Archive for September 2015 - Page 9

I must admit, writing the “Bass Player To Know” series can be somewhat self indulgent… I selfishly spend hours listening to and researching some of my favorite players, expanding both my knowledge base and musical collection. Every column rekindles my fascination with a particular player and sparks the desire to investigate others of a similar style or musical era. I...

Bassist Cheikh Ndoye shared this awesome video of his work on the African Contrabass, also known as the bass ngoni. The West-African traditional instrument is fretless with three strings. Ndoye, who was born in Senegal, did some of his own modifications to get it to fit his style. “The traditional instruments are very hard to tune without the tuners,” he...

Bassists using pedalboards have a new option for keeping their effects in place with the Pedalboard Supplies Pedal-Links Effect Mounting System. Pedal-Links utilize the housing screws found on the bottom corners of most pedals to fasten them to your pedalboard. The fasteners are used by removing the housing screws, threading the screw through the Pedal-Link’s eyelet, then re-fastening it into...

Lamb of God was one of the headliners at this year’s three-day hard music festival known as Heavy Montreal. Bassist John Campbell was willing and able to sit down in the blazing sun to talk about everything from why he used to play with only three strings on his bass, to the sad situation that found his singer Randy Blythe...

Mark Marxon sent this video to me recently (on his birthday!) Mark arranged Elton John’s “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” as a chill solo bass piece – complete with some smooth lines, chords and harmonics. Really enjoyed this one. Nice work, Mark – and happy belated birthday.

Veteran tube amplifier tech Blackie Pagano of NOISE Audio Design has unveiled The Perfect Storm, a limited edition high-transconductance, high-current tube bass guitar preamp. The sleek preamp takes its moniker from a realization Pagano had after receiving a box of Russian-made 6C45pi tubes, which are sensitive to audio signals and, despite their small size, run the same currents of larger...

Q: I have a question about improvising. If one browses the internet for learning how to improvise on the bass guitar, one can easily find lots of great tips: learn familiar melodies and expand them, learn solos from other instruments and be inspired by others. I would like to know about how to approach improvising using musical theory. In this...

We’re used to seeing Miki Santamaria as a solo bassist, but we know he can lay it down (and does) in plenty of band settings. Here’s Miki along with vocalist DaBeat and their friends performing Michael Jackson’s “Baby Be Mine”. If you dig this, check out Miki and DaBeat’s duet on “Man in the Mirror” from the archives.

Swedish melodic death metal band Soilwork has released its last album with bassist Ola Flink, who left the band in June. The Ride Majestic is a work informed by deaths affecting several band members, according to vocalist Bjorn “Speed” Strid. In June, Strid addressed Flink’s departure: “We all sooner or later come to a crossroad in our lives, when our...

Gabriel Vilches’s father took him to see KISS when Gabriel was fifteen years old. The next day, he began playing the bass, and he hasn’t stopped yet. We love his story. Bio: I’m a bass player, composer and producer of Argentina, who loves music. I started playing in rock bands in my hometown, La Plata, later I played jazz and...

Time for the celebration that gives most No Treble readers a bad case of G.A.S. We prefer to call it the top 10 most read gear stories on No Treble for the month though. Enjoy. 1. Bohemian Guitars Boho Bass Here’s something different: Bohemian Guitars has introduced the Boho Bass, a hollow body electric bass constructed with an upcycled oil...

If you’ve been following No Treble for a while, you know that Miles Mosley is doing amazing things with the double bass. I recently caught Mosley on tour with saxophone genius Kamasi Washington and it was one of the best concerts I’ve ever seen. The band’s chemistry was the stuff of legends. Here’s a great clip of Kamasi and the...