My 6 string I built has a graphite neck and will sustain any note pretty much forever. It's cool sometimes, but not for normal playing. So, I use a Fretwrap to tame the sustain. It works well and doesn't look strange.
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Is sustain such a many splendored thing?
- Thread starter jellymax
- Start date
Gaolee
Official leathers tester and crash dummy
This makes sense. I have a P with an aircraft carrier deck of a neck, and it has great sustain. It's a bolt on neck. My other bass guitars are either set neck or neck through and have about the same or a little less sustain. They have narrower necks.
I like sustain. It's there when you need it and you can dampen it away when you don't.
Palm muting while using a pick is one of the most injurious things you can do on a bass. I do it and my hand hurts badly within seconds. Not to mention that it doesn’t sound good to play finger style and palm mute if you don’t want to play right on the bridge. And I usually don’t.
Not that I usually use foam, but occasionally I do, and it’s so not the same as doing these other methods. The goals are similar…the sounds are not.
Ever listen to the end of Larks Tongues in Aspic? Prog needs sustain.
Bass on ELP’s ‘Take a Pebble’?
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Note length is an essential aspect of the bass part. Studio players execute note length precisely; that is a requirement and part of what makes them sound like pro bass players.
Sustain on bass is rarely an issue. Rarely do you see a part with notes carried tied over several bars of music (which just about any bass has no problem doing). Unless you have wolf tones or dead spots, just about any bass will give enough usable sustain to cover any situation. The opposite is much more common; staccato parts and syncopated 8th and 16th note lines are all over pop, RnB, and rock recordings.
Of all ADRS (attack, decay, sustain, and release) characteristics, long sustain is not very important in contemporary electric bass playing. Compressors will enhance the sustain to keep the amplitude even, should you need long, loud sustain. Arrangers will likely choose an arco bass or Mini-Moog should very long sustained notes be required for an arrangement.
Marcus, Victor Wooten, Jeff Berlin, Jaco, Verdine White, Hendric Linder, Rocco Prestia, Flea, Any of these players require massive, sustained notes beyond the norm?.... don't think so.
Sustain on bass is rarely an issue. Rarely do you see a part with notes carried tied over several bars of music (which just about any bass has no problem doing). Unless you have wolf tones or dead spots, just about any bass will give enough usable sustain to cover any situation. The opposite is much more common; staccato parts and syncopated 8th and 16th note lines are all over pop, RnB, and rock recordings.
Of all ADRS (attack, decay, sustain, and release) characteristics, long sustain is not very important in contemporary electric bass playing. Compressors will enhance the sustain to keep the amplitude even, should you need long, loud sustain. Arrangers will likely choose an arco bass or Mini-Moog should very long sustained notes be required for an arrangement.
Marcus, Victor Wooten, Jeff Berlin, Jaco, Verdine White, Hendric Linder, Rocco Prestia, Flea, Any of these players require massive, sustained notes beyond the norm?.... don't think so.
"Is sustain such a many splendored thing?"
Maybe on end notes, or for solos (saxophones, guitars violins, vocals), but as a bass player never forget:
"Muting is a beautiful thing because muting is percussive, and so is bass."
On bass, muting=cleaner playing (generally). Palm muting. Muting using your shirt sleeve. Muting with your fretting hand. Muting with your plucking hand. Muting with your friend's hand. Muting with a volume pedal or a pot on the bass. Muting with string mutes. Muting with noise gates.
TBH, I have been playing for 46 years and the single lesson I didn't get soon enough was the relationship between bass that "popped" has quick melodic and percussive notes would be the one that mastered muting AND if I wanted to sound like something other than a pile of slop, I need to mute throughout, sustain for final drone\hanging notes only. More importantly, the cleaner and faster I can mute note consistently, the better I might sound playing faster things bc speed is all about clean consistent muting. Sustain is overrated on bass.
Jamerson, Wilton Felder (CRIMINALLY OVERLOOKED) and other Motown r/b bassists paid the rent with muting that accented some notes and not others in a percussive/melodic "pop," holding back sustain mostly for contrast.
The Jackson Five's "Want You Back" with Wilton Felder on bass is largely dependent on the sustained notes in the chorus (I think it's Gb-F-E in the chorus that makes the whole song immediately recognizable), yet most of the bass arrangement, apart from that, is quick, muted and percussive.
