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Ambient/Post-Rock/Textural bass playing thread

#26,384
hieronymous said:
Some of my pre-Pastorius fretless faves are:

Francis Moze (Magma, Gong)



Freebo with Bonnie Raitt - specifically on the album Give it Up, which I discovered in my dad's CD collection after he passed - I didn't realize a fretless could be played and sound like that - Jaco, & maybe Mick Kara seemed like the template for what it would sound like.
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Good to know I'm not the only Gong fan on here. They're actually one of my favorite bands. I love Mike Howlett's work with them (although it was all fretted AFAIK). Was lucky to see them up close in NYC back in 1999, they were incredible.
 
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#26,385
steubig said:
seeing rick danko and then reading about alphonso johnson getting one built (plus obsessing about the fender catalog ca 1970) were what made me get my first fretless p-bass in 1973 (72?). then i swapped the neck with a jazz bass (1974?) and voila, fretless jazz bass. (btw, alphonso was playing fretless in weather report *before* pastorius; look up weather report in berlin 1975 on youtube, he's killing it.)

there were others before pastorius as well: boz burrell, bill wyman, the guy in van morrison's band, the bass player in l.a. psych band the united states of america (fretless ampeg with fuzz)—and probably many more.

all of which is to day that mssr pastorius gets a lot of credit for starting stuff that he probably didn't—and people who should know better who create more legend than truth. (would he even have gotten a solo deal if stanley hadn't already done two solo albums?)
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Somewhere on here there's a fretless P bass thread with a bunch of cool old recordings. And of course they sound nothing like Jaco.

Also, with enough distortion, you can bring out the harmonics on a P/front pickup :)
 
#26,387
Are we talking about playing harmonics, or bringing out the harmonics of every note you play? Because if it's the latter I've actually been wondering lately about how to do that while maintaining a relatively clean sound. Something like the Darkglass Harmonic Booster maybe? Something else?
 
#26,388
JES said:
Somewhere on here there's a fretless P bass thread with a bunch of cool old recordings. And of course they sound nothing like Jaco.

Also, with enough distortion, you can bring out the harmonics on a P/front pickup :)
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Mark Egan's work on the first two Pat Metheny Group albums is a fretless P and also some of my favorite fretless playing ever. I remember hearing in an interview that Jaco actually gave him that.
 
#26,390
lordradish said:
Good to know I'm not the only Gong fan on here. They're actually one of my favorite bands. I love Mike Howlett's work with them (although it was all fretted AFAIK). Was lucky to see them up close in NYC back in 1999, they were incredible.
Click to expand...
Mike Howlett is very cool! Love his playing on You - he was also a producer, he produced Flock of Seagulls among others.

I also like that Francis Moze played with both Gong & Magma - two profoundly different bands!
 
#26,391
lordradish said:
Mark Egan's work on the first two Pat Metheny Group albums is a fretless P and also some of my favorite fretless playing ever. I remember hearing in an interview that Jaco actually gave him that.
Click to expand...
yeah. sort of a p-bass.

when i was on the road in the 70s, we ran into metheny et al. playing at the jazz workshop in boston (we were starting at paul’s mall in two days later). i’d say this was 77 or so (?), so early days for them.

we chatted them up. i was talking to egan, who was playing a fretless (maple fingerboard, i’m pretty sure) p-bass with an added j pickup in the rear.

i said something like, cool, sounds good, etc. he said, “this jaco dude put it together for me.” me, “yeah i know who jaco is.”

another interesting note:

metheny says, “you have to go hear this band playing before muddy waters next door (paul’s mall). they’re called the dixie dregs.”

i did and the dregs were mind-blowing. (right around the time of “free fall.”)
 
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#26,392
lucas303 said:
Are we talking about playing harmonics, or bringing out the harmonics of every note you play? Because if it's the latter I've actually been wondering lately about how to do that while maintaining a relatively clean sound. Something like the Darkglass Harmonic Booster maybe? Something else?
Click to expand...
i’m talking about playing natural harmonics on the strings.

ime, the rear pickup “hears” those partials better. some of it is technique (playing closer to the bridge) and some is practicing a lot to get the right nodes.
 
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#26,394
hieronymous said:
Mike Howlett is very cool! Love his playing on You - he was also a producer, he produced Flock of Seagulls among others.

I also like that Francis Moze played with both Gong & Magma - two profoundly different bands!
Click to expand...
Howlett was with them when I saw them. His playing on Shamal (the one after You) is really good, too. Can't say the same about his singing, though.
 
#26,396
steubig said:
yeah. sort of a p-bass.

when i was on the road in the 70s, we ran into metheny et al. playing at the jazz workshop in boston (we were starting at paul’s mall in two days later). i’d say this was 77 or so (?), so early days for them.

we chatted them up. i was talking to egan, who was playing a fretless (maple fingerboard, i’m pretty sure) p-bass with and added j pickup in the rear.

i said something like cool, sounds good, etc. he said, “this jaco dude put it together for me.” me, “yeah i know who jaco is.”

another interesting note:

metheny says, “you have to go hear this band playing before muddy waters next door (paul’s mall). they’re called the dixie dregs.”

i did and the dregs were mind-blowing. (right around the time of “free fall.”)
Click to expand...
That is a cool story. Yeah, it has a maple fingerboard. I've pretty much watched every performance of that lineup that I could find.
 
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#26,399
I was close, but no cigar...
FZ in liner notes from Sheik Yerbouti: The bass part is extracted from a four track master of a performance from Gothenburg, Sweden in 1974 which I had Patrick O'Hearn overdub on a medium tempo guitar solo track in 4/4. The notes chosen were more or less specified during the overdub session, and so it was not completely an improvised "bass solo." A year and a half later, the bass track was peeled off the Swedish master and transferred to one track of another studio 24 track master for a slow song in 11/4. The result of this experimental re-synchronization (the same technique was used on the Zoot Allures album in Friendly Little Finger) is the piece you are listening to. All of the sensitive, interesting interplay between the bass and drums never actually happened...

O'Hearn's bass track originated as an overdub on FZ's solo from Inca Roads, Gothenburg, Sweden in 1974. FZ broadcast this version of Inca Roads with O'Heran's overdubs on WSOU FM in 1978.

Bozzio's drum track originated from a studio recording of a piece titled Number 9 which is a version of the Outside Now motif in 11/4 referenced by FZ in the Sheik Yerbouti liner notes above as ' a slow song in 11/4'.
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