Reader Spotlight: Dmitry Lisenko

by Corey Brown Tuesday, January 19th, 2016

Dmitry Lisenko

Meet Dmitry Lisenko, a bassist and teacher who seemed to have some outside forces working against him in his early days. Despite that, he went for it and is now making his living in music.

Dmitry is this week’s reader in the spotlight. Here’s his story…

Bio:

I started playing bass at the age of 16. When I went to the audition in music school they said “It’s better to be a good street cleaner then a bad musician.” But it didn’t stop me. After finishing high school, I enrolled at the London music university, but dropped it after one year as the level of education was very low.

In the years since then, I have been busking in London underground, released a solo album, and played in a lot of bands and projects. I formed my own band “Karmafree” together with my amazing wife. I recently won Russian bass players competition.

Location:

Riga, Latvia

Day gig:

Private lessons / bass guitar teacher

Years experience:

Bands & Gigs:

I have project together with my wife “KARMAFREE”. We play different kinds of stuff, mainly with loop stations, a beat box and lots of effects. The main idea is that two people can sound as a full band playing live.

Gear:

Warwick Alien Deluxe 4
Ibanez Sr-506

Why I play the bass:

I had a cousin who played bass and was in a Rapcore band. I spent one summer together with him and really liked the lifestyle of musician. Then one day, my cousin ask me if I wanted to buy his old bass. I told him I couldn’t play, didn’t listen to any music and didn’t even know the difference between bass and guitar. He said “it’s the simplest instrument in the world, just look at the guitar player what he is doing and repeat after him, he will play a lot of notes and you just play one.” So I agreed to buy it :)

My bass superpower/claim to fame:

Recently I discovered a new style for bass players called “Percussive Guitar”. It’s very huge on acoustic guitar, but there aren’t any (or many) bass players doing it. So i bought an acoustic bass and start learning. After about 2 months of practice I won a very big bass players competition in Russia. It was great achievement and inspiration to continue to develop this style on acoustic bass.