How to get this tone... Esperanza Spalding

At the time she was using the stock Fender flats, which may have been made by D'Addario, but that doesn't mean they're Chromes.

 

Wanna sound like that?

Easy!

Become her.

 

I just read somewhere today that Fender Flats were designed to sound like a stand-up bass.

 

Fender Flatwound (9050s)

Looks like it in the description..

 

That is the second time I heard Ms. Spalding get a bit out of tune for a second. I am not hating, playing and singing the way she does, it is amazing that she is in tune 99+% of the time.

 

what's a quarter-tone between friends?

 

"jazz" hehe

 

I was wondering about how to get precisely her tone on this show and found this thread. It's indeed a great tone which gets very close to a P-bass.

I don't think I'd like to have a fretless that could only achieve this sound, but on another song of the same gig she makes it sing a bit more. It seems to me that it'd be possible to get some mwah had she favored the bridge pickup, wouldn't it?



Apart from strings (and her fingers), anything important you guys think is needed to get there? Amp? Pickups?

 

I had to check the link just to see. That's the first time I have even read that. Having used them for over 5 years on a couple of my basses, I would never use 'sound like an upright' to describe their tone. I guess I'm doing it all wrong.

 

From listening to this video, definitely flatwound strings and it sounds like more of the neck pickup than the bridge pickup.

 

She's using a TC amp in that video, but at the time I think she was touring with an Aguilar rig, so maybe she was just using whatever was available at the festival. The Fender flats from that time were pretty thuddy and (in my opinion) didn't sound good for very long). They reformulated them so the ones you get now aren't the same as what she was using then.

I think the main key to her sound is that she's playing a fretless bass, but rarely accentuating the things that make it sound like a fretless. She's playing a custom five string fretless now, and I don't think her tone sounds any different than when she was playing the Fender.

I think the whole "tone is in your fingers" thing is nonsense, because people clearly get different sounds out of different basses, amps, and strings. But in this case, I think if you play a fretless with not-too-bright flat wounds, and play over the pickups like she does (rather than near the bridge, like Jaco, or near the neck, to accentuate the "mwah"), you're going to be 98% of the way there.

 

Fretless. All neck pickup. Flats. Mid boost.

 

Yes what you said.

 

Same way you get to Carnegie hall ....Practice!

(Someone had to say it)