It's not just r&b and Motown, muting is critical to prog - Geddy is a master of muting. YYZ is ALL about muting until you get past the bass\drum solos, which is why the next section of the Spanish sounding guitar solos on B and Cm feel so free. The sci-fi bass line that he pounds out in "Cygnus X-1" - E - e/E - D - G" is weird because of its muting on top of Neil's drums sounding more cryptic - and ominous - than sustained notes night. Or go back to 2112, the supplicant appeals to the priests with staccato, muted bass notes, with single note conservative hammer-ons, "Listen what I'm saying, these things just can'y be true, our world could use this beauty, just think what we might do" - the priests fire back with NOTHING but sustained notes: "Don't annoy us further, we have our work to do..." The priests always use sustained bass notes. powerful, unyielding, no vibrato, no giving in, no change from the past - which sets up the final conflict at the end where the priests "assume control" and our hero, with his staccato notes, pleas, polite hammer-ons, runs against a world without "this beauty" and commits suicide,
All that to say if you play too many staccato notes on bass you could wind up in a black hole, but if you really need THAT much sustain, maybe you need to re-evaluate your tone.
YMMV.
Maybe on end notes, or for solos (saxophones, guitars violins, vocals), but as a bass player never forget:
"Muting is a beautiful thing because muting is percussive, and so is bass."
On bass, muting=cleaner playing (generally). Palm muting. Muting using your shirt sleeve. Muting with your fretting hand. Muting with your plucking hand. Muting with your friend's hand. Muting with a volume pedal or a pot on the bass. Muting with string mutes. Muting with noise gates.
TBH, I have been playing for 46 years and the single lesson I didn't get soon enough was the relationship between bass that "popped" has quick melodic and percussive notes would be the one that mastered muting AND if I wanted to sound like something other than a pile of slop, I need to mute throughout, sustain for final drone\hanging notes only. More importantly, the cleaner and faster I can mute note consistently, the better I might sound playing faster things bc speed is all about clean consistent muting. Sustain is overrated on bass.
Jamerson, Wilton Felder (CRIMINALLY OVERLOOKED) and other Motown r/b bassists paid the rent with muting that accented some notes and not others in a percussive/melodic "pop," holding back sustain mostly for contrast.
The Jackson Five's "Want You Back" with Wilton Felder on bass is largely dependent on the sustained notes in the chorus (I think it's Gb-F-E in the chorus that makes the whole song immediately recognizable), yet most of the bass arrangement, apart from that, is quick, muted and percussive.
It's not just r&b and Motown, muting is critical to prog - Geddy is a master of muting. YYZ is ALL about muting until you get past the bass\drum solos, which is why the next section of the Spanish sounding guitar solos on B and Cm feel so free. The sci-fi bass line that he pounds out in "Cygnus X-1" - E - e/E - D - G" is weird because of its muting on top of Neil's drums sounding more cryptic - and ominous - than sustained notes night. Or go back to 2112, the supplicant appeals to the priests with staccato, muted bass notes, with single note conservative hammer-ons, "Listen what I'm saying, these things just can'y be true, our world could use this beauty, just think what we might do" - the priests fire back with NOTHING but sustained notes: "Don't annoy us further, we have our work to do..." The priests always use sustained bass notes. powerful, unyielding, no vibrato, no giving in, no change from the past - which sets up the final conflict at the end where the priests "assume control" and our hero, with his staccato notes, pleas, polite hammer-ons, runs against a world without "this beauty" and commits suicide,
All that to say if you play too many staccato notes on bass you could wind up in a black hole, but if you really need THAT much sustain, maybe you need to re-evaluate your tone.
YMMV.
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Call me crazy, but I bet cover bands play Get Ready and I Can’t Help Myself a a lot more often than Larks Tongue In Aspic
Not everyone wants to sound like music from 50 years ago? That would be my guess.
Like a parachute it's better to have it and not need it that to not have it and need it.
You’re ‘crazy’.Call me crazy, but I bet cover bands play Get Ready and I Can’t Help Myself a a lot more often than Larks Tongue In Aspic
You said to do it.
See, that’s what is nice about being a bedroom bass playing hack. I can (try) to play whatever I like.
It’s all good my friend
Huh, I play pick and palm mute all the time, never had any discomfort. It's one of my most-used sounds actually. This is on your typical FSO's, playing down by the bridge. I wonder why you get pain from it?
Yes, the palm muting while using fingers and thumb really only works down by the bridge--can't "float" up closer towards the neck really and get any kind of serviceable sound or consistency.
The angle my hand is at when I pick and palm mute + the strings being at their stiffest by the bridge = massive pain. Heck, just using a pick near the bridge is enough to make it happen. Carol Kaye considers it very detrimental. John Wetton had surgeries on his right hand because of it. Be glad you’re not one of us.
Bummer. Yeah, I do the Carol approach when I want that sound, but that's not the most comfortable for me, that sort of "jazz guitarist" approach.
Wetton had surgery because of finger playing.
He would play with a pick for certain songs. Never played with a pick in King Crimson.
He started using a pick in U.K.
In his late years he’d use a thumb pick almost all the time.
String damping and muting are 2 different things.
I usually associate palm muting and using a foam mute as a tick tack type of playing rather than a damping to keep other strings from ringing out like when a finger player uses his thumb.
As a pick player I’ll also use my fretting hand to keep other strings from ringing out.
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