To say that root notes are a bassist’s bread and butter would be inaccurate. In fact, they’re a bassist’s bread, butter, french fries, milkshake, and a decent chunk of their hamburger to boot. Huge swaths of bass lines across a multitude of genres are made up, if not entirely, than almost entirely out of root…

Let’s start with a joke: Hey, what do you call the worst guitarist in a band? The bassist. I like that joke, not just because making fun of bassists is eternally hilarious, but because there’s at least a little truth to it. I don’t think it’s fair to say every bassist secretly wants to be…

Recently, I’ve embarked on a mission to listen to every song to appear on Billboard’s year-end hot 100 list since the list’s debut in 1959. It’s an endlessly fascinating project, and as great as it is admiring old classics and cringing at long-forgotten failures, the best part of the whole endeavor has definitely been discovