Table of contents for November 2020 in Bass Player

When did the bass guitar truly come into its own? That’s a question which has led to many a discussion here over the years. The instrument first came into being in 1951, courtesy of L. Fender; it found its place in the Sixties; and it went stratospheric in the Eighties, as the state of the bass-making art took advantage of new technologies. Somewhere in the middle is where bass players finally took control of their frequencies, as well as some belonging to other musicians; and what a glorious explosion of creativity it was, for those of us old enough to see it. Welcome, then, to our look-back to the Seventies, the decade when bass grew up. Suzi Quatro is our guide, followed up by Timothy B. Schmit, Colin Bass of…

"When we recorded Bowie’s album The Man Who Sold The World in 1970, we felt we had had enough with the folk-rock influence of his previous Space Oddity album. We had met guitarist Mick Ronson during the mixing sessions, and we were very impressed with him. We wanted the next one to sound a lot tougher and more experimental. “Mick Ronson insisted I played like Jack Bruce. I rose to the occasion” “Mick really loved Cream and extolled their virtues. He insisted from the beginning of the album, ‘If we’re going to play in the same band, you’d better listen to Jack Bruce’. I did, and I think I rose to the occasion. Mick also told us all about Woody Woodmansey, who got the job as drummer. “The songs came…

New Jimi Hendrix film and album feature bassist Billy Cox A new documentary, Music, Money, Madness... Jimi Hendrix In Maui, and an accompanying album Live In Maui are on the way. The film chronicles the Jimi Hendrix Experience’s 1970 visit to Hawaii and the ill-fated Rainbow Bridge movie, originally intended as Hendrix’s next project after his Electric Ladyland album of 1968. The Experience—Hendrix plus bassist Billy Cox and drummer Mitch Mitchell—performed a blistering two-set concert at Honolulu’s H.I.C. Arena on August 1, 1970. As Cox once told BP: “I used to love jamming on classic songs like ‘Johnny B Goode’. I loved all the songs we did together. We were locked together spiritually, and I think that doesn’t happen so much nowadays: musicians can’t lock in so well together because…

Welcome to this issue’s essential Theory Of The Month, bassists! Now, mastering arpeggios on your bass is always a work in progress, so just because you don’t have a complete grasp of them, it doesn’t mean that you can’t start learning how to apply them. Let’s look at constructing bass-lines that connect directly with the music you want to play. When constructing our lines, it’s a good idea to isolate and mix four essential concepts, which we can list as chord tones, scales, chromatic approach notes, and rhythmic phrasing. When using chord tones, we will have the option to use roots; roots and fifths; roots, fifths and thirds; and finally roots, fifths, thirds, and sevenths. Scale ideas will include scale passing tones and scale approach notes, using diatonic notes of…

Back in 2016, when we met Timothy B Schmit of the Eagles, he was at a bittersweet crossroads. Eagles founder member Glenn Frey had passed away not long before our interview, and the future of the Eagles was in question. But following the completion of a fine new solo album, Leap Of Faith, the Californian bassist was poised to begin a new chapter in his eventful life. He gave Neville Marten the lowdown on his years as bassist with country-rock’s highest-flying band, and how his early love of US folk act the Kingston Trio saw him sing for Steely Dan and moonlight with Crosby, Stills and Nash. Glenn Frey’s death was a terrible shock. Does his passing mean the continuation of the Eagles on hold—or is is it over? My…

Short-scale basses are definitely an important aspect of many modern bass players’ gear arsenal, thanks to their lesser string tension, the relief they give to your fingers, shoulders, and lower back, and possibly their airplane cabin-friendly dimensions. We’ve road-tested quite a few shorties in recent years, and there’s no sign of the flow of shorts letting up any time soon. Gibson have sent us their recent Les Paul Junior bass for review, subtitled Tribute in homage to the company’s original EB-O from 1959, so let’s see how it matches up. Build Quality As an American-made bass with a pricetag in the high three figures, we’re expecting a pretty flawless playing experience. While that’s definitely what we get, note that this is a bass with its own character, its own mission,…

