | Not cheap Overall | A super-Jazz with great attention to detail BP RATING…

One of the many great things about this magazine is that we can combine reviews of gear from disparate global locations—in this case, pedals from Godlyke in Clifton, New Jersey, and GR Bass, from the town of Bari in southern Italy—and enjoy the similarities they share as well as rejoicing in their marked differences. We’ve always said that playing bass gives you a planet-wide perspective, and here’s the proof, one more time. Both of the pedals claim to produce varying types of overdrive, the GR Bass Pure Drive in a sober chrome casing that takes up a chunk of your pedalboard, and the Godlyke in a small purple box with lurid graphics. Think of one as an serious Italian businessman in an Armani suit, and the other as a brash…

Modes are a subject area that creates an air of trepidation whenever it comes up, but there’s no need to worry—the hype surrounding modes disguises the fact that each one is simply a scale that creates a different sonic texture, which in turn complements the coinciding chord types. Take the Aeolian mode, also referred to as the ‘natural minor’ or ‘relative minor’ scale. ‘Relative’ doesn’t mean that it’s the evil cousin of the major scale, full of resentment and dissonance—the term simply refers to the fact that the two structures share a key signature. While key signatures are typically thought of as major, they actually signify both major and minor key centers. For example, all of this month’s exercises are composed with one sharp [ # ] in the key…

NEW ALBUM Radiodust, A.O.R. (2019) Zippy bass parts from the McCartney school soar over the grungy riffs from these rockers; Dennis Feeney is the chap at the low end. OLD ALBUM Dark Angel, Darkness Descends (1986) These Los Angeles thrash metallers churned out some tasty bass parts; Rob Yahn’s tapped chords in the intro of ‘Merciless Death’ are a case in point. REALLY OLD ALBUM Ella Fitzgerald, Ella Fitzgerald Sings The Cole Porter Song Book (1956) When Ella sang, the world listened, and when the renowned swing bassist Joe Mondragon played, the earth shook... but subtly.…

In an age when machines are dauntlessly pumping out guitars, we need to ask ourselves, where’s the humanity? Are we willing to sacrifice quality for convenience? Luckily, raging against the machine is American luthier Rob Elrick, whose craftsmanship has yielded some of the world’s finest basses. With over a quarter of a century’s worth of professional bragging rights at his disposal, Rob tells us that it isn’t so much what materials you use—it’s how a bass feels that really makes it an Elrick. Having been a player himself since his early teens, it’s his fingers that get the last word before these beauties hit the shelves. He explains, “Without hours and hours of field testing, my products would not have developed in the manner that they have. Even before I…

This month, I would like to continue my series of articles about tapping on the bass. Let’s continue to look at some of the some of the songs from my first solo release Radio Free Albemuth, released by Relativity Records in 1988. That’s an unbelievable 31 years ago! It will be hard for many of you younger bassists to grasp (and most are younger than me at this point!), but way back then, tapping on the bass was a brand-new thing. Certainly, guitar players had been using some forms of techniques such as hammer-ons for a while, but the way that we used tapping was based very much on transcriptions of piano music that I had played growing up. I think the songs from this album were many bassists’ first…

As a solo artist and member of the Aristocrats, Bryan Beller finds himself in the best of both worlds. With guitarist Guthrie Govan and drummer Marco Minnemann, he says, it’s “a rollicking outfit. We’re doing outrageous things, winking and nodding at the audience, and breaking the fourth wall all the time, so it’s kind of a tricky muso act, but we’re also having a lot of fun and breaking all the rules. Then there’s the deeper, more emotional, reflective part of me, which is where my solo material goes.” “WITH THE ARISTOCRATS, THERE’S A LICENCE TO DO ANYTHING. WE CAN DO ANY STYLE WE WANT, AS LONG AS IT WORKS IN A TRIO FORMAT AND WE HAVE FUN WITH IT. THOSE ARE THE ONLY REQUIREMENTS” When he spoke to us,…

The introduction of a five-string bass to Rickenbacker’s immortal 4003 lineage has caused some serious ripples among fans of the brand. We ran a picture of the 4003S5 under review here on our social media recently, and reactions to the new modifications—specifically the pickup design—ranged from enthusiasm to outright despair. At the extreme end of that spectrum, comments along the lines of ‘Would you add a turbocharger to a vintage Cadillac?’ made it clear that certain bassists were unnerved by the new look. With all that in mind, how does the thing play? The model we’ve been sent for review boasts a walnut body, an extravagance which explains a substantial chunk of the cost—enough, let us remember, to buy at least three high-quality new or used Fenders. We plug in…

Price | $3,299.99, $2,869.99 Made In | Germany Body | Flame maple back and sides, spruce top, plastic/walnut binding Neck | Maple (two-piece) / maple and walnut (three-piece), 30” scale Neck Joint | Set neck Nut Width | 42mm Fingerboard | Rosewood/walnut Pickups | Höfner staple nickel pickups x 2 / Höfner Blade H513B pickups x 2 Electronics | Passive Controls | Volume, volume, rhythm/solo switch, bass on/off switch, treble on/off switch / volume, volume, tone Hardware | Höfner hardware, ebony bridge / Schaller machine heads, walnut bridge Weight | 4.85 lbs, 4.63 lbs Left-hand available | Yes Gigbag/case included | Höfner hardcase WHAT WE THINK Plus | Authentic looks, classic tones Minus | Limited tonally, cramped string spacing Overall | A piece of history, old and new BP RATING…

As you may have read in last month’s interview with Jim Bergantino, a few years ago he launched the B|amp, a 800w class D amp with a range of digital signal processing (DSP) features allowing the user to match the amp to a range of Bergantino cabs. It’s been a great success, and now Bergantino have launched the Forté, a head with the same power as the B|amp but with fewer features and at a lower price. How does it match up when plugged into the company’s HDN-112 and 210 cabs? Build Quality Although the Forté amp’s case is made from steel, its size and the lightness of the digital amp inside means that the whole thing weighs just 6 lbs. It’s a bit bigger than some of the new…

Totally Wycked Audio Godlyke Minimorph Dynamic Waveshaper Price | $189 Made In | USA Power | 9V battery or DC Features | Drive, Level controls, Gain, Dry, Morph mini controls, two-mode EQ curve selector Dimensions | 4.5 x 2.5 x 1.5” (114 x 64 x 38mm) Weight | 8.3 oz WHAT WE THINK Plus | Makes an astounding wall of noise Minus | Er, makes an astounding wall of noise Overall | An unusual but compelling way to scare people BP RATING GR Bass Pure Drive Price | $319 Made In | Made In Italy Power | 9V DC Features | Gain, Master (with Pre/ Post), Drive (with Low Filter), Blend (with Drive Mod), Master; four-band EQ (Low [with Deep filter], Mid Low [with Freq A/B], Mid High [with Freq…

Welcome to the latest instalment in my long-running series on tapping. Over the course of this series we’ve covered two-handed tapping from the basics up to some fairly complex material, investigated linear tapping in considerable depth, and, for the last three issues, looked into sweep picking. Phew! In this month’s column we’re going to begin looking at ways in which we can combine the tapping technique with other playing styles such as slap bass, strumming, and the use of harmonics. Tapping and Artificial Harmonics The tapping technique can be used to play artificial harmonics quite easily. This is done by fretting a note, then tapping the same string with the picking hand at a point exactly an octave higher. However, this time when tapping the note you should allow your…