Tag Archives: Bass guitar

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Line 6 Helix with Bass Guitar

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Helix with Bass – How Useful is a Line 6 Helix for Bass Guitar Players?

I originally bought my Line 6 Helix LT primarily to use with guitar. Although the fact that it is designed to be used with both guitar and bass was a big selling point for me. If you’re not familiar with the Helix products, they are essentially digital amp modelling and multi effects units.

You can set the unit up like a pedalboard. It has eight foot pedal switches for turning effects on and off. And many of the effects in the Helix are modelled on famous guitar and bass effects pedals. For example you can use a digitally modelled version of a Boss CE-1 chorus pedal or an MXR Phase 90. There are many preset patches already installed in the product when you buy it. Most are for guitar but there are plenty for bass. And you can also make your own patches. Or buy patches from other musicians online and install them into your Helix.

What are the patches I used?

The patches in the video are a mixture of preset patches, 3rd party patches and one that I created myself. Although I have tweaked all of them a little bit to suit my own playing. I’ve marked on the video the patches that are presets. There’s one called Boots Bass, which is clearly designed to sound like Bootsy Collins. Generally I would prefer to mix the sound of this preset with the clean sound of my bass. But for the sake of this demo, you are just hearing the sound of the preset patch.

The other preset is called Tuck n’Go, which features a model of the Ampeg B15. It’s a classic amp from the 60’s, played by bass legends such as James Jamerson, John Paul Jones and Jack Bruce among many others. The patch includes both a compressor and a drive pedal that you can control with two of the foot switches. Of the two demos I did of this patch, one has the drive switched on and the other doesn’t. Both have the compressor on.

Of the other three patches in the video, two were 3rd party patches that I bought from other musicians. The synth bass patch came from an American bass player called Chad Carouthers and the heavily reverbed patch came from the guitarist Johnathan Cordy. The final patch featured in the video was one I made myself from scratch.

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Make a Bass Sound Like a Guitar and a Bass – Bass Practice Diary 160

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Make a Bass Sound Like a Guitar and a Bass – Bass Practice Diary – 1st June 2021

For a long time I’ve been playing with the idea of making electric guitar sounds on bass. As technology has improved over the years it’s getting easier and easier and the idea is becoming more and more popular. I’m sure many of you are familiar with the popular duo called Royal Blood. Bassist Mike Kerr makes his bass sound like a guitar and he takes care of all the guitar and bass parts at once. It used to be the case that there were a lot of octave pedals on the market that created an octave or even two octaves down. But there weren’t many good affordable pedals that could create an octave above.

Using Line 6 Helix with Bass

The Line 6 Helix range of products, which includes the Helix LT that I’m using, have caused quite a sensation amongst guitar players. But they’re not as heavily used by bass players. However, the Helix products are designed to be used with both guitar and bass, and although I wouldn’t use them for everything bass related, there are a few situations where they are really useful. For example, if you want to create a vintage bass tone without investing in heavy and expensive vintage gear, the Helix has some good vintage bass amps modelled, like the Ampeg B-15.

Another situation where the Helix comes into its own is when you want to use lots of effects. You can set the Helix up to be like an all in one pedal board with all your effects controllable by foot switches. You can also import patches into your Helix from other artists. That’s exactly what I’ve done here with this lead guitar patch from the guitarist Johnathan Cordy. It’s worth knowing that he sells his entire patch collection for Helix for £5 including the patch I’m using in the video. However, be aware that he is a guitarist, not a bass player and the patches are all designed to be used with guitar.

My Setup

My setup in the video is actually pretty simple. I’ve split my signal coming out of the bass using a Morley ABC pedal (although I’m only using A and B). From the Morley pedal, one signal goes straight to my Warwick Hellborg bass amp and the other goes to the Helix. I recorded the lead guitar sound straight from the Helix and I took a line from my Warwick Hellborg Preamp for my bass sound.

The patch from Johnathan Cordy is doing all the work. The patch contains an octave pitch shift, distortion, reverb and delay as well as guitar amp simulation. You could probably reproduce all of that with individual pedals and a guitar amp. But it might end up being more expensive than buying a Helix and maybe not sound as good. For live use I would use both a guitar amp and a bass amp and I would plug the Helix into the guitar amp.

