Bass Player is the world's most comprehensive, trusted and insightful bass publication for passionate bassists and active musicians of all ages. Each issue delivers the latest tips and techniques that are guaranteed to make you a better player.
Whatever you may have thought of Motörhead, you couldn’t deny the impact of their music, delivered by the genuinely iconic Ian ‘Lemmy’ Kilmister, who died in 2015 at the age of 70. Of course, a lot of people didn’t like his songs, his singing, or his image, come to that: Lemmy wasn’t exactly someone you could easily define or ignore. As a bass player, his tones and playing style were unorthodox to say the least, but they propelled him to a godlike position in our world... even if, as I say, his music wasn’t for you. In this issue, we show you to achieve those very bass tones, we look back at Lemmy’s chaotic life, and we ask why he remains as popular in the afterlife as he was when…
Emmett Chapman, the inventor of the Chapman Stick, died on November 1. A post on the homepage of the Stick Enterprises site reads: “The musician, inventor of the Free Hands two-handed tapping method and the Chapman Stick, and founder of Stick Enterprises, died at his home on Monday, November 1, after a long battle with cancer.” Chapman invented the 10-string instrument, which he dubbed The Stick, in the late Sixties. A keen jazz guitarist with an eye for innovation, Chapman already played a custom long-scale nine-string guitar, which included a gear shift lever for a “wild string”, allowing him to access various different intervals on demand. He had begun to practice playing while standing, and one night hit upon the method of playing the instrument in an upright position, using…
A new Zoom multi-effects unit for bass, the B6, has been launched at an approximately midmarket price point of $650—and you get a wide range of features for your money. It includes 11 bass amp and four DI tones, based on tube and solid-state models, a dual input (with adjustable impedance from 1M to 10M ohms) and an A/B switch, enabling players to quickly swap between two instruments. There’s a 4.3” color touchscreen, nine footswitches, a looper, and 10 new preamp and effects models, including Bass Analog Octave, a ‘1073’ preamp, and a new ‘Djent preamp’. Review incoming.…
The late saxophonist John Coltrane arguably peaked with his iconic 1964 album A Love Supreme, bringing spiritual themes to his art; a new live album, A Love Supreme: Live In Seattle restates the album’s impact. Coltrane’s band features Jimmy Garrison plus a second bassist, Donald Rafael Garrett. Jazz lovers will also appreciate Esperanza Spalding’s recent eighth album, Songwrights Apothecary Lab, containing 12 tracks, each assembled with the help of music therapists, neuroscientists, experts in Sufism and South Indian Carnatic music to evoke particular emotions.…
Amp-, bass- and pedal-makers Ashdown have unveiled a new signature head for Guy Pratt, the Interstellar-600, and a new signature pedal, the Pedal Of Doom, for Geezer Butler. The former is based on Ashdown’s ABM 900 head, and boasts extra features, such as two VU meters for input and output levels, a nine-band EQ section and, on the rear, an input for Pratt’s Moog Taurus pedal. The amp can be used with a footswitch to engage “the compression and the sub harmonics at fixed values to Guy’s exacting specifications when required”. As for the Pedal Of Doom, Ashdown tell us: “Over the past 18 months, we have been talking about what a great bass distortion requires: Fundamentally it revolves around an EQ, a predetermined structure to drive the right frequencies…
2021 was supposed to be the year that the live music industry got back to normal, but we know now that it’ll be 2022 at the earliest before we’re all jumping around in the front row in serious numbers. A whole range of cool tours have been announced by a range of optimistic bands, which has been rewarding to see, so let’s hope conditions continue to improve—because plans are for a whole lot of great bass players to hit the road. Keep an eye out for Cannibal Corpse, whose violent death metal should shake off those winter blues Make sure you catch the Red Hot Chili Peppers, whose impending world tour will see Flea and crew a-funking their way through 32 cities around the planet. Recently rejoined by their Blood…