Price | $649.99 Made In | China Power | 110 watts RMS Features | Features Channel A/B—Sensitivity (mic/mute/low/high) selector switch, input level, bass, mid, treble, Limiter on/off switch, Limiter level, Aux In level, master volume Speakers | 2 x 5” Chrome Dome NeoPower bass speakers Dimensions | Dimensions 220mm (H) x 345mm (W) x 285mm (D) / 8.7” (H) x 13.5” (W) x 11.2” (D) Connections | Connections Combined XLR/0.25” input (active and passive), 0.25” input (active and passive), 3.5mm Aux In, 0.25” headphone out, balanced XLR DI output with ground/lift switch, 0.25” tuner and line outs Weight | 15.5 lbs WHAT WE THINK Plus |User-friendly controls; portability; tone range Minus | Size and power limitations past a certain point Overall | A very impressive combo at this price BP…

Welcome to the latest instalment of my column covering advanced slap techniques. Over the past few issues, we’ve been examining the challenges of putting our slap chops to use over different feels, specifically the shuffle feel and the swung sixteenth-note feel. Starting in this issue, we’re going to move on and begin a short series that covers the popular double thumbing technique. This is an area of the slap style that’s often incorrectly assumed to be difficult to learn. Here, and over the next few issues, I’m hoping to demystify this popular technique. Double thumbing is a technique that is closely associated with virtuoso bassist Victor Wooten. However, as Victor himself would be the first to tell you, it’s a technique that was actually being used by other bassists as…

I don’t know about you, but if I make it to 70 years old, I plan to do a whole lot of sitting around and doing as little as possible. Of course, this is a shamefully lazy attitude, as evidenced by the phenomenal work ethic of our cover star Suzi Quatro, four months into her eighth decade as you read this—and busier than ever. In 2020 she’s recorded an internet bass series, worked on a forthcoming biopic, promoted last year’s Suzi Qdocumentary, and written not one but two albums’ worth of songs. “This is what I’ve done my whole life,” she tells BP. “When things get tough, I create. When my first marriage was going bad, I wrote a musical. Creativity, that’s what saves me every time, so I’ve been…

When everything around you is going horribly wrong, it’s always best to keep busy. Many professional musicians have made valiant attempts to keep the creative ball rolling during lockdown, with often highly questionable results. Camel bassist Colin Bass, on the other hand, has been helping to run the health food store that he and his wife, a nutritionist, bought four years ago, “basically on a whim”. “It’s turned into quite a business!” says Bass. “We’re the only shop like this for 25 miles or something, and somehow we’ve made a success of it. It’s been an incredible learning curve for me, but it’s been incredibly enjoyable. My wife is the boss and she’s the brains of the outfit, and that’s fine by me.” “I’m always talking with Andy Latimer. We’d…

The German luthier Holger Sandberg is in an enviable position, with his company’s basses highly regarded but still enjoying an exclusive feel that older, bigger manufacturers can no longer claim. Neither niche nor mainstream, his instruments sound and play great in our experience, so it will be interesting to see in coming years if the brand can transition from a primarily European marque and establish a significant presence in the USA. The two Sandberg California basses we have here, both made in Germany but with some Korean components, occupy a tricky midmarket position alongside a huge range of competing basses. The Nighthawk Plus, a lavishly-equipped instrument by any standards, contrasts against the more traditional Lionel, Sandberg’s new short-scale model—but they share a host of features, as we’re about to find…

Welcome back! This month, we’re going to dip back into theory. Learning bass is a constant rotation of the three aspects of how we understand and execute any musical idea—what it sounds like, what it looks like on the fingerboard, and how we explain it via music theory. Technical exercises are a combination of all three, as are composition and improvisation. These three ways into any piece of music can help us out if we get stuck with any one approach. If we can hear it but don’t understand what’s happening theoretically, we might have more chance once we’ve worked out the pattern on the fingerboard. Alternatively, if we know that a piece is in the key of D, that might give us a starting-point for working out the notes…