Bass Blog

6-String Bass Exercise – String Skipping Three Notes Per String – Bass Practice Diary 156

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6-String Bass Exercise – String Skipping Three Notes Per String – Bass Practice Diary – 4th May 2021

This is one of those exercises that you do when you know a scale well, and you want to find a new way to practice it. There are two techniques I’m practicing here, string skipping and three notes per string. You can use this idea in solos. It will help your scale lines sound less like scales.

Three Notes Per String

The three notes per string idea works really well on 6-string bass. Three notes per string across six strings gives you eighteen notes. So, with a seven note scale like a major scale you can achieve two octaves plus a fourth without shifting positions on the neck. The idea does also work on four strings but you only get twelve notes per position which is a range of less than two octaves.

A Major Scale on 6-String Bass - Three Notes Per String
A Major Scale on 6-String Bass – Three Notes Per String

String Skipping

String skipping or crossing strings, is what I call playing consecutive notes on strings that are not next to each other. So, playing a note on the fourth string and then one on the second string, for example. You need to cross the third string to be able to do it, and it can be awkward at high tempos. There are plenty of other ways to practice that. You could play a scale using 6th intervals for example. But I choose to add this element to my three notes per string exercise, partly because it’s an essential technique to practice, but also because it sounds cool.

A Major Scale on 6-String Bass - String Skipping & Three Notes Per String
A Major Scale on 6-String Bass – String Skipping & Three Notes Per String

If you’d like to see more 6-string bass videos and exercises. I’ve put all of my 6-string bass videos into one playlist on YouTube. You can find it here.

Bass Blog

Armando’s Rhumba – a tribute to Chick Corea – Bass Practice Diary 146

Armando’s Rhumba – a tribute to Chick Corea – Bass Practice Diary – 16th February 2021

Armando’s Rhumba wasn’t the first Chick Corea composition that I heard. But it was probably the tune that really got me listening to him in a big way. His real first name is Armando, but that’s also his father’s name. I have a feeling that the piece is named for his father, but I might be mis-remembering that.

We’ve lost many great musicians in the last 12 months, but none hit me harder than the news of Chick Corea’s passing this week. I have been an avid follower of his work for over 20 years and he has influenced me musically more than just about any other artist. The first time I saw him play live was in 2004. Since that day I’ve made a point of going to see him play whenever he came to London. I was fortunate enough to meet him once after a gig and I was more star struck than I’ve ever been. He was extremely nice to me. He made the effort to make conversation with me, even when I was struggling to put two words together.

Chick Corea 1941-2021

His death, from a rare form of cancer, came as a shock to me. I didn’t know he was ill. He may have been 79 years old, but anyone who has seen him recently will know that he seemed to have a lot of life in him. He did not look, talk, move or play music like an older man.

I woke up on Thursday morning, and as soon as I checked social media, my heart sank. I saw image after image of Chick Corea from posts from so many musicians that I follow. Tragically, that only usually means one thing, and my fears were realised.

I had a ticket to see him play live at the Barbican last year in March with a wonderful trio including bassist Christian McBride and drummer Brian Blade. The concert was cancelled with less than 48 hours notice due to the first COVID lockdown.

I’ve been trying to bring to mind all of the times I’ve seen him live. I was trying to count them and I got into double figures, but I’m sure I’ve missed some. I’ve never paid to see any other musician play live that many times. I think the reason that I kept going back to watch him play again and again is because it was never the same twice. There are other wonderful artists that I have seen four or five times and thought “I don’t need to see them again, I’ve seen it”. I’ve never thought that about Chick Corea. Even when I’ve seen him with the same band twice, it was never the same. He truly was a musical genius.

This isn’t the first time I’ve featured a Chick Corea composition in my Bass Practice Diary. You can find my version of Spain here.

Bass Blog

Cascading Arpeggios Exercises – Bass Practice Diary 145

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Cascading Arpeggios Exercises for Bass Guitar – Bass Practice Diary – 9th February 2021

You probably have an idea in your head of what cascading arpeggios sound like, even though it isn’t a particularly technical musical term. I think that music journalists and writers often use the term more than musicians do. It gets used as a descriptive term in any number of different musical contexts. From classical music to guitar solos.

What are cascading arpeggios?

Usually they are either fast or repetitive descending arpeggios. It’s a very popular melodic device. And they also get used as a way of playing chords under a melody. In theory you could apply this idea to any arpeggio. In this video I’ve only used diatonic 7th chord arpeggios as an example. So, here are the four different inversions of a descending C major 7th arpeggio.

Descending C major 7th arpeggio inversions

You can create an exercise by taking each of these inversions down through all of the diatonic arpeggios in the key of C major. I’ve done the first one of these in the video.

Cascading Arpeggios - Diatonic 7th Chords in the Key of C Major
Exercise 1 – Cascading Arpeggios – Diatonic 7th Chords in the Key of C Major

An alternative way of playing this is to move each arpeggio down the neck of the bass. Position shifting every time you start a new arpeggio. This is harder for the left hand.

Exercise 2 – Cascading Arpeggios in the Key of C Major with Position Shifts

I would strongly recommend practicing these both ways. Exercise 1 is easier to play, and it’s ok to play in one position like that. However, it also helps if you can shift positions smoothly. If you can’t, you’ll get stuck playing everything in just one place on the neck.

The final example that I featured in the video starts on an E7 chord and it uses the diatonic arpeggios in the key of A major. The inversion starts on the 5th, B in the case of the E7 chord.

Exercise 3 – Cascading Arpeggios – Diatonic 7th Chords in the Key of A Major
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Chord Progression on 6-String Bass – Bass Practice Diary 144

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Chord Progression on 6-String Bass with Chord Diagrams – Bass Practice Diary – 2nd February 2021

This week I’ve been coming up with chord progressions on my new Sandberg Superlight 6-string bass. I thought this chord progression was quite nice, so I made a video of it. It uses mostly simple chord voicings, triads and the occasional 7th chord. Simple chord voicings tend to work well on bass. Too many notes in the lower register can sound like a mess.

I started out trying to play something in C major, and as you can hear, I ended up in Bb major. I wasn’t necessarily planning that when I came up with this. But that was where my instinct took me, and when I listened back, I liked it. I did think about including bass tablature in the video. But in the end I decided that chord diagrams worked better.

However, if you’re looking for a note for note transcription, here it is with tablature for 6-string bass.

Chord Progression on 6-String Bass
Chord Progression on 6-String Bass

If you’d like to learn more chord progressions on 6-string bass then check out my YouTube channel, Johnny Cox Music. It features a playlist of 6-string bass videos including several videos on the subject of chords and chord progressions.

Bass Blog

Create Chromatic Jazz Lines – Bass Practice Diary 142

Create Chromatic Jazz Lines by Using Passing Notes – Bass Practice Diary – 19th January 2021

When you improvise a jazz line, you can put a chromatic passing note anywhere, right? That’s true up to a point. But your lines will be significantly improved if you think about where you place them. Chromatic passing notes can be used to connect scale notes and chord notes. In this video I’m looking mostly at scales, but you still need to think about where you play the chord tones. Otherwise your chromatic jazz lines can sound like you’re just playing a chromatic scale.

Chromatic Passing Notes

The idea behind chromatic passing notes is very simple. You simply move between two notes chromatically (in half steps). Major scales consist of five whole step intervals (whole tones) and two half step intervals (semitones). That means that there are five places in a major scale (or any of it’s modes) where you could place a chromatic passing note. Between any of the five whole tone intervals.

If you place a chromatic passing note in all five places, you have a chromatic scale. We don’t want our lines to sound like we’re playing a chromatic scale. We want them to sound like they belong with the harmony of the music. So, to make a chromatic jazz line sound like it fits the harmony, you need to think about what the chords are. And where are the chord tones in your line.

My Chromatic Jazz Line

Chromatic Jazz Line on a II V I in D Major

This is the line I featured in the video. I’ve used a chromatic passing note on the V chord A7. I’m thinking of the whole line as being in D major, so I’m using the notes of the D major scale. I’m also thinking about the chord tones for each chord. So, on the A7 I’m thinking about A, C#, E & G. The one chromatic passing note that I’ve included on the second bar is placed between the root note, A and the 7th, G. I’ve done that to ensure that both notes land on the beats, while the chromatic passing note (G#) lands on the off-beat.

The rest of the notes in that bar are taken from the D major scale (or A mixolydian mode). The addition of that one passing note between the root and 7th ensures that a chord note lands on every beat. The notes on the off-beats act as passing notes (either scale notes or that one chromatic note). This basically gives us what is known as a bebop scale.

