Table of contents for March 2020 in Bass Player

Welcome back, bassists! This month we will be continuing with my Player Series, having started with advice on being a touring bass player in the last issue. This time around, I’ll be sharing tips on the required skills, tools and knowledge for life as a deputy, or ‘dep’, bassist. If this is a new term to you, this role in the music world denotes standing in (‘deputizing’) for other musicians in bands or projects. There’s a whole set of skills specific to being an effective dep, but I’ve condensed them into the following key areas: GETTING THE GIGS Firstly, how do we get dep gigs? Fortunately, it’s easier than ever with the evolution of social media. There are plenty of Facebook groups now for specific areas or parts of the…

If the parents of Raymond Matthews Brown had been better off when he was a schoolkid in the 1930s, you’d now be reading a Star Trombonist profile. Thankfully for us—if not for the young Ray—his folks couldn’t afford the brass instrument, and so he took to the upright bass instead. And what a decision that was, leading to a 60-year career that took in work with the likes of Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, Ella Fitzgerald, Buddy Rich, and Frank Sinatra. Brown is one of the legends of jazz and in particular bebop, due to his work with Oscar Peterson. A move to New York in 1945 found the 19-year old hired for Gillespie’s band, where he played alongside Charlie Parker. Multiple Grammy-winner Ray also worked as a publisher, manager, and…

Wondrous handmade limited editions at ACG • Ampeg making waves with their 50th Anniversary Heritage SVT • The new 26-fret Anaconda Hydra bass, with three Delano pickups and a Kahler tremolo bridge • Very playable fours, fives and sixes from Atelier Z, a Japanese brand brought into the USA by Fred Reitz • Darkglass and their new DN Series lightweight cabs, featuring custom Eminence Neodymium drivers, in two new 2x12 and 1x12 models • Sweet sounds from amp-makers Eich • Luthier Rob Elrick preparing for a busy year (watch this space) • State-of-the-art amplification from Epifani • New ESP USA, ESP Original Series, and special ESP Exhibition Series models • A wide range of mouth-watering models from F Bass and G&L • Hamstead Soundworks and their new Subspace Intergalactic Driver overdrive • Violin-shaped…

What’s happening, Yuriy? My new album …For Its Beauty Alone features David Binney, who also produced the record, on alto saxophone; Matt Mitchell on piano and Prophet 6; Rudy Royston on drums; and myself on the bass. It’s all my original music and stylistically I made quite a deviation from my first album with the nonet. I used a myriad of approaches and compositional tools, electronics, I employed different musical structures and forms and even made use of my poetry on it. “APPROACH THE BASSIST’S ROLE AS A COMPOSER, EVEN IF IT’S SOMEONE ELSE’S MUSIC” The album is meant to be listened to from beginning to end as the composition and production set in such a way, that one track leads to another. I’ve been wanting to make a record…

Voyager was first founded in 1999, two years before I had even started learning how to play bass. It wasn’t until 2007 that I was finally accepted into the band, and our seventh album, Colours In The Sun, is out now on Season Of Mist. Our future plans include promoting the album, probably lots of paperwork, some touring... Oh yes, and then, taking over the world! I first got into playing bass when the allure of jamming with my mates in their band was too sweet to ignore. As it was 2001, the plan was to be that awesome DJ scratching away frantically on a turntable over heavy guitar riffs. However, I didn’t own a turntable and, quite frankly, knew absolutely nothing about being a DJ, so, I got my…

Okay, we get it. The Jazz Bass is the most popular bass design out there—perhaps because when you break it down, its components are relatively simple. Why is it, then, that one sounds so different to another? I have several examples in my collection and all of them have different tonal characteristics. At a pocket-friendly $349.99, what sort of performance does this J put on? Build Quality It goes without saying that certain areas of this low-budget bass will no doubt reveal some cost-cutting—but on first examination, the instrument is surprisingly well put-together, with all of its nickel-plated hardware functional, solidly attached and working as it should. The ever-familiar offset body comes in a rather fetching Daphne Blue gloss polyurethane finish, which is made all the more striking due to…