Few bass players have appeared on as many hit records as James Jamerson. Having cut his teeth performing nightly on the Detroit club scene, and working as a session bassist in local studios, James was enlisted in 1959 by Berry Gordy as the go-to groovesmith for his Motown label. Over the next 23 years, Jamerson would play on hundreds of songs, including ‘My Girl’, ‘I Heard It Through The Grapevine’, and Marvin Gaye’s ‘What’s Going On’. Jamerson would tweak his Fender Precision to replicate the sound and feel of a double bass Previous to his Motown era, Jamerson had been an accomplished upright bassist, and while he favoured Fender Precision electric basses, namely his ’62 ‘Funk Machine’, he made a few tweaks to replicate the sound and feel of a…

You know what? Suzi has a point... but it’s not quite as simple as it seems. Looking back from 2020, all these decades later, you could argue that the first couple of years of the Seventies were essentially an extension of the Sixties, certainly in bass terms, and indeed from many other cultural angles too. Before funk and jazz fusion really started to make themselves felt, many high-charting bass-lines were heavily indebted to the classic bassists of the previous decade, an early example being Free’s 1970 single ‘All Right Now’, anchored by Andy Fraser’s sublime, James Jamerson-alike line. On that note, Jamerson himself remained active on sessions throughout the Seventies, with recordings alongside Gladys Knight & he Pips, Robert Palmer, Smokey Robinson, and Ben E. King making it clear that…

Lightweight bass combos have become a popular choice in recent years, as more and more of us abandon large and loud amplification in favor of smaller units and in-ear monitoring. Our lower backs and wallets love us for this, but then again, we miss the big sounds of the big boxes. Never fear: this Bass Cub II combo from the great Phil Jones Bass fits into the ‘small but perfectly formed’ category, incorporating two independent channels of controls and giving us plenty of settings to play with. Let’s plug and play. Build Quality Our first impressions are that this is a well-built and sensibly laid-out combo. The controls are recessed into the top panel, to avoid being inadvertently knocked or damaged; it features a black or red vinyl covering; and…

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’. PLECTRUM TECHNIQUE Where necessary, down and upstrokes with the pick will…

While the harsher tone of a pick has its place, fingerstyle is arguably more challenging The choice between playing with a pick or using your fingers has always caused debate among bassists. Although purists tend to prefer the warmer sound of soft fingertips over the harsher tone of pick on string, both techniques have their place for different reasons and often in different musical genres. Fingerstyle is arguably a more challenging technique however, especially if you come from a primarily guitar playing background. Here, we’re taking a brief look at four iconic rock bassists who prefer fingers over a pick: Steve Harris, Robert Trujillo, Flea, and Christopher Wolstenholme. Keep in mind that you can extend their techniques to many parts of your playing, so this isn’t just a ‘soundalike’ exercise.…

JAMES’S GIGBAG THE AIN’T TOO PROUD TO BLAG RIG 1. Squier Vintage Modified Precision Bass PJ Okay, this has a Jazz Bass pickup too, but the quality of Squier’s VM range will get you far closer than you deserve for the price, and it comes in the right three-color sunburst finish. 2. Rotosound Jazz Bass 77 Flatwounds Just because you’re flat-broke, doesn’t mean you can’t go flatwound. They’re your biggest tonal step to Jamerson’s round bass sound, along with those flying fingers, of course.... 3. Hartke HD75 Groove is in the Hartke—this 75-watt brute keeps it simple, with easy-to-use controls, headphone output, and an aux-in, so you can jam along with the classics. 5. Foam Buried in the Funk Machine’s bridge cover were rubber mutes that dampened the string to…