Bebop Scales and Beyond

A bebop scale on a dominant 7th chord is just the notes of the mixolydian mode with the addition of that one chromatic passing note between the root and 7th. It’s a useful scale because if you start by playing a chord tone on beat one, as I did. You can play the scale either descending or ascending. If you play 8th notes starting on beat one, you will hit a chord tone on every beat.

That’s not the only bebop scale. There is one for major chords as well that involves adding a chromatic passing note between the fifth and sixth notes of a major scale. There are three other bebop scales which I might cover in a future video. The dominant 7th version that I’ve used here is the one I use most often.

But what if you want to go beyond bebop scales and play more than one chromatic passing note in a line? I’ve given one example in the video of playing a chromatic line that goes from 3rd down to 7th chromatically.

Chromatic Scale Jazz Line

It’s essentially just a sequence from the chromatic scale. But it works as a jazz line because I’ve planned where the chord tones land. The 3rd lands on beat one, the 9th on beat two. The 9th is a chord extension, but it can be treated as a chord tone for the purposes of making jazz lines. Then the root note is on beat three and the 7th on beat four. When you listen to it played against an A7 chord, you can hear the sound of the chord coming from this chromatic line.

Bass Blog

Sandberg “Superlight” 6-String Bass – California II TT6 SL

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Sandberg “Superlight” 6-String Bass – California II TT6 SL – Lightweight Six String Bass

Update 13/01/2021 I have now spoken to Sandberg and the Sandberg distributer in the UK. I’ve learned that there are two more SL 6-string basses planned to be built. However, they are unlikely to be completed before Autumn 2021. Both basses will be sold by Bass Direct.

The answer to the question, “why did they only make one?” is that the body was cut by accident. Apparently, they had intended to cut a 6-string body from alder. The person cutting the body picked up the Paulownia by mistake. I believe that it was either Bass Direct themselves or the UK distributor that requested that the Paulownia body be made up into an SL 6-string bass.

I also found out that the Paulownia wood used by Sandberg is grown in Spain. It comes originally from South East Asia but it has been imported into Spain and it grows well there.

My Original Post

Here is my new Sandberg Superlight 6-String Bass. Currently the only one in existence, but keep checking this page to find out if and when there will be more. I’ve been trying to find a good lightweight 6-string bass for several years and I was very lucky to find this instrument. I came across it on the Bass Direct website. They are one of the UK’s official Sandberg dealers.

Sandberg SL basses

I did some research into Sandberg Superlight or SL basses when I first heard of them a couple of years ago. They are made in Germany. They make the bodies out of a very lightweight and strong wood called Paulownia. I stopped researching the basses because they only offered them as 4-string and 5-string basses. They still do only offer 4 and 5-string “Superlight” basses. But, every now and then I’ve been checking them online to see if there were plans for a 6-string version.

It was during one of these online searches that I came across Bass Direct offering a Sandberg California II TT6 “Superlight”. I Immediately started doing more research to find out when Sandberg had started making 6-string Superlight basses. But when I went on the Sandberg website, it said that the SL basses were only available in 4-string and 5-string. So, I emailed Bass Direct to try and find out what the story was, and apparently this is currently the only one.

I didn’t get a lot of information from Bass Direct, but what they said is that the 6-string Paulownia body was initially made by mistake. Having made the body they finished making the bass and offered it to Bass Direct. Apparently Bass Direct had suggested an SL 6-string previously. I have emailed Sandberg to ask for more info but I’ve received no reply yet. I will email them again with a link to the video and hopefully they will get back to me at some point.

Use Headphones

I’m sure that anyone visiting my website already knows this. There is a recurring problem if you run a YouTube channel for bass players. The problem is that most people watch YouTube videos while listening to the internal speakers in their phone/tablet/computer. And those speakers are very bad at reproducing low frequency sound. So, when I produce a video, I have to decide if I’m going to EQ out most of the low end. If I don’t do that, then the sound will either distort when most people listen to it, or it will just sound very quiet.

The problem is worst when I’m trying to demonstrate a product, like today. There’s no point in me saying “here is what it sounds like when I boost the bass” and then EQing out the bass afterwards so I can push up the levels. So the sound of the bass in this video is almost completely unedited. I haven’t compressed it or EQ’d it for the benefit of phone speakers.

The moral of this story is that if you want to hear the low end, use headphones or a good speaker. This is particularly true of todays video. I always test my videos by listening to them on different devices before I upload them. I know that some of this is inaudible on small speakers. If I push up the levels it will distort badly. The only solution would be to EQ out the bass which would defeat the point of the video. So I have left the audio alone. Use headphones.

