Archive for 2017 - Page 12

Damian Coccio sent us this video with a simple note: “Here is something to help folks relax.” We’re all for that. The tune, “Inner Ponds,” features Damian’s fretless bass and EBow. And it is definitely relaxing.

The first thing we have to consider to play this arrangement is the accents. The trick is to emphasize the 2nd and 4th movement, just as a drummer would do with the snare drum. To do this use the “strum” technique (think Stanley Clarke in School Days), accenting the 2nd and 4th movement where I can try to keep it...

Thundercat has a style all his own. His playing is unbelievable and his songs are earworms. That’s evidenced on his recent NPR Tiny Desk Concert from October. With bandmates Dennis Hamm, Justin Brown, and Miguel Antwood Ferguson, the bassist plays through three tracks from his album, Drunk: “Lava Lamp,” “Friend Zone,” and “Them Changes.” Check out his chording technique on...

It’s been 25 years since R.E.M.’s iconic album Automatic For The People and Concord’s Craft Recordings is celebrating with a deluxe reissue. Available in three versions, the remastered album includes their hits “Nightswimming,” “Man on the Moon” and “Everybody Hurts.” While it’s a hugely important record to so many people, the band members didn’t necessarily set out to make it...

Acoustic Amplification expanded their bass amplification lineup with the B410C bass cabinet. Featuring a 4×10-inch speaker configuration, the cab handles up to 400 watts at 8 ohms. The cab’s traditional ferrite speakers are also accompanied by a defeatable high-frequency horn driver. “This great cab harkens back to the original bass speakers that consistently delivered amazing tone for serious bassists,” says...

Kenny Passarelli’s place in music history was cemented when he co-wrote Joe Walsh’s “Rocky Mountain Way,” but that just scratches the surface of his career. He also worked with Elton John, Hall and Oates, Stephen Stills, Tommy Bolin, Dan Fogelberg, Yusuf Islam (Cat Stevens), and more. Naturally, he has more than a few stories to tell. The bassist grew up...

This one should get you moving! Check out the 18-year-old Bootsy Collins backing up James Brown and the Original JB’s for a performance on Italian television in 1971. Funky!

Michael League and Snarky Puppy have announced a U.S. tour for 2018 with support from fellow GroundUP artists Forq, Alina Engibaryan, Sirintip, and Banda Magda. The Grammy-winning band will begin their trek in Atlanta, Georgia on February 14th before heading north to Maryland then west. It is currently slated to wrap up March 4th after a four-night residency at SF...

S.I.T. Strings unveiled a new set of bass strings called the Foundations line at Bass Player Live this year. The new strings are built with a “state-of-the-art core material” that the company says makes them extremely responsive. “Designed to be the brightest and most flexible bass string available, The Foundations are sure to become the building blocks of your sound,”...

Q: I’ve been checking out this site for a while. Love it all. However, I have a problem: I don’t know where to start. Let me tell you a little about me. I’ve played bass for quite some time and even taken lessons by some famous players. I’m the student that everyone dreams of. I practice incessantly. With all that...

It is clear Diego Tarantino is quite the student of music. Here’s a video he shared with us recently of him performing a bass version of “After You’ve Gone,” based on the version by Django Reinhardt. Amazing musicianship on display!

31 years after its release, Metallica is paying tribute to their iconic Master of Puppets with an incredible reissue box set. The band’s third album has been remastered for sound quality in CD, vinyl, and digital formats. An expansive deluxe box set includes the album in several formats and much more with three vinyl records (with a MP3 Download Card),...