[What Kinda Bass Player Are You?]

I do gig frequently, I do recording session work, and I play at my church on Sundays. 

 

I work a day job, but I'm a professional multi-instrumentalist, arranger and songwriter. 

 

You got a day job and you get to do everything else as a bass player and a musician. After everything you practice at night too..?  I salute the amount of dedication you have. How do you do it?  

The song is nice man. I Liked the clarity of every individual instrument in the mix. Pretty Clean.

 

While EQuing the bass in a mix is still is time taking task for me, I feel that EQuing the Bass on an amp becomes easier if you regularly get the same amp at your gigs or if you carry your own amp. Mainly beacuse it takes a lot of experience to shape the tone the way you want it, keeping in mind the disastrous effects of bad acoustics and the way tone changes at the places you play at. If you've used a same amp over and over again, you get used to setting it up tonally. But to sum it up, the key is "THE EAR". Not that there are no tricks out there.

 

I hope your band audition went well. All the best man!

 

 

There are loads of styles I would like to learn at some point. Ideally somewhere between fundamental technique and tricks would be good from a learning perspective.

I tend to think melodically and harmonically on a bass, but I need to further develop the rhythmic aspects of my toolkit.

 

That's nice john. Styles would be really easy to learn if you can get the basics/fundamentals right. Since there is no specific beginner technique, you can let your fingers tell, what your technique is. And one way to get that is by playing the bass over and over again and trying to enjoy while you are at it.

 

Its good that you can think melodically and harmonically, rhythm comes naturally i guess. The key again is to keep playing the bass. All the techniques/theories/tricks/ideas/styles can be learnt watching a video on YouTube, but applying them in a live/jam scenario takes atleast some amount of practice.

 

Whatever rhythmic ideas I normally have or get are a result of experimentation over the influences I have plus the stuff i've learnt or heard from somewhere. Then again when you keep playing, some sort of magic happens, there are unexpected variations of rhythms that just show up. Hope that is helpful.

[What Kinda Bass Player Are You?]

Firstly thanks a lot for sharing .

Its good to know that all you guys've played other intruments. So picking up the bass and getting along wouldnt've been too hard. 

 

Yeah its certainly true that after you start playing the bass, you start digging it. Feeling the rhythm makes it easier to enjoy a song or a groove even more

 

 

My main problem with the bass comes when I'm trying to EQ and get it to sound good in the mix. I have one song where I'm relatively happy with the bass, and 3 or 4 that are just a horrible mess. 

 

I always feel EQuing the Bass to sound good in the mix is a pain, maybe because im not a good sound engineer. The tonal variety makes it even harder. But last night while recording a demo, i took my bandmate's GR55 and ran the signal through a Bass Amp. I was pretty impressed and loved the tone I got. It stood out really well and didnt need any EQuing at all. I think it has also got to do with the kind of bass you have, some of the expensive or custom made basses have a kind of tone that is so standard that EQuing sometimes screws up the tone. I dont have any tricks up my sleeve to help you EQ the bass, i like to go by ear, and I keep trying combinations to get something I like.

 

I've heard of Aria, Ashton and Ashbory. Is it any of these?

 

I am currently using two books/cds to learn a little. One is Bass Arobics by Jon Liebman and The Versatile Bassist by Dave Averthrow. Both have improved my bass playing immensely.

 

Jim, I havent read these books, i'll check em out.

 

 

Hope you guys get some time to play sometime soon  . All the best!!

[Who Is Your Favorite Bass Player?]

The Bass player you like most can have a great deal of influence on your playing. That person can be the reason why you started playing bass in the first place.

 

  I started playing the bass, because my band didn't have a bass player, but as i explored, there were a lot of these amazing artists who changed the way i look at a  Bass, how i play it. They stand as a big reason for why i still play it. 

 

We might have a few similar favorites; Victor Wooten, Jaco Pastorius, Larry Graham, Steve Harris, Flea, Paul McCartney, Cliff Burton, Stu Hamm, Billy Sheehan, Bass player of Jamiroquai, etc..

 

But there are a lot of other bass players that i look up to. They might not be as famous as the others, but they are the masters of their craft and architects of Bass insanity.. 

 

Panagiotis Andreou : This greek born Bass master plays with bands like New York Gypsy All Stars, Now vs Now and a lot of other Bands.

