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Oscar Pettiford and Attila Zoller: The Gentle Art of Love
I’m a sucker for jazz ballads on bass, so when Christopher Brydge shared this duo of Oscar Pettiford and Attila Zoller playing “The Gentle Art of Love,” I dropped everything to watch. The video is part of some rare footage from a TV program called “Black and White Show no. 2” which aired on June 15th, 1959. Pettiford, who is...
Oz Noy Releases “Twisted Blues Vol. 2” with Will Lee and Roscoe Beck
Bassists Will Lee (The Late Show with David Letterman) and Roscoe Beck (Leonard Cohen, Robben Ford, The Dixie Chicks, Eric Johnson) provide the low end for singular guitarist/composer Oz Noy on his sixth album, . The album is a follow-up to the 2011 release of Volume 1, also featuring Lee and Beck. An Israeli native who has called the U.S....
In Memoriam: Randy Coven
Rock bassist Randy Coven, who toured and recorded with artists including Yngwie Malmsteen and Steve Vai, passed away on May 20th of undisclosed causes. He was 54. Born in Great Neck, New York, Coven was introduced to music at a young age. His parents fostered his love of music by taking him to the Beatles concert at Shea Stadium when...
Getting the Most Out of Music Books
Q: Do you think you could run through / give some examples of how to make use of rhythm books like Modern Reading Text In 4/4, and theory books like Jazz Theory by Mark Levine or Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns by Nicolas Slominsky? A: Nice selection of books! Generally speaking, my approach is to combine any rhythm exercises...
Ian Trusheim: Stair Steps
Get ready to chill out. Ian Trusheim sent in this awesome solo bass tune he wrote called “Stair Steps.” The song revolves around a nice groove that develops into a beautiful harmonic progression to which the bassist adds a simple yet gripping vocal melody.
Mark Egan Returns With “About Now”
Mark Egan (Pat Metheny Group, Sting, Arcadia, Roger Daltry and Joan Osborne) is showing off his stellar fretless bass chops on About Now, his seventh album. Egan, a contemporary jazz composer, recorded the instrumental album as part of a trio featuring Danny Gottlieb on drums and Mitchel Forman on keyboards, both musicians with whom he has recorded before — Gottlieb...
Reader Spotlight: Jay Dwyer
Meet Jay Dwyer, a bassist from the Chicago area who has a very cool gig: paying tribute to John Entwistle and playing his amazing bass lines in a Who tribute band. Jay is No Treble’s reader in the spotlight for the week of May 19, 2014. Bio: I am 55 and I started playing at age 7. I’ve actively gigged...
Analog Alien Shipping Alien Bass Station
Analog Alien is now shipping the Alien Bass Station, a pedal that puts three effects into one box. The effects, which include a limiter, an amp generator, and a gamma fuzz, can be used independently or simultaneously for tonal flexibility. Each section has separate output knobs to adjust that effects signal strength. The limiter has a limit-comp knob for the...
Vulfpeck: A Walk to Remember
We hear from a lot of readers who say they discovered Vulfpeck thanks to No Treble sharing their awesome videos. And we’ve said it before – all of Vulfpeck’s members are stellar musicians. But it is bassist Joe Dart who really knocks us out every time we hear one of their tunes. The guys in Vulfpeck surely know what a...
Island Jazz, Featuring Linley Marthe, Released Debut Album
Linley Marthe, the bass virtuoso from Mauritius, has teamed up with vocalist Monika Njava in the new world music/jazz hybrid group, Island Jazz, which has released its . Njava sings in English and several dialects of Malagasy, the language of her home country, Madagascar, which lies west of the island of Maruitius — the birthplace of the now Paris-based Marthe,...
Grouping Multiple Notes Into a Single Action/Thought
When playing at slow speeds we can concentrate on our physical movements for every single note we play. However, this becomes impractical at high rates of speed. When playing at high speed it helps to group notes, and motions, together into a single action. The number of notes we can combine will depend on the requirements of the specific passage,...
Dominic “Forest” Lapointe: Death’s “Nothing is Everything” Bass Playthrough
Every time I watch a video by Dominic “Forest” Lapointe, it’s sure to blow me away. This one is no exception. Here’s the fretless 6-stringer playing through “Nothing is Everything” by Death. The track comes from their 1993 album Individual Though Patterns, which was originally played by fellow fretless metal player Steve DiGiorgio.