ANy examples of aggresive fingertones? Where the bass can cut through the mix without being too overwhelming... I can only think of Racer x - scarified, juan alderete w his jazz bass....any other?
Iron Maiden - Steve Harris, he has quite an aggresive approach to bass but it works perfectly fine for their music.
Billy Gould of Faith No More, I've been listening to a lot of him recently. It's hard to tell where his slapping ends and his fingerstyle begins, there's so much emphasis on the upper mids, I love it. Flea would also fit this bill.
The first bassist that popped into my head when I read "aggressive finger tone" is GEDDY LEE. Even though he's an extremely famous bass player, I STILL think he's one of the most overlooked bass talents.
John Entwistle. He used a lot of pickstyle early on (most of Live at Leeds was done with a pick) but later switched to his so-called "typewriter" method, where he struck straight down with his right-hand fingertips. This caused the strings to slap the end of the fretboard, giving piano-like tone: strong attack, rich in harmonics. See the "Kids Are Alright" DVD, and look for the more recent tracks such as Baba O'Reilly in which Ox plays his Alembics. Amplifier setup is another part of the equation... but that's been covered in other sub-forums. Yessss!!
Three for the mention here, but I could go on... Geddy Lee, first of all. The guy just has that..."roar" in his tone that comes from the way he picks. Simply awesome. Stanley Clarke and Jonas Hellborg are a couple of players who have both used the whole "hard plucking" thing to great effect over the years, particularly Jonas. At times, they both pluck so hard it sounds close to a pop with the string bouncing off the neck. A perfect example of this would be the second bass track in "Northpole English" from Jonas' "Elegant Punk" album. froma bout 50 seconds in when the second bass track starts playing the melody line, listen to that agressive sound. What really impresses me about it is that he gets it to sound so smooth and flowing, and while he's still playing with a hard touch, it doesn't sound overtly agressive in an emotional manner, but adds a brilliant dynamic to the tune.
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