Here’s a finger style demo of my new Overwater Hollowbody Thinline fretted 6-string bass. I’ve owned the bass for a couple of weeks now and I wanted to get a demo out because a lot of people have asked for one. In the video, I’m playing only through the bridge pickup and the low end and the mids are slightly boosted and the treble slightly dipped. This is a tremendously versatile instrument, and this demo only really demonstrates one aspect of its personality. So I will be recording more demos in order to show off its full range of characteristics.
Changes in Rhythm (based on Rhythm Changes) by Johnny Cox
I’m currently writing compositions specifically to be played on this bass. And “Changes in Rhythm” is the first one that I’ve completed. The piece is based on the jazz chord progression known as Rhythm Changes. Rhythm Changes is probably the second most popular jazz chord progression (after the 12-bar blues) and it’s almost always played with a medium fast or fast swing feel. My idea was to take the Rhythm Changes progression but completely change the feel to a slowish 16th note Latin feel. Hence the title “Changes in Rhythm”.
I wanted to record this with a percussionist as a duo. Similar to the concept of Jaco Pastorius and Don Alias playing Donna Lee. But unfortunately the lockdown put an end to those ideas. Hopefully I will record this tune again in the future as part of a duo.
My New Overwater Hollowbody 6-string Bass Guitar – Bass Practice Diary – 23rd June 2020
This week I received my custom made Overwater Hollowbody 6-string bass guitar. It’s taken just over a year to build. And this bass is currently unique. It’s the first fretted 6-string hollowbody that Overwater has made and the first with a 34″ scale length. I’ve only owned this bass for a few days, but my early impressions are very positive. It’s relatively light for a 6-string bass, but the low end it gives you is huge. And it has one of the best low B-strings of any bass I’ve played.
Chris May and Overwater Basses
Bass players outside the UK might not be familiar yet with Overwater basses. The company was founded in 1979 and is run by it’s founder Chris May. Many British professional bass players play Overwaters including Scott Devine of Scott’s Bass Lessons. Chris has featured in videos on Scott’s Bass Lessons and he has earned his reputation as one of the best bass builders in the business.
Over the last few years I’ve spoken to several companies about making me a lightweight 6-string. As you know, I’ve always played Warwick 6-string basses. They’re great, but they’re heavy. And it’s not always practical to take out a heavy 6-string bass. Especially when I know I’m going to be playing long sets. So, I’ve often found myself taking out lighter 4 or 5 string basses when I’d prefer to play 6.
I first spoke to Warwick about making me something lighter. Their position was, that if you make a bass too light, it won’t sound like a Warwick. Which is a very fair point, but it lead me to the conclusion that I needed to look elsewhere in order to find what I was looking for. So, I started by talking to UK based bass manufacturers like Status, Sei and Overwater. All of them make great instruments that I would be happy to play.
The reason that I opted for Overwater was down to Chris May. Out of all the companies that I spoke to. It’s not easy to build a good light 6-string bass. And I felt that all of the other companies I spoke to were slightly cautious about taking on the challenge. But Chris was exceptional in his enthusiasm and expertise and in taking a personal interest in what I needed.
My Overwater Hollowbody 6-string bass
The bass has a Walnut top and a Swamp Ash body. It has a 3-piece maple neck and the neck joint is glued. The fretboard is Indian Rosewood. It’s a thinline body. I’ve played a fretless version of this model with a much thicker body shape and a 35″ scale. It sounded awesome but it was heavy!
Overwater have their own pickups and they match the wood on the pickup covers to the bass. They also do their own 3-band active eq with matching wood covers on the control knobs. The onboard preamp also includes a balanced XLR output, which effectively makes the bass itself an active DI box. With the two outputs you can route the jack output to your amp and send the balanced XLR output to the front of house.
I’ll do a proper demo of this bass in the next few weeks. The playing in this video was literally the first time I’d played this bass. And I was playing with all the EQ’s on the bass and amp set flat. I’ll be able to give a much better demonstration of what this bass is capable of when I’ve played her for a few weeks.
A Quick Tip for Learning the Fretboard on 6-String Bass – Bass Practice Diary – 9th June 2020
How good are you at locating notes on the fretboard of your bass? There’s a big difference between being able to work out where a note is, and knowing it without having to think about it. Knowing all the notes in every part of the neck is fundamental, but a lot of musicians never fully get to that point.
The fretboard can look very intimidating when you don’t know it well. But I can tell you that it’s much easier to learn the entire fretboard than you might think. It does take an investment of your time, but perhaps not as much time as you think. If you take a methodical approach to learning it, you can learn the entire fretboard in weeks rather than months.