Sims Enfield Lionheart Standard Air 4 (5) Price | £2,799 £ (2,975) Made in | UK Finish | River blue gloss (Old white gloss) Body | Lightweight mahogany Neck | Five-piece quarter-sawn North American hard rock maple with phenolic and walnut laminates, 34” scale, satin finish Neck Joint | Bolt-on, five-bolt attachment Nut Width | 40mm (51mm) Fingerboard | Phenolic Frets | 24 Pickups | Sims Super Quad pickups x 2 Electronics | Glockenklang two-band EQ, 9-volt Controls | Volume (push/pull for passive), pickup pan, bass, treble (in passive mode, acts as a passive tone control) Hardware | Custom Hipshot A-style bridge and HB6 machine heads in black/nickel Weight | 8.6lbs (9.7lbs) Case/Gigbag Included | Hiscox case (extra) Left-Hand Option | Yes, as a custom order WHAT WE THINK Plus…

Making you a better bass player 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…

Welcome back, guys! I hope that you’ve been having fun this past month experimenting and playing around the intervals of the major scale. For this issue, we’re going to take a look at the minor scale, and a few other pattern options for building bass-lines using the notes in the scale. Firstly, let’s take a look at the scale we’ll be using this month—the D natural minor, starting on the fifth fret on the A string. Example 1 Notice the one flat in there, a B b (that’s the sixth note of the scale), and changes the sound considerably from the scale we’d have if we played the B natural. That would be a Dorian mode, and is derived from the major scale, starting on its second degree. Notice that…

Welcome to the third instalment of The Last Note, where we look at my virtual pedalboard signal path, take a chunk of it, explain what it is and figure out how to use it for bass! This month, we’re looking at equalization, or EQ. There’s a lot to say on this subject, more than will fit into a single page, so let’s focus on the three most popular types of EQ that you’ll find on amps and pedals: Graphic, semi-parametric and passive tone stack. WHAT IS EQUALIZATION? An equalizer is just a set of filters that have the ability to make areas of the audio spectrum more prominent by boosting levels within those areas, or conversely, decreasing those levels to reduce their prominence. WHY DO WE NEED IT? Most people…

NO TREBLE KEVIN JOHNSON Wood you believe it? There’s nothing like a ‘best of’ list to get bassists all riled up. That’s why the most viewed and commented-upon video for the month was of Scott Devine’s Top 20 Bass-lines Of All Time. Devine prefaces the list by saying it’s his personal list, although it’s a solid collection of grooves. It ranges from Chic’s ‘Good Times’ by Bernard Edwards to Marvin Gaye’s ‘Ain’t No Mountain High Enough’ by James Jamerson to the Beatles’ hit ‘Come Together’ by Paul McCartney. Of course, it’s impossible to list all the best bass achievements in 20 songs, and No Treble readers chimed in with plenty of their own favourites. What would be at the top of your list? In industry news, the Conference on International…

We took a look at the concept of voice-leading last time around and how it can help develop an awareness of how chord tones resolve within progressions. This month’s concept should lead on quite nicely... So, read on! We’ve spent a lot of time on chord tones and extensions so far, and this approach can initially help build chromaticism into lines which target specific chord tones. Eventually, it can develop to the point at which we can improvise freely with chromaticism, which can sometimes seem a little daunting if our practice has been centered exclusively around harmonically-correct lines. As a concept, this one is simple: Approach a specific chord tone (and eventually extensions) from both above and below (or below and above) that tone. For illustrative purposes we will restrict…

December 2019 saw famed luthier Roger Sadowsky launch a range of bass guitars through a licensing deal with German company Framus Warwick. We were invited to Warwick’s German headquarters, close to the Czech border, to meet up with Roger and Warwick and get the scoop on the new partnership. Sadowsky is one of the USA’s most respected instrument master-builders. Working from his studio space in New York, he has made custom guitars and basses for artists as varied as Prince, Marcus Miller, and Lou Reed. His own-brand bass guitars really came about by accident, as Roger started his career in the early 80s, modifying or upgrading the Fender basses favored by the New York session players. “When the vintage market took off and these vintage 60s Jazz basses were suddenly…

