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UNBEATABLE MIKE LULL, MTD, GIBSON AND CARVIN BASS GEAR REVIEWED AND RATED BY BGM'S PRO TEAM
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Making you a better bass player in every issue, our state-of-the-art team of educators will guide you every step of the way. Say hello to them here!
Dig into your favorite bass parts... and discover treasure! Ryan Madora is one of Nashville's most sought-after touring and session bassists. Recent touring and session credits include Robben Ford, Kyshona Armstrong, and her instrumental trio, The Interludes. For the past five years, she has served as musical director for Bobby Bones and has played with Garth Brooks, Darius Rucker, and Carrie Underwood. In addition to instructing at Nashville's campus of Musician's Institute, Ryan has taught at Gerald Veasley's Bass Boot Camp, Rock'n'Roll Fantasy Camp, and at universities across the USA. She has contributed columns to No Treble for over a decade and in 2019, published her first book, Bass Players To Know: Learning From The Greats. Ryan offers online education at TrueFire and her website.
Maximize your bass skills with our advanced studies Toronto-born electric bassist Rich Brown has established himself as an incredibly versatile artist. Along with being one of the most called-upon electric bass players in Canada, Rich is a composer, producer, bandleader, educator and clinician, broadcaster, and voiceover artist. He has recorded three albums as a leader, including his critically acclaimed album of solo bass compositions Between Heaviness & Here. Rich appears on a plethora of recordings, ranging from jazz to traditional Arabic and Asian music. He has performed with a wide variety of artists, including Rudresh Mahanthappa, Vijay Iyer, Steve Coleman, and Angelique Kidjo. Rich leads two groups-rinsethealgorithm and The Abeng and was nominated for a Juno Award in 2016 for his latest album, Abeng. fbass.com/artists/rich-brown Instagram richbrownbass Youtube Brown'stone With Rich Brown
Kickstart your journey to the top of the bass world here Steve Lawson is the UK's most celebrated solo bass guitarist. Across more than two decades of touring, and a huge catalogue of solo and collaborative albums, he's built up a worldwide audience for his looping and processing approach to bass sound. Recent collaborators include Beardyman, Reeves Gabrels, Andy Gangadeen, Tanya Donelly, Divinity Roxx, and Jonas Hellborg. He been teaching bass for almost three decades, and lectures at universities and colleges across the globe. Victor Wooten once commented, 'Steve Lawson is a brilliant musician. I've known about him and listened to him for many years. He may not be one of the most famous bassists but he is definitely one of the most talented'. Who are we to argue? www.stevelawson.net
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Now you're rolling, it's time to hit the next level Philip Mann studied at the London College of Music, securing bachelor's and master's degrees in performance before receiving a scholarship to study under Jeff Berlin at the Players School of Music in Florida. Endorsed by Overwater and Eich, he's a busy, internationally freelancing electric and double bassist. His performance and session credits include work with Grammy Award-winning artists Van Morrison and Albert Lee, five-time Grammy Award nominee Hunter Hayes, Deep Purple's Steve Morse, Leo Sayer, Billy Bragg, and country artist Peter Donegan. Author of the Chord Tone Concepts texts, Philip is currently a member of the visiting faculty at the Players School while simultaneously lecturing for Scott's
Bass Lessons.
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The following is a guide to the notation symbols and terminology used in Bass Player magazine
The Stave: Most music written for the bass guitar uses the bass clef. The example to the right shows the placement of the notes on the stave.
Tablature: This is a graphical representation of the music. Each horizontal line corresponds with a string on the bass guitar, with the lowest line representing the lowest pitched string (E). The numbers represent the frets to be played. Numbers stacked vertically indicate notes that are played together. Where basses with five or six strings are required, the tablature stave will have five or six lines as necessary.
TAPPING TECHNIQUES Fretting hand taps have a '+' in a circle. Picking hand taps are just '+'. Particular fingers may be shown with numbers.
SLAP AND POP TECHNIQUE Notes slapped with the thumb are marked with a 't', notes popped with the fingers marked with a 'p'.
ADVANCED SLAP TECHNIQUE Fretting hand slaps are marked 'lh' and double thumbing upstrokes are shown with an upward pointing arrow.
PLECTRUM TECHNIQUE Where necessary, down and upstrokes with the pick will be shown using these symbols (down-up-down-up).
SLIDE (GLISSANDO) Slides are performed by playing the first note and then sliding the fretting finger up to the second note.
HAMMER-ON AND PULL-OFF These are shown with a slur over the notes. Only the first note is plucked by the picking hand.
TRILLS
Trills are performed by rapidly alternating between the two notes shown, using hammer- ons and pull-offs.
The pitch of the note is altered by repeatedly bending the string up and back with the fretting finger.
NATURAL HARMONICS The note is played as a harmonic by lightly touching the string above the fret indicated.
ARTIFICIAL HARMONICS Pluck while fretting the lower note and touching the edge of the picking hand thumb to the note in brackets.
BEND AND RELEASE The note is bent up to the interval indicated and then released back to its original pitch.
The note is bent upwards to the interval specified: 1/2 indicates a semitone, 'full' indicates a tone.
I SPY...
