Table of contents for May 2022 in Bass Player

When Primus announced that they were about to go on tour and play the Rush album A Farewell To Kings as part of their live set, fans of both bands immediately paid attention. Here at Bass Player, we had a few burning questions to ask Les Claypool when we caught up with him, including ‘What the hell are you thinking?’, ‘Are you mad?’ and ‘What are you going to do when Geddy Lee shows up?’ among them. We’re kidding, obviously—if any bassist on the planet can handle the demands of a Rush album, it’s the man from Primus, themselves a fearsomely funky band. Still, it was fascinating to dig deep into the Claypool cerebral cortex and see what was going on in there, and when we asked Geddy himself what…

Stone Temple Pilots bassist Robert DeLeo has nearly completed recording sessions for his debut solo album. DeLeo recently took to Instagram to share several clips of a new song, ‘Anew’, which features vocals from The Voice singer Kara Britz, alongside Dave Eggar on cello and Bill Appleberry on piano. Judging from the instruments mentioned and clips shared by DeLeo, it seems fans can expect the record to take some cues from STP’s 2020 acoustic album, Perdida.…

Mysterious forces beyond our understanding swathe and accelerate the universe, hidden and immeasurable—the hypothetical dark matter which cosmologists believe makes up 85 percent of the whole caboodle. Darkmatter is also the title of the newest EP by the galactically-talented bassist Eva Gardner, who as a youngster would hang out at the Griffith Observatory in Hollywood, marveling at the constellations above, and the possibilities of life to come. The six-song EP has been orbiting Gardner’s muse for five years in sketches and riffs, and like many projects it took the pandemic to free up the time and creative space to actually complete the follow-up to her 2019 solo debut, Chasing Ghosts. “I always had it in my mind to do another one,” she tells us. “The timing just worked out; there…

Martín Méndez was just 17 years old when he bought a one-way ticket from his native Uruguay to Sweden in the hope of pursuing a career in heavy metal. It was a risky move—he didn’t have any money or know a single word of Swedish, although ultimately the gamble paid off well. He would soon end up joining Opeth, the progressive rock pioneers led by singer/guitarist Mikael Åkerfeldt, and now stands, 24 years on from relocating halfway across the world to fulfil his dream, as the group’s second-longest serving member after Åkerfeldt himself. Edging away from the metallic extremes of their roots, Opeth’s last four albums have seen the quintet embracing cleaner vocals, less distortion and folky psychedelia, with some truly stunning results. This creative departure has also given Méndez…

BITE bite.guitars $2500 Should you be the sort of bassist who enjoys pondering various permutations and design aspects of any new bass, then Bite basses could well be for you. Their levels of customization are extensive and impressive, although with so many options available, it will be helpful if you know exactly what you want to create. Allow this review to focus your attention a little. Here we have the Funky Booster bass, centered around Bite’s existing Jawbone model, with its USP a pair of humbucking pickups that can be converted into single-coils for a markedly different sound. Build Quality The Jawbone model is a Jazz Bass variant—a fine place to start. The red alder body has been finished in a Funky Silver gloss finish with Stardust Black Weed graphic…

I’ve been hard at work practicing and studying triads intently for the last couple of years. I’m finally learning to unlock the sheer beauty and majesty found within these three simple little notes. I realize that might sound a little melodramatic, but there were so many enlightening moments in the shed that came up as I was working on these concepts. I want to share some of these moments with you in this lesson. Hopefully, with a bit of work on these ideas, you’ll feel the same enthusiasm I do about triads and their musical possibilities. Let’s first examine the triads and their inversions. When we think about playing a triad, one specific shape usually comes to mind. This isn’t a bad thing, but the main objective of this lesson…

Darkglass Electronics has announced the Exponent 500, a bass head that features five assignable control dials to control your choice of parameters across a range of 22 effects, available via an app. On the surface, the Exponent 500 is a smart-looking 500-watt bass head. Round the back, it has an effects send/ return, XLR direct out, headphone socket, ground lift, plus USB and MIDI connections. Head to the front and there are seven dials mounted on the front panel, five of which are assignable ‘Quick-Pots’ with LED level indicators. By default, the control knobs relate to four-band EQ controls and a preset control, and there are five presets already onboard. There’s also a nifty little mute switch which simultaneously fires up a built-in tuner when engaged. The head will function…