“I’M UNTRAINED, EVERYTHING I KNOW IS THROUGH MY EARS” Andrew, the Brand New Heavies are busier than ever. How is the current tour going? It’s good fun. This tour’s pretty special for us, with the new album TBNH doing so well, so we’ve been trying out different iterations of the set. I’ve got an Aria Pro II SB that I’m getting to know. I’ve still got to get used to the top end not being there, because I’m used to Jazz basses. Why did you change to the Aria? It just cuts through and there’s no boominess, so it was quite easy to get a good sound onstage. We’ve got a lot of fast tracks and syncopation, so anything with too much bottom end gets lost in our set. I’ve…

I’d gotten into playing bass when I was asked to join a band in high school. The only position left was that of bass player, so I went out with my dad and bought my first bass. On the way home he told me if I wanted to take this on I would need to listen to some of his heroes, so out came the Level 42 tapes and the Black Sabbath vinyl. I think I wore both of them out in about a month: Listening to Mark King and Geezer Butler really opened my ears to what you could do with a bass. My first bass was a Peavey Milestone 3—a great instrument to learn to play on, and I still have it now, nearly 18 years on. I’m…

Price | $349.99 Made In | Indonesia Color | Daphne blue gloss Body | Poplar Neck | Maple, 34” scale Neck Joint | Bolt-on, four-bolt attachment Nut Width | 38mm Fingerboard | Indian laurel Frets | 20 Pickups | Fender-designed Alnico single-coil pickups x 2 Electronics | Passive Controls | Volume, volume, tone Hardware | Chrome hardware, elephant-ear machine heads, standard bridge Weight | 3.7kg / 8.2lbs Case/gig bag included | No Left-hand option available | No WHAT WE THINK Plus | The giveaway price, excellent playability Minus | A few minor finishing issues Overall | Highly impressive and stunningly playable at its price BP RATING…

Rockboard TRES 3.1 Pedalboard Price | $99 Made In | China Dimensions | 510 x 234mm / 21” x 9” Weight | 1.2kg / 2.65lbs WHAT WE THINK Plus | We loved the use of pedal-width apertures Minus | None Overall | A great starting place for a solid pedalboard BP RATING Rockboard MOD5 Cab SIM/Patchbay Price | $199 Made In | China Features | 3 x ¼” TRS thru, 6 x IR-based speaker cab sims, selectable Mono/ Stereo input, selectable Un/Balanced output, ground lift, XLR DI out, parallel ¼” TRS output, 3.5mm stereo headphone output with adjustable volume WHAT WE THINK Plus | Great feature set, nice to have headphone output Minus | Just the one bass amp sim Overall | Very versatile, the possibilities are extensive BP RATING…

Welcome back! In my previous column, we looked at an array of chord tones, referenced in conjunction to a coinciding open string. The goal was to give you the ability to deliver triadic double-stops that could act as focus points to identify chord tone vocabulary and neighboring extensions. Today we’ll continue with this theme, but focusing more on 10th intervals. To kick things off, let’s review what 10th intervals actually are and how to access them. The third diatonic step of a major or minor scale is the boss! Essentially, it’s the sole interval that is responsible for defining major and minor tonality. Thankfully, it’s a pretty easy one to locate: The major 3rd resides four half-steps above the root, while the minor 3rd can be found three half-steps up.…

NEW ALBUM Sepultura, Quadra (2020) It’s fast, it’s mostly Brazilian, it’s metal with a capital M—and Paulo Jr’s bass parts are as zippy as ever. OLD ALBUM Marcus Miller, The Sun Don’t Lie (1993) Still astounding after a quarter of a century; there’s nothing Marcus can’t do at the low (or high-mid) end. REALLY OLD ALBUM The Godfather Soundtrack (1972) Sure, those wedding dance tunes may make you tremble with fear, but you’ll love their nifty, subtle bass parts.…

