Playing bass in a duo often requires making adjustments to your approach, but can be a very rewarding artistic endeavor when done right.
Playing bass in different-sized ensembles brings different sets of sonic and stylistic opportunities and challenges. Frequency wise, playing in a large band means a very small space for the bass, and your tone has to be tailored for that specific application [“The Space of the Bass," September 2012]. Playing in a trio requires a completely different tone and approach, as does performing an unaccompanied solo. Playing bass in a duo, in my opinion, can be one of the trickiest yet most rewarding situations you can find yourself performing in. I absolutely love it.
Whether for financial or production reasons, many bars and restaurants are hiring duos. In my first 10 years of playing semi-professionally, I'd estimate that about 50 percent of the shows were duo gigs. And the most common duo partners I performed with were piano players and acoustic guitarists.
When paired with a piano player, you have to quickly diagnose your partner's left-hand approach. Is he or she a heavy-handed player like Elton John (hammering double octaves with the left hand all night long) or is your partner's approach lighter and more casual? You can go with a thicker tone if it's the latter—maybe even rely more on the neck pickup if old-school warmth is your tonal preference. If your piano player happens to be the first type, with a heavy left hand, a more growly midrange approach on bass might be what's needed. This is the time to use that tone in order to cut through the onslaught of piano bass.
Whether it's a tiny system on stands or a full-blown line array, making sure the PA doesn't vibrate the stage more from the piano's bass notes than your notes is of the utmost importance. An overall muddy mix is the inevitable end result of that, and it will ruin your gig if you are performing in a duo. You'll be surprised how many amateur and semi-professional sound guys make this mistake.
The most effective way to play bass alongside an acoustic guitarist is determined on a case-by-case basis. The first thing I usually find myself doing is slapping on beats two and four of every measure to emulate a snare drum. (This technique can pack a dance floor if you and the guitarist have had the chance to play together frequently.) Take note: If not performed right, the “snare-drum slap" can be just as catastrophic for the feel of a song as a drummer who plays with poor feel and an exceptionally loud snare drum.
Another rhythmic tool I use more with an acoustic guitarist than with a piano player is playing a ghost note before the “main" note. This technique is commonly used in full-band situations as well, but when a busy drummer is involved I find it can come across as sounding a little too eager.
Guitarists I work with in duos most commonly play with a pick, so in order to match their feel, I often play with a pick, too. It works surprisingly well and doesn't sound too aggressive if done tastefully. The ghost-note possibilities with a pick are also interesting since a pick attack doesn't carry as much low-end attack as a finger when played lightly. I tend to add more ghost notes with a pick to emulate the subdivision of a hi-hat.
For me, the most rewarding duo scenario as a bassist is playing with a singer. The naked human voice makes a terrific duet partner for electric bass and I am surprised I don't hear the combination more often. When I started a duo with a female singer back in my college days, the rewards were instantaneous. I was able to flow with the vocal like a classical piano player does when accompanying an opera singer.
The human voice is also an especially tremendous match for a fretless bass, and the music doesn't necessarily have to be jazz. The fretless offers us bassists the chance to emulate the vibrato of a singer, slide between notes like a singer, fall off notes like a singer, and slide up to notes … like a singer.
After performing with my first fretless-bass/vocal duo, some fellow bassists asked me when I was going to buy a 6-string bass and start using more upper-chord structures. I told them that would ruin my whole idea. The idea was to strip a song down to just the bass line and lead vocal, and let the genius of those two parts be exposed. Most importantly, the silence between the notes becomes so incredibly powerful in this setting that it instantly turns the duet into a trio, where silence is the most important member.
Playing with just one fellow musician is a learning experience every time, and it can be fascinating. Until next time, happy dueting!
It’s almost over, but there’s still time to win! Enter Stompboxtober Day 30 for your shot at today’s pedal from SoloDallas!
The Schaffer Replica: Storm
The Schaffer Replica Storm is an all-analog combination of Optical Limiter+Harmonic Clipping Circuit+EQ Expansion+Boost+Line Buffer derived from a 70s wireless unit AC/DC and others used as an effect. Over 50 pros use this unique device to achieve percussive attack, copious harmonics and singing sustain.
Does the guitar’s design encourage sonic exploration more than sight reading?
A popular song between 1910 and 1920 would usually sell millions of copies of sheet music annually. The world population was roughly 25 percent of what it is today, so imagine those sales would be four or five times larger in an alternate-reality 2024. My father is 88, but even with his generation, friends and family would routinely gather around a piano and play and sing their way through a stack of songbooks. (This still happens at my dad’s house every time I’m there.)
Back in their day, recordings of music were a way to promote sheet music. Labels released recordings only after sheet-music sales slowed down on a particular song. That means that until recently, a large section of society not only knew how to read music well, but they did it often—not as often as we stare at our phones, but it was a primary part of home entertainment. By today’s standards, written music feels like a dead language. Music is probably the most common language on Earth, yet I bet it has the highest illiteracy rate.
Developed specifically for Tyler Bryant, the Black Magick Reverb TB is the high-power version of Supro's flagship 1x12 combo amplifier.
At the heart of this all-tube amp is a matched pair of military-grade Sovtek 5881 power tubes configured to deliver 35-Watts of pure Class A power. In addition to the upgraded power section, the Black Magick Reverb TB also features a “bright cap” modification on Channel 1, providing extra sparkle and added versatility when blended with the original Black Magick preamp on Channel 2.
The two complementary channels are summed in parallel and fed into a 2-band EQ followed by tube-driven spring reverb and tremolo effects plus a master volume to tame the output as needed. This unique, signature variant of the Black Magick Reverb is dressed in elegant Black Scandia tolex and comes loaded with a custom-built Supro BD12 speaker made by Celestion.
Price: $1,699.
Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine is one of the loudest guitarists around. And he puts his volume to work creating mythical tones that have captured so many of our imaginations, including our special shoegaze correspondent, guitarist and pedal-maestro Andy Pitcher, who is our guest today.
My Bloody Valentine has a short discography made up of just a few albums and EPs that span decades. Meticulous as he seems to be, Shields creates texture out of his layers of tracks and loops and fuzz throughout, creating a music that needs to be felt as much as it needs to be heard.
We go to the ultimate source as Billy Corgan leaves us a message about how it felt to hear those sounds in the pre-internet days, when rather than pull up a YouTube clip, your imagination would have to guide you toward a tone.
But not everyone is an MBV fan, so this conversation is part superfan hype and part debate. We can all agree Kevin Shields is a guitarists you should know, but we can’t all agree what to do with that information.