Archive for July 2010 - Page 3

For over 30 years, bassist Victor Bailey has been on the scene, most notably taking over the bass chair in Weather Report after Jaco Pastorius’s departure. Bailey has just announced live online bass lessons, offering private bass study for intermediate to advanced/pro bassists. The lessons are an hour long and conducted via Skype, and the cost is $150.00 per hour....

This piece is written by Austrian bass player Georg Breinschmid who after long consideration decided to name it “5/4” as he explains in the beginning of the video. He performs it with Thomas Gansch playing the trumpet.

For almost ten years, Gerald Veasley has held his Bass Boot Camp for bassists in the U.S. Next week, he’s taking the camp to Aurora, Canada. The camp will take place on Thursday, July 29th from 8am to 11pm, with intensive, hands-on instruction from Veasley along with drummer Richard Waller III. BBC Canada is open to bassists of all levels,...

Tool bassist Justin Chancellor will be a featured guest on the upcoming Intronaut album Valley of Smoke, due out this fall on Century Media Records. Chancellor also co-wrote the song he will be playing on, which features an intriguing instrumentation. Intronaut’s Sacha Dunable spoke on the new album. “…We were lucky enough to have this guy Justin (from some band...

This video is really more about drummer Bill Bruford than anyone else, but there’s still some exciting bass playing to be heard from Laurence Cottle. It’s clear that Cottle (and the other musicians, for that matter) in Bruford’s Earthworks have a lot of musical freedom to just do their own thing.

July 27th will bring the culmination of double bass virtuoso Gary Karr’s 2010 KarrKamp program. Karr, who founded the International Society of Bassists in 1967, has been teaching summer school to 18 students each year at the University of Victoria in British Columbia. The pinnacle of each program is the Basses Loaded concert, held this year at the Philip T....

Manson Guitar Shop has released the John Paul Jones E-Bass model, a replica of the bass Hugh Manson made for John in the early 90’s. The 4-string bass features a maple through-neck, figured maple top, aged cherry sunburst finish, ebony fingerboard, EMG pickups and active circuit, Hipshot D-tuner, Schaller machine heads and Badass bridge. The specs are an exact match...

When Simone Vignola entered the EuroBassDay solo bass contest in 2008 he won the whole thing. This time he’s entering the Boss Loop Station World Championship with the following video of a piece he calls “FAQ”.

Andy Hummel, original bassist for the 70s power pop group Big Star, has passed away after a 2-year battle with cancer. He was 59. This comes just months after the loss of the group’s singer, Alex Chilton. Big Star’s early three-album career influenced many rock bands that followed them, including R.E.M., The Replacements, and The Posies. The younger generation might...

After years of bad blood between the two, ex-Pink Floyd bandmates Roger Waters and David Gilmour seem to be patching things up. The duo recently teamed up for the first time since Live 8 in 2005, to perform for the Hoping Foundation in Oxfordshire where they played a 4 song set of Floyd classics, plus a Phil Spector tune. Since...

Q: Is there any reason how and why the bass got tuned in fifths (B, E, A, D, G, C) as opposed to the guitar’s tuning (E, A, D, G, B, E)? A: Actually, those are fourths the bass is tuned in. If my memory serves, the bass tuning came first. Although, hundreds of years ago, it WAS tuned in...

When we posted the photo of Kevin playing the 12-string Prat bass at Summer NAMM, people went pretty nuts. Well, here’s a video feature Regi Wooten, guitarist and older brother to Victor Wooten, giving it a shot. Let the “that’s not a bass” / “that’s awesome” debate continue!