There are basses; then there’s Fodera basses. Established in Brooklyn back in 1983, by master luthiers Vinny Fodera, and Joey Lauricella, their company and instruments have no need for an introduction—playable works of art that would give the Sistine Chapel a run for its money. Attracting the kings of the lower frequencies such as Tom Kennedy and Matt Garrison with their game-changing designs, it’s their relationship with virtuoso Victor Wooten that immortalized the name Fodera into the halls of greatness forever. Chatting to Lauricella, how did they cross paths in the first place, we ask? “Back in 1983, a friend of mine named Ira Siegal, who’s a great guitar player, calls me up and asks, ‘Joey, you have any basses that are playable right now?’ I say, ‘Yeah, I have…

Sometimes you feel slightly inadequate as a bass journo. Take our interview with Leon Lee Dorsey, for example: The man has done so much great work in the field of the low frequencies, alongside such illuminated names, that your questions about what string gauges he prefers seem a touch inconsequential. Fortunately, Dorsey is a friendly fellow, full of enthusiasm about MonkTime, his new album of Thelonious Monk compositions, and evidently doesn’t feel the need to boast about the artists he’s played with (Dizzy Gillespie, Lionel Hampton, Art Blakey, Wynton Marsalis, Freddie Hubbard, Benny Carter, the Duke Ellington Orchestra, and Frank Sinatra, to name a few!) or the ton of degrees he’s acquired from various learned institutions. Instead, he’s much more interested in digging deep into the motivations behind his new…

Megadeth, a recording and touring metal band that has operated at the very top of its niche since 1984, was put on hold early in 2019 when frontman Dave Mustaine embarked on treatment for throat cancer. Fortunately for the band’s huge numbers of fans, he’s due to resume touring again this year, but during Megadeth’s hiatus, bassist David Ellefson—a musician who runs several other businesses outside the band under the EMP banner (Ellefson Music Productions)—has used the time off in many creative ways. The most prominent of these has been a raft of international tour dates as a solo artist, some under his Basstory spoken-word format, others with his solo band and still others one-offs such as a recent show in the English city of Wolverhampton, alongside former Judas Priest…

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…

Ever since Enfield’s Cannon bass range was unveiled at the end of 2008, the Enfield range has undergone various developments in terms of features, aesthetics and the odd nip and tuck here and there. The ever-genial luthier Martin Sims has sent us these new ‘leaner and cleaner’ instruments for our perusal—so what sets them apart? Build Quality These new Air-branded models are constructed from lightweight mahogany in color gloss finishes, the pickguard has been removed for a ‘sleeker’ visual and a Glockenklang two-band preamp with four controls and side-mounted jack socket has been utilized as standard. The curvaceous body sits comfortably against the player, and contouring front and rear improves the way the body hangs for the player, while the lower cutaway on both basses offers unhindered access to the…

Gallien-Krueger Legacy 800 Price | $899 Made in | USA Power | 400 watts at 8 ohms, 800 watts at 4 / 2.7 / 2 ohms Features | ¼” input socket, Trim, Drive, Level, Bass, Lo-Mid, Hi-Mid, Treble, Master, Overdrive switch, Edge, Bump switch, Contour switch, Presence switch, Mute switch, Pin 1 Lift/Ground switch, Balanced DI XLR output socket, Source Pre/Post switch, 3.5mm headphone out, 3.5mm aux in, ¼” tuner socket, ¼” footswitch socket, 1/4-inch jack Send/ Return sockets, Cabinet Impedance selector switch, 2 x Speakon output sockets Dimensions | H 61 x W 291 x D 271mm / H 2.4” x W 11.5” x D 10.7” Weight | 5.7 lbs WHAT WE THINK Plus | Covers a lot of ground, tonally speaking Minus | A footswitch to cover the…

Hello, and welcome back to my long-running column on the two-handed tapping technique. We’ve covered a lot of weird and wonderful techniques over the past couple of years, and I hope you’ve enjoyed being on this journey with me. However, all good things must come to an end, and indeed this will be my final column on the subject of tapping. We’re going to finish things off in style, though, and look at a couple of particularly challenging study pieces. Both of the pieces we’ll be covering in this column are contrapuntal, meaning that they contain two independent lines, played with each hand. As you probably know by now, when learning pieces like this, it’s a good idea to learn each hand separately to begin with: Iron out any fingering…