 

Steve Zerlin : Or otherwise known as 'Z Man' has harmony embedded in his fingers, yes "Fingers" not "Brain". Dont be fooled when i use the word "harmony". If you see him improvise on Indian Ragas, i swear you'll s#it in your pants.

 

Bill 'The Buddha' Dickens : Just watch a video, you'll know why!

 

Mohini Dey : This girl gives me nightmares and makes me cry like a little girl when i see her playing. She is just too much. She is like 16 or something, but if you see her skills ""HOLY MOTHER OF GOD"". I saw her playing first on MTV Coke Studio with A.R.Rahman, and a big fan since then. She is the singlemost biggest source of practice inspiration for me.

 

Seth Govan : This guy put the bass lines on Guthrie Govan's "Erotic Cakes". He is also Guthrie's brother and that explains a lot. I probably love everything on that record maybe because its one of the three favorite albums of mine, the other two being "Tenacious D" and "The Pick Of Destiny".

 

Michael Manring : One Word "Hyperbass"

There are a lot of other bass players that i like and follow, this is just a short list. You can like a bass player for their techniques, attitude, the kind of bass they play, they band they play for and so on.

 

 Let us know your favorite and why you like em.! 

[The List Of Basses You'd Love To Own Or Already Have!]

I've been playing for not more than 5 years now, but i still play on the bass that i first bought. Yamaha RBX 270 J. Its an amazing bass for starters and has served me well till today. At one point, I installed a custom active circuit on my bass to get more tonal options with a bass boost for those days when im pissed at everything and everybody for no apparent reason .

 

I have a fetish for basses that are skillfully crafted, look beautiful, produce even more beautiful tones, and push the player to new limits.

 

Some of my favorite bass makers are Fodera, Aries, Marleaux, Jens Ritter, MTD, Zon and Odyssey apart from the regular Fenders, Hofners and Musicman basses.

 

I would love to have a bass that has lightwave pickup installed in it. One of the first bass that i had my eyes on was a Lightwave Saber VL 5 string fretless.

 

So what do you want and what do you already have?

[What Kinda Bass Player Are You?]

Do you regularly play gigs?

Do you session frequently?

Do you just add bass lines to your song?

Did you just pick it from somewhere and started playing?

Did you just buy your bass and starting to learn?

Do you play at all?

 

Let me know and we can have some topics flowing..

 

Cheers!

[Next Big Thing In Online Music Collaboration]

So the first review doesnt sound all that good!! Too bad, it looked very promising!

[Next Big Thing In Online Music Collaboration]

Oh wait, ill change the download thing, didnt notice it before.! Thanks for mentioning.

[Next Big Thing In Online Music Collaboration]

Haha . Like john said, they will be used for a collage representing the Songstuff community on the Banners/Graphics that will be used on Songstuff and other Social Media like G+, Fb , Youtube etc.

[Next Big Thing In Online Music Collaboration]

Hey no problem man, dont worry about it. Guess i should've made my identity clear in the message first. 

[Next Big Thing In Online Music Collaboration]

I know how hard it is to collaborate with people who've never met you personally and are trying to make music with you online. The pain of recording single tracks one by one, sending it to others, asking if they like, resending, rechecking, getting individual tracks by others (Its even painful to write the damn steps included).

 

That's where these guys came up with an acceptable solution, which i must say is pretty damn good. They made a DAW that stores whatever people record on it in the cloud. So whoever is in the project can record anytime, make any changes, mix, master and do everything else like a normal DAW using cloud technology. 

 

So if you are collaborating with people across the world or even somebody who is near you, checkout Ohm Studio.

 

 

They have a FREE PLAN that supports upto 10 projects, not bad eh?

 

I decided to share this because i've seen a lot of people on Songstuff that are willing to collaborate online and thought this might be of help.

 

I haven't personally used it a lot, so if any of you do, let me know how it goes!

[Finger Or Pick?]

If your right hand technique doesn't give the sound you need/want, then change your technique or use a pick. You can probably get 5 different sounds off each. Yet again it depends on the whole combination of sound, whatever works!

[How Many Of You Play Live?]

1. Its been a long time since i've put any live recording online. I think the bad audio quality would just put people off and give a bad first impression.

2. Ya i do go out and play live gigs. That's the place where you get to see if the stuff really works, and that's where you sometimes find like minded people and even musicians who can help you a lot. There is something about live playing, the more mistakes you make, the better musician you become!