Archive for November 2011 - Page 5

It wouldn’t be much of a Bass Cover Week without including bassist Viaceslav Svedov. There’s a ton to choose from, and we ultimately picked his cover of Metallica’s “Master of Puppets”, posted earlier this year. One of the commenters renamed it “FUNKALLICA, Master of Slapping”. Awesome.

Count The Who’s 1973 rock opera mega-hit Quadrophenia among the new and super-sized box set releases that are in vogue for many bands this year. Released this week, Quadrophenia: The Director’s Cut packs a treasure trove of material that spans five discs and offers up nearly 60 tracks of music. Discs one and two contain the newly remastered version of...

The Dropkick Murphys, led by bassist/vocalist Ken Casey, have announced two months worth of tour dates beginning in late January in Europe and finishing March 24th in Washington, DC. The tour culminates in the Irish punk rockers’ annual St. Patrick’s Day celebrations, including two shows in Lowell, Massachusetts and the ShamrockFest in D.C. The band will also be releasing a...

I’m pushing the pause button on questions this week thanks to an experience I had just last night, which is a great lesson for all musicians. I’m traveling to Tokyo with the Jaco Pastorius Big Band at the moment. Last night, we had our warm up concert in Sunrise, FL. After the gig, I got into a conversation with fellow...

Bass Cover Week on No Treble continues! We’re celebrating awesome cover tunes that feature bass in unique and awesome ways. If you have a video to share (by you or by someone else), we’d love to hear from you. Drop us a note at [email protected]. Brian Storey shares this video of bassist Thomas Morgan performing an awesome bass version of...

Catherine Popper has parted ways with the folk/blues rock-tinged group Grace Potter and the Nocturnals. Popper, who joined the group in 2009, made the announcement on her Facebook page. “Hey everybody for the past two and a half years, [Grace Potter and the Nocturnals] has been my family away from my family. We’ve all grown so much together. So it’s...

Meet Ethan Sobotta, an extraordinarily diverse bassist living in Seattle who makes his living the way it should be: playing bass. Among the musical genres he lists are “Punk rock sea shanties and Appalachian death polka,” somehow performed by a single band. Ethan is our player in the spotlight for November 15, 2011.   Bio: I studied bass at the...

This week, we’re changing up the question format a little and seeking your advice. What would you like No Treble to cover more often (or start covering)? We’re here for you, so let us know!

The videos we featured in October, 2011 were among most popular (most viewed) videos of the year. The mega-popular video featuring John Entwistle‘s isolated bass on “Won’t Get Fooled Again” ranked #1. Rounding out the top 10 is our own wacky “How to Fix a Guitar” video, plus some amazing performances by Daniel Rey, Tal Wilkenfeld, Victor Wooten, Scott Ambush,...

In the early ’70’s, music shops in England banned (and even fined) guitarists for playing “Stairway to Heaven” in the stores. (I seem to remember quite a few talent shows at as a kid that would have benefitted from this rule). This even inspired the scene in Wayne’s World, when Wayne started playing the Led Zeppelin classic before a salesman...

Fear and the Nervous System, an experimental industrial metal band formed by Korn’s James Shaffer and Faith No More bassist Billy Gould, has released their self-titled debut album. The group also includes Repeater vocalist Steve Krolikowski, Bad Religion drummer Brooks Wackerman, guitarist Leopold Ross and keyboardist Zach Baird. Grounded by Gould’s gritty bass tone, the album project began as a...

If you’ve been wishing for a music notation app for your iPad to make quick sketches or exercises, or any other simple notation and charts, Symphony Pro by Xenon Labs might just be what you’ve been waiting for in an app. While Symphony Pro can’t match up feature-for-feature with desktop apps like Sibelius or Finale, it is a terrific notation...