One Note at a Time, One String at a Time
I’m going to show you two exercises for learning where you can find the note C all over the fretboard of a 6-string bass with 24 frets. Most 6-string basses have 24 frets. Having said that, you can easily use this same process to learn the notes on any instrument. It will work equally well on 4 or 5-string basses or on a guitar.
The first exercise involves starting at the open string, and working your way up the neck from the 1st fret to the 24th. Play the note C on every string in every position. You’ll find that the fretboard of a 6-string bass with 24 frets contains the note C in five different octaves. You can play those five C’s in 13 different positions on the neck and I’ve written them out here.
All the C’s on a 24 fret 6-string bass
As you can see, the notes make a pattern in three’s going up the neck. But we’re trying to learn the notes, not just the pattern. So, for that reason, I would also recommend playing through this second exercise.
All the C’s played one string at a time
When you play the notes on one string at a time, it forces you to think about where each individual note is, rather than thinking about the pattern that the notes make on the fretboard.
Remember, that there are only twelve notes in the octave (chromatic scale). So if you set yourself a target of learning one note per day, using these two exercises. Then you’ll learn the entire fretboard in 12 days.
6-String Bass Solo & Chords with Bass TAB & Chord Diagrams – Bass Practice Diary – 14th April 2020
This week I’ve transcribed a 6-string bass solo that I played in practice. It follows on from what I was doing last week, finding creative ways to use pentatonic scales in jazz solos. These days I often practice the same ideas on both guitar and bass. In this case I started by playing some pretty chords on the guitar. Then I came up with two pentatonic scales, a tone apart, that worked on each chord. So, each chord had a different pair of scales. I then tried to improvise lines on my 6-string bass using the two pentatonic scales plus a third outside scale that sits exactly between the two scales. Using this idea I was trying to create inside/outside jazz lines in the same way I did for my pentatonic jazz lick last week.
The Chords
Having done this I then switched it around. So, I worked out how to play the chords on my 6-string bass and I improvised solo lines using the same system on the guitar. Here are the chords and scales that I used in the video.
The first chord is Emaj9, and the two inside scales are C# minor pentatonic and D# minor pentatonic. The reason I chose those two chords is that I was thinking of the Emaj9 chord as lydian, and those two scales spell out the E lydian sound very well. The outside scale would have been D minor pentatonic, but I didn’t use it on the solo I included in the video.
I then played a sequence of major chords over a peddled E bass note. D/E creates an Esus chord and I used the B & C# minor pentatonic scales and C minor pentatonic for the outside notes. Then on C/E I used A & B minor pentatonic and Bb for the outside notes and then A/E I used F# & G# minor pentatonic and G for the outside notes. In each one of these slash chords I was thinking of the major chord as being lydian.
Finally I played an Em9 chord which I treated like a II-V-I in D major, exactly as I did last week. In fact, I tried to used the lick from last weeks video on this chord. I didn’t execute it perfectly but the idea still came across.
The Solos
These solos are a long way from being perfect, they represent what I’ve been working on this week, which is the point of my bass practice diary. I’m including the transcriptions here to help you see my thought processes as I tried to create these lines. But I’m sure that you can take these ideas and improve on what I’ve done, which is what I’m going to do as well. It’s actually a great exercise to transcribe your own solos, because you can immediately think about how you would do it better next time. Here is the bass solo I played in the video.
6-string Bass Solo featuring Inside/Outside Pentatonics
Chord Scales on Six String Bass – Bass Practice Diary – 22nd October 2019
I’ve done a few videos recently about chord voicings and progressions for six string bass. So, I felt that I really needed to do a video about chord scales. Because chord scales might be the best way to practice playing chords on bass. If you really want to explore the full potential of every chord voicing that you play. As well as learn how to use them all over the fretboard. Then practising chord scales is the way to achieve that.
What is a chord scale?
You can turn just about any chord voicing into a chord scale. The idea is, that every chord implies a particular scale. There may be more than one scale option for a particular chord. For example, for an E7 chord you could us E mixolydian. But you could also use plenty of other scales, like an E lydian dominant scale. In that case you could come up more than one chord scale.
Once you have a chord voicing and a scale, you simply create a chord scale by moving all of the notes in your chord voicing up one scale step at a time.
So, I’ll use the C major chord scale that I used in the video as an example. The C major scale goes C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C. And the notes of the C major chord are C, E and G. So, to make the second chord in the scale, the C becomes D, E becomes F and G becomes A. D, F and A is D minor. And when you continue moving up the chord scale you get seven different chords. One chord starting on each of the seven notes of the C major scale.
C Major Chord Scale
More Chord Scale Examples
Here are some more examples from the video. This first one is in F major and uses a basic triads voicing.
F Major Chord Scale – triads
Here is the same key using seventh chords.
F Major Chord Scale – 7ths
This next one is in the key of A major, and it uses inverted triads. Meaning that the root note is not the lowest note in the chord voicing.