Oscar Pettiford was born in Okmulgee, Oklahoma on September 30, 1922. His Native American mother was a full Choctaw and his father Harry was half African-American and half Cherokee. The family were all musically talented, and Pettiford began his career singing and dancing with them before switching to piano when he was 12. By the age 14 he was tinkering with a double bass, and gained his first professional recognition as one of two bass players, the other being Chubby Jackson, in Charlie Barnet’s band. Pettiford then went on to co-lead a very early bop group alongside Dizzy Gillespie, and was soon playing in Duke Ellington’s orchestra, where he remained for much of the latter years of the Forties. He first added the cello to his repertoire as a joke,…

Yes Fragile(1971) Chris Squire was an early hero to me. ‘Roundabout’ is on this album, along with a bunch of other songs that influenced me. The guy who produced this album, Eddie Offord, contacted Primus in the early days and wanted to produce us, but we were too many chefs in the kitchen and we didn’t want anyone producing us. But the one thing he said was, ‘I can get you that Chris Squire tone’. I was like ‘Hmm!’ and trying to pick his brains about it, but he wouldn’t give up any information, ha ha! Having played for a long time now, I’ve learned that your tone is very much in your fingers and how you attack your instrument. Rush All The World’s A Stage (1976) Right now I’m…

Few names in the metal world command such authority as Sepultura. Founded in 1984 by brothers Max and Iggor Cavalera in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, the band went on to shape the metal landscape all over the world, and their influence can still be seen and heard to this day. Although they faced challenges in 1996 after frontman Max left the band, and again when Iggor followed suit a decade later, bassist Paulo Pinto Jr, six-string shredder Andreas Kisser, vocalist Derrick Green, and drummer Eloy Casagrande have kept the name of Sepultura alive and relevant. “Recording SepulQuarta was more like a jam with friends instead of playing a part 200 times over” “I think it’s been the unity we’ve shared up to this day that’s kept us going. We still have…

A whole world of distortions and fuzz, available separately or in combination with each other BAREFACED www.barefacedaudio.com $300 Last year, Barefaced released a teaser video hinting that they had a new product on the way—and this time it wasn’t a bass cab! Now we know they were heralding the release of the Machinist—their first foray into bass effects. The pedal is the result of a collaboration between boutique effects manufacturer COG and Barefaced. It comes in an interlocking plywood box, like a tiny Barefaced speaker cab. Removing it from the packaging, I have to say that first impressions are a little underwhelming. The large format pedal is housed in a plain aluminium project box, with just a single jack in and out, plus a DC input which I assume is…

The Stave: Most music written for the bass guitar uses the bass clef. The example 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 played together. Where basses require five or six strings, the tablature stave will have five or six lines. Notes shown in brackets indicate that a note has been tied over from a previous bar. 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…

Jazz! For some, even the mere mention of the genre can bring on performance anxiety. After all, it’s complicated to understand even in its most basic incarnation, and there’s loads of improvisation involved, right? What’s more, you never seem to encounter beginner jazz musicians, do you? They always seem to be experts already! So, the question arises: How do you actually get from novice to competence? Well, without you really knowing it, I’ve actually been surreptitiously training you using an old Jedi mind trick. From now on, just refer to me as Bass Yoda. Although you may think that drawing comparisons between jazz and blues is the musical equivalent of comparing an abacus with a supercomputer, the former has more in common with the latter than most of us imagine.…

Have you ever stopped to consider how important your frets are? We use these little pieces of metal as a precise method of pitching, with each fret mark another accurate semitone or tone up from the open string pitch. There are no ‘in-between’ tuning issues as there would be on a double bass or fretless electric. Let’s see what they’re all about. You’re going to tell us how they’re fitted, aren’t you? You know I love the details. A fret actually comprises a head, also known as a bead, which is the main part that we see on the fretboard. The top of this is known as the crown, and is the area that gets all the wear and tear from strings. It’s also the bit that needs attention when…