In session and stage bassist Ryan Madora's amazing column, we discover a stack of useful secrets hidden inside our favorite bass-lines ey there, bass players! If there's one thing I enjoy, it's a good ol' boy country bass-line that moves between the root and the fifth. I do live in Nashville, after all. While this pattern is commonly associated with country music, it actually provides the framework for countless Latin grooves, pop and rock bass-lines, and jazz standards. It can be boot-scottin' or bossa nova, dub or doo-wop. It's got a 'Peaceful Easy Feeling' or it can be
'Feelin' Alright'. Okay, okay, you get the picture, let's dig in!
So how could a two-note pattern be so widely used and utterly perfect? Well, it fits over both major and minor chords, it provides just enough information to anchor the harmony, and the notes are easy to play on our instrument. Plus, it lends itself to rhythmic adaptation and can take on different feels depending on tempo and the usage of dead notes. And last but not least, it allows us to play with direction as we move through a chord progression. While this pattern often gets labeled as 'country', it's widely used in the traditional music of many cultures.
Before we start playing, let's explore the pattern from the theory perspective. In addition to both notes serving as chord tones of major and minor arpeggios, there's just something special about how this movement sounds. The root note provides a sense of stability and grounding. It is, after all, rooting the harmony. The fifth, however, fulfils two roles. It sounds consonant as a chord tone but it also wants to move, or more importantly, to resolve.
This hints at an incredibly important musical concept, the dominant-to-tonic relationship. This concept asserts that a dominant chord (which naturally occurs on the fifth scale degree of a key) has a strong pull to the tonic chord (which is built on the root note of the key). In other words, the V chord wants to resolve to the I chord. This is widely used within our world of Western harmony and we've learned to derive satisfaction from it. So, whether we're playing full chords or single notes, there's something lingering in the back of our mind that urges us to take advantage of this movement.
Now that we better understand the theory behind it, let's dig into Exercise 1. We're going to use our friendly I-IV-V-I chord progression in the key of C, playing each chord for two bars. In the first bar, we'll play the root note and ascend to the fifth. Begin at C on the 3rd fret of the A string and then play G on the 5th fret of the D string. In the second bar, we'll play the root note and descend to the lower fifth, moving from C on the 3rd fret of the A string to G on the 3rd fret of the E string. Notice the shape of this pattern and how the higher fifth is one string higher and two frets up while the lower fifth is on the same fret, just one string lower. Move these patterns across the chord progression, C Major-F Major G Major C Major.
In Exercise 2, we'll move to the key of G, change the rhythm, and learn how to pick and choose between using the higher fifth or lower fifth. Our chord progression will go G-Am-D-Gor I-ii-V-I. Due to the fact that we're starting on the lower G, we can only ascend to the higher fifth (unless you happen to be playing a five-string bass). On the Am chord, play the root note on the fifth fret of the E string and use the higher fifth (E on the 7th fret of the A string). We're specifically using the higher fifth because it's just a whole step away from where we intend on landing, the D on the fifth fret of the A string. Once you're there, play the lower fifth of the D chord, A on the 5th fret of the E string. Using this lower fifth will make it easy to resolve back to the low G. You may recognize this rhythm and root-fifth movement in Otis Redding's '(Sittin' On) The Dock Of The Bay'.
As you play this exercise, be aware of how your note choices imply direction. Regardless of the song you're playing, the decision to use the higher or lower fifth will depend on positioning options, the chord progression, and where you want to be on the fretboard. These moves may change if you're playing in a different key, moving between registers, or playing a four-, five- or six-string bass.
In Exercise 3, we'll play the same notes but with a different feel. A small adjustment to the rhythm will make it sound a bit more country or rock rather than R&B. This comes from setting up the downbeat with an eighth note on the 'and-of-four'. The more you increase the tempo, the more it will take on an up-beat country vibe (try playing it at 100bpm, 125bpm, and 150bpm). You can even try playing the same exercise with dead notes instead of pitched notes in Exercise 4. This adaptation works well alongside a drummer playing a fast train-beat. Now, let's do some spying. First up, 'Help!' by the Beatles. Paul McCartney bounces between the root and fifth throughout the verses and gives us a one-two punch on the record by following it up with similar movement on 'The Night Before'.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, we have 'Spain' by Chick Corea with Stanley Clarke exercising roots and fifths all over the fretboard. This brisk movement outlines the chord changes with a samba feel and provides momentum throughout the solo sections. And we'll throw in a Carol Kaye reference just for good measure. The bass-line of 'Feelin' Alright' by Joe Cocker features a greasy back-and-forth with plenty of passing notes in between. It's simple, it's effective, and it grooves.
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GEAR
Welcome to our expert road-tests of state-of-the-art bass gear ehold our world-beating bass gear review section, where we bring you the crop of each month's new, interesting, or otherwise relevant bass guitars, bass amplifiers, bass cabs, and bass effects. Occasionally we'll review a guitar effect if it's useful for bassists, but generally speaking, this zone is reserved for bass-specific gear. We take our reviews seriously. BP is the last English-language print magazine devoted solely to bass in the world, and we have readers all over the planet, so we're responsible about our conclusions. If a product is worth your time, we'll say so; if it's flawed, we'll make that clear. We're not answerable to advertisers in any way, and our tests are independent of the views of musicians, manufacturers and distributors. Let us know what you think of our conclusions. Did we get it right? Joel McIver, Editor
FUSION 800S AND NEO-IV 410 CAB $1249, $1399, www.gallien-krueger.com