Buzz

Our turn to rave about Ray Riendeau… check out this live performance of “Liquid”, at Mojo’s Music Academy in Longmont, Colorado. Ray is joined by drummer Martin Diamond. Hold on to your hat!

There are lots of great ways for artists to connect with fans and the list keeps growing. Wouldn’t it be awesome to have your own iPhone app dedicated to your music, news and shows? Now you can! MobBase is a service that lets artists create custom iPhone apps for sharing music, tweets, photos and video, merchandise, shows and other useful...

Pedulla basses now have a finger ramp option available on their fretted and fretless basses. The ramp fits snugly between the pickups and provides a consistent body-to-string vertical distance for players who prefer the contact to anchor and gauge their finger-style stroke. The edge of the ramp is parallel to the strings and provides a multi-position thumbrest while leaving enough...

Hulk Hogan: Bass Player for Hire

Being widely known for his prowess in “the cage” and his shirt ripping affinity, Hulk Hogan has recently spoken about his past dreams of bass stardom. Hogan’s love for music and the bass guitar may be unknown to many of his wrestling fans, but says that long before wrestling was in his life, he wished to be in a successful...

It is about time we share another Zander Zon video. We tend to favor his compositions, and this 2008 recording of “I Resolute” is another great one. As Zander shares, “there is a bit of slapping and tapping here and there, but (technically speaking) the piece mainly aims to make use of the instrument’s awesome natural harmonics…” Great stuff as...

System of a Down bassist Shavo Odadjian is set to release a single from his new group Achozen, which is a collaboration with Wu-Tang Clan member The RZA. The single, “Salute/Sacrifice,” will be released today through his web site, urSession.com. Achozen is a heavy hip-hop group that also features members Kinetic 9 and Reverend William Burke. Of the upcoming album,...

With all of the talk and glimpses of the soon-to-be-released album from Them Crooked Vultures, fans have been itching to find any information possible. Recently, John Paul Jones has spoken with Nova 919 about numerous topics ranging from what the album sounds like, to what it was like working with other musicians of such great caliber. Jones mentions that in...

It is critical to understand the natural resonances of the bass to get the strongest tone and make a plan for fingering strategies in each key. A working knowledge of natural harmonics and sympathetic resonances will allow you to make more sophisticated choices in your playing approach and ultimately improve your sound (and give you a ton of music-geek points)....

No doubt, Nathan East is one of the A-list bassists out there, and has been for some time. So it is fitting that in this video clip, Nathan and several others talk about what it takes to become an A-lister, and the difference between those on the A and B lists. Plus, there’s some pretty good music in between.

Green Day’s alter ego, the Foxboro Hot Tubs, gave a few select fans the ultimate impromptu show on November 1st in London. The audience included fan club members, competition winners and some invited guests. According to bassist Mike Dirnt “The only reason you’re here is you didn’t go to church yesterday.” The band, Billie Joe Armstrong, Mike Dirnt, Tre Cool,...

Spector has announced the release of their latest line of USA basses: the Forte4 and Forte5. These are the same handcrafted basses we expect from Spector and are new for 2010. The slogan for the new line is “No Options, No Frills, ALL TONE.” The Forte’s have a lot of great features including the original Spector NS curved body scale,...

Q: I seem to see two camps out there. “Learn/understand everything in all 12 keys” and “the symmetry of the neck can not be denied, so embrace the patterns and do not worry about learning it in all 12 keys”. Although I am not against a strong theory base or patterns, is there a middle road or another way of...