The latest addition to Fender’s Player Plus range is the Meteora, a new active model which, the Big F tells us, combines “innovative Fender design with player-centric features and exciting new finishes... superb playability and unmistakable style”. It’s powered by two Fireball humbuckers, and comes with a three-band active EQ for precise tone-shaping: Meanwhile, a switchable active/ passive operation adds flexibility. The Meteora’s neck has a satin finish and rolled edges with a 12”-radius fingerboard and modern C profile, and there’s a HiMass bridge. The instrument will be available at $1,149.99, and we’re reviewing one next issue.…

The TE-1200 appears to pair its enormous power with functionality to match he new Trace Elliot amp, the TE-1200, is being hailed by the brand as its “first big product release of the new decade”. The amp features 1200 watts of RMS power, a four-band EQ and the ability to split the signal between two built-in high and low-band compressors, with individually adjustable threshold controls. There are also separate gain and output controls and a pre/post compressor switch for the EQ circuit. What’s more, all the connections and controls on the front panel are illuminated—great for dark stages. The most notable thing about the TE-1200 becomes apparent with a glance at the back panel. Turn it around, and you’ll see a pretty astonishing amount of connectivity on offer, including a…

“Some call it slap and pop—Larry calls it “thumpin’ and pluckin’”—and it’s arguably the single most innovative and influential technique in the instrument’s history,” said Bass Player back in 2007, prefacing an interview with Graham himself, one of the most revered musicians in the bass guitar’s ongoing trajectory. “I started thumpin’ and pluckin’ from the first time I played bass, because I played guitar with my fingers—not a pick,” he told us. “I would thump the strings with my thumb to make up for the bass drum, and pluck the strings with my fingers to make up for the backbeat snare drum. It made sense to me because I had been a drummer in the school band. I wasn’t interested in learning the so-called ‘correct’ overhand style of playing bass,…

In its truest sense, quartal harmony can be described as chords which are voiced predominantly by fourths, as opposed to the more common stacking of thirds (tertiary harmony) that we encounter. While that is accurate, a study of quartal voicings can give rise to the concept becoming a resource to build melodic vocabulary. Interestingly, while we spend an awful lot of our time describing the harmony in our bass-lines, employing predominantly fourths in our lines can make them sound a little more ambiguous, harmonically. Even though the notes should still be harmonically ‘correct’—in other words, every note has to be a chord tone or an allowable scale tone or extension—the melodic shape can be less obvious to the listener harmonically, giving a sense of ambiguity. Employing predominantly fourths in our…

Trivium’s tenth album is the most intricate, technical, and downright hefty in their oeuvre, even by their sky-smashing standards. Bassist Paolo Gregoletto explains that In The Court Of The Dragon is built both on the back of previous record What The Dead Men Say and the forced weirdness of the pandemic. “We hope that people can really hear the amount of time and attention to detail we put into this one,” he tells us. “From the songs themselves, from our individual playing to the orchestration to the mix, to the way everything sounds a little bit different than the last record, it’s a little heavier, a little bit more aggressive and progressive.” “There’s a release that comes with seeing live music that is positive, no matter what genre” If there…

BOSS www.boss.info $399 Boss’s Katana amp range has given guitarists the ability to combine impressive amplification with some of their favorite Boss effects and sounds, fully featured and with the extra ability to tailor those sounds via downloadable software, in a broadly similar fashion to other modeling products. A bass-specific version has been long awaited by Boss users, and we’ve got the 1x10” version of the new combos for review. A quick glance at the control panel and the rear connection panel of this 1x10-equipped bass combo illustrates very clearly that this unit is packed with features. Please refer to the manual for a list of the features, controls and connections on offer... it’s extensive! Build Quality In terms of looks and construction, black is certainly the order of the…

Hey there, bass players! We’ve recently embarked on a musical journey through patterns and shapes, so grab your bass and get ready for our next destination. This time, we transition from the blues box to something I’d like to call the ‘blues rock walk’. While this may not be an official term, it tells us a lot about how we’re playing and the style of music to which we can apply it. Before getting into the pattern, I do want to narrow our definition of rock. Since this genre has developed and evolved over the years, keep in mind that this lesson refers to early rock’n’roll and should be used to rock around the clock rather than rock and roll all night. This pattern is ubiquitous in the world of…