Weekly Top 10: Tips for Freelancing, Gail Ann Dorsey, Wojtek Pilichowski Transcribed, Top Bass Videos and More

1. Freelance Gigs: Five Tips for Bass Players

The last “Tips” column (on avoiding injury), was a popular one. So let’s continue this series with some tips on freelancing, prescribed by Dr. D…

2. Bass of the Week: UNICORNbass Ozellman Master

UNICORNbass is a boutique bass company out of Sweden that’s making some pretty slick instruments. The Ozellman Master is a flexible, performance-driven bass with the added touch of customizable looks. It is our Bass of the Week…

3. Acoustic David Bowie with Gail Ann Dorsey: “Heroes” (Live)

In celebration of Gail Ann Dorsey’s this week, we go back to a terrific acoustic performance of David Bowie’s “Heroes”, with the talented bassist playing a wonderful line and adding her equally wonderful vocals…

4. Dream Studio Guitars Unveils M5 Bass

Dream Studio Guitars has released a 5-string version of their Maverick Bass called the M5. The bass retains many of the same features as its predecessor while adding a low B string…

5. Breaking Down Harmonic Substitutions: Part 2

In part 1 of this series, we were experimenting with using substitutions that allowed us to play familiar major and minor scale shapes over various basic chord types. Now, let’s move on to melodic and harmonic minor mode choices in this popular Ask Damian series…

6. Colin Trusedell’s Quartet of Jazz Death: The Escape

Colin Trusedell is an active duty Air Force bass player and Colorado State University bass professor. He shared this new video of a tune from his new funk/fusion electronic jazz album, Quartet of Jazz Death, with some seriously beefy bass tone, lots of grooves and solos…

7. Karl Clews: Bass Cover of Stanley Clarke’s “Pop Virgil”

Back in 2012, bassist Karl Clews knocked us out with his solo bass performance of “Come Together”. We’re featuring him once again thanks to his impressive cover of the Stanley Clarke tune, “Pop Virgil”, which appeared on Clarke’s latest album, Up…

8. Bass Transcription: Wojtek Pilichowski’s “Cowboy from Prague”

This month’s transcription is “Cowboy from Prague,” a short piece by Polish slap bass wizard Wojtek Pilichowski, recorded at the Aguilar Artist Loft earlier in 2014. Have fun with this transcription. You don’t get to play like this very often, but when the opportunity does arise, it’s nice to have ideas like this in your trick bag…

9. Oz Noy, Will Lee and Keith Carlock: Steroids (Live)

One of my all-time favorite videos we’ve shared goes back to 2012: Oz Noy, Will Lee and Keith Carlock performing “Schizophrenic” live in Tokyo. Here’s the trio cooking on “Steroids” from that very performance…

10. Reader Spotlight: Linus Abrahamson

Meet Linus Abrahamson, a musician from Sweden who never seems to sit still and has certainly accomplished quite a lot in his musical career: three separate projects happening right now (with his fourth on hiatus due to “people having babies”), a double master’s degree in music education, and more…