agreed! Especially on this bass, dialing down the tone knob just makes the tone hollow and boomy. Flats are the answer!
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JAZZ LOVERS!
- Thread starter Shakin-Slim
- Start date
agreed! Especially on this bass, dialing down the tone knob just makes the tone hollow and boomy. Flats are the answer!
I play an SX Jazz in my Jazz combo.
I strung it with Fender Tapewounds and it sounds pretty good to my ears. I get alot of compliments (most are on the vinyl record pickguard though!)
I strung it with Fender Tapewounds and it sounds pretty good to my ears. I get alot of compliments (most are on the vinyl record pickguard though!)
Where are you going to be studying jazz? You should find out what they expect you to be playing on. I can tell you that at some schools, you could forget about the electric in general, let alone a Warwick. You might play some electric in some of the combos, but if you're going to be a jazz studies student, you will have to play upright, and that's all you'll play in the ensembles. Like I said, it depends on where you go, but as an example, when I was at O.S.U. (Ohio State), the ONLY electric instruments you'd see were hollow body jazz guitars! Heck, they didn't even like modern saxes! They wanted you to get an old horn with an old fashioned round chamber mouthpiece.
Defretting any bass with a wenge fingerboard is pretty silly.Especially if you intend on using roundwound strings.
Re.Playing jazz on a Warwick?
Why the hell not?
It's a bass.
You can play any style of music with it,& anyone that tells you otherwise is full of it.
Re.Playing jazz on a Warwick?
Why the hell not?
It's a bass.
You can play any style of music with it,& anyone that tells you otherwise is full of it.
Mate,I say this with the utmost respect.But when you're getting compliments on your pickguard,instead of your playing &/or tone,well.I'm sure they mean well.
Your pickgaurd sounds amazing.
It's true.I mean well too.
The type of jazz I want to play, to answer a few of your questions, really is bebop, and post/hard bop. So I guess that practically makes an upright the only way to go. I just don't fancy making the leap to upright and then finding myself out of my depth. I'm not too interested in fusion, as much as I respect Jaco. So if that was the direction I wanted to go in, the bop thing that is, would you all say the upright would be the way to go? I guess the best idea would be to get both! Then I'd be sussed. Ha wouldn't that be the life.
Oh and to answer a few of your questions, I'll be at the NZSM. Yeah I live in New Zealand.
Oh and to answer a few of your questions, I'll be at the NZSM. Yeah I live in New Zealand.
Given the tempos that bop plays at, maybe the best way is to start with what you know, electric bass, to learn your way around the expectations of speed, timing, and styles of bass lines. Then if the encouragement or expectations are there from their end, and the desire is there from your end, start translating what you know to upright and see where that takes you.
In the meantime, you could string your Warwick with TI Jazz flats or La Bella Tapewounds to reduce the snarl and get a more organic sounding blend. Experiment with pickup selection and tone settings. I figure you'll want to switch to neck pickup and pluck near the fretboard. I play electric bass along with a lot of jazz recordings, and you don't get a good jazz tone by rolling the treble down. The bass has to blend, but it also has to have character and a structure of overtones, which also helps define pitch. You may need to roll the treble a little or depress the midrange to remove some of the snarl, but don't roll down to an indistinct thump.
When I was studying jazz at uni, I was using a Warwick Corvette Bubinga 6, and it was fine for the electric bass stuff. I was comfortable on it and I played it the best out of my other basses, and given the huge amount of theoretical material I was processing, it only made sense to do this on an instrument I was comfortable on. It's a versatile instrument if you take the time to tweak EQs and things. Dare to be different; jazz should never be about the status-quo! And, like someone else said, jazz is not a sound or an instrument or a look; it's an approach to life and to music, and it's an art form that can be produced through whatever medium YOU choose!
Later in the degree, it became clear that to get more gigs, I would need a double bass as well. But that's the only reason; to get more gigs. So I picked that up along the way, but I have certainly not made any kind of decision to limit myself to one or the other. In Melbourne, there is an odd anti-electric bass culture amongst the jazz musicians, and that kind of pressure is hard not to bow to - especially when you're groveling for any kind of gig you can get in on. So, as you can tell, despite the ideals of jazz, the business of the whole thing can still have a big influence.
So, stay with your bass if you're comfortable with it. You'll be bombarded with technical and theoretical information at school and you won't have any chance applying it to your actual music if you don't find the instrument comfortable to play in the first place. If you can barely find you way around an instrument (which is often the case with EB player converting to DB), you won't be able to apply what you're learning and you just won't have fun! If you find that you NEED to change instruments as you get into the course, then do it... but not now.
Later in the degree, it became clear that to get more gigs, I would need a double bass as well. But that's the only reason; to get more gigs. So I picked that up along the way, but I have certainly not made any kind of decision to limit myself to one or the other. In Melbourne, there is an odd anti-electric bass culture amongst the jazz musicians, and that kind of pressure is hard not to bow to - especially when you're groveling for any kind of gig you can get in on. So, as you can tell, despite the ideals of jazz, the business of the whole thing can still have a big influence.
So, stay with your bass if you're comfortable with it. You'll be bombarded with technical and theoretical information at school and you won't have any chance applying it to your actual music if you don't find the instrument comfortable to play in the first place. If you can barely find you way around an instrument (which is often the case with EB player converting to DB), you won't be able to apply what you're learning and you just won't have fun! If you find that you NEED to change instruments as you get into the course, then do it... but not now.
you can play jazz with any bass. its all in your fingers. this is highly subjective topic so I would play any bass that sounds good to you. I haven't touched an upright bass since high school and never looked back. If I needed an upright type sound I would play a fretless and dial in the sound with a signal processor
I'm going to have to disagree with you about sounding boomy. I've played a heck of a lot of jazz gigs in the manner stated above and have never gotten a complaint about 'boominess'.
I think, however, we're talking about two different styles of jazz. I'm referencing Monk Montgomery's, ect. age. Where we're playing standards written by Gershwin, Kern, Rodgers, Porter Carmicheal and Ellington and some bop tunes. Not Jazz-Fusion, so although that jazz tone may work in your setting - it won't cut it if you do manage to catch a gig.
So like I said it works for me, maybe we have different techniques maybe different equipment. But my setting described above is more than enough to get a nice thick bass sound by the neck and then when I need clarity to play the melody, bump the tone knob a hair *maybe* and pluck by the bridge.
Hope this helped.
- John
BTW.
This is the cat I'm playing with weekly.
So is this your potential instructor?
http://www.nzsm.ac.nz/people/staff/paul-dyne.aspx
I would touch base (not bass, that'd be weird!) with him now and see what he thinks. I'm betting an upright is in your future!
Jazz is in the player's technique. You can play on fretted or fretless.
BUT - don't defret the Warwick. Buy a Squier Vintage Modified fretless - it will cost less than the value your Warwick will lose if defretted. And you can change the strings on the Warwick and make a big difference in its sound.
BUT - don't defret the Warwick. Buy a Squier Vintage Modified fretless - it will cost less than the value your Warwick will lose if defretted. And you can change the strings on the Warwick and make a big difference in its sound.