Find a video about my Overwater Hollowbody 6-String Bass here.

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6-String Fretless Bass Modal Improvisation – Bass Practice Diary 140

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6-String Fretless Bass Modal Improvisation – Bass Practice Diary – 29th December 2020

This is a modal improvisation on my Warwick Thumb SC 6-string fretless bass. What do I practice in the week between Christmas and New Year? Inevitably I’ve practiced less at Christmas than I usually would. Normally I would have been visiting various family members. But all my plans were cancelled at the last minute due to a COVID lockdown announced by the UK government on December 19th. However, despite that, I still have a wife and son at home, so my usual practice time got devoted to trying to make Christmas special for them despite the restrictions.

So, what should you practice at a time when you haven’t done much practice? For me, the answer is, just play! Play for fun, improvise, play for the love of playing music. Don’t worry about whether it’s good or not. Just get the feeling of the strings back under your fingers. So, with that in mind, here’s a video of me improvising on a short modal chord sequence that I’ve been playing around with this week.

The Chords

I’ve called this a modal improvisation. But how can it be called modal if I’m improvising over a chord sequence? The reason I’m calling it modal is because the chords are not connected by diatonic harmony. So I’m thinking of each chord as being a different scale or mode to improvise on. There is no key that connects the chords. They are simply connected by a bass note, each chord is played over an E bass note.

The chord progression in the video is very simple. It starts on an Eb major chord over an E natural bass note. That chord resolves upwards onto an Emaj7 chord. Then I raise the 5th and make that chord an Emaj7#5 before dropping back onto the Emaj7. These might sound like really small changes, and they are. But each chord change creates the sound of a new mode.

I think it’s an interesting way to think about chord progressions. Rather than thinking about chord changes. Think about changing just one note in a chord and see how that one note changes the overall sound.

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Christmas Bass Practice Diary 2020 – We Three Kings – Bass Practice Diary 139

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Christmas Bass Practice Diary 2020 – We Three Kings – Bass Practice Diary – 22nd December 2020

Happy Christmas 2020! This is the fourth time that I’ve given a Christmas song the “Bass Practice Diary” treatment. You can find them all on my YouTube channel and JohnnyCoxMusic.com. This year I’ve decided to take on a Christmas carol for the first time. I’ve arranged We Three Kings for double bass and 6-string bass guitar.

The inspiration for this came because I was arranging Christmas carols for online church carol services. As most church services this year are taking place exclusively online due to the pandemic. I’ve been preparing performances of carols (mostly on guitar) to be streamed as part of online Christmas services. It was in the process of doing that, that I started to have some fun with We Three Kings. This arrangement is much to dark and uncomfortable sounding to use for a church service. But I was having fun with it, so I arranged it on bass, and here it is.

The Arrangement

As I’ve already alluded to, this arrangement started life as a solo guitar arrangement. I originally came up with the chord melody arrangement for the verse part on guitar, while pedalling the open E string underneath. For the bass arrangement, I put the E bass note on my double bass and played the chord melody on my 6-string bass. The bass is actually in an altered tuning for this.

I very rarely play bass in altered tunings. But in this case, I needed to reach a high D to be able to play the entire melody. The highest fret on my first string in standard tuning is C. So, I tuned up a whole tone to reach the D. Having done that, I tuned the G string up to A and the D string up to F. This enabled me to play the chord voicings using similar fingerings to those I’d worked out on the guitar. The solos on the intro and outro are both played in standard tuning.

The middle section of the piece was arranged entirely on bass. If I’m being honest, I’ve never really liked this section of the song. So, I wanted to give it a complete overhaul and change the harmony entirely. I tried a few things, but nothing really grabbed me until I started playing the “James Bond” style chord progression that you hear in this section. I was obviously channeling something that I did last year, because I realised afterwards that I played something very similar at one point in last years Christmas Bass Video.

Let’s Look Forward to 2021 (It has to be better!)

This is, in some ways, a strange treatment of a Christmas Carol. It doesn’t sound like a celebration. But, on the other hand, this is a very strange Christmas. I am stuck at home in lockdown, unable to see my parents or any of my extended family. We’re all sheltering from the virus and trying to protect others. So it feels to me like this arrangement reflects the times we are living in. Hopefully next year will bring a more cheerful Christmas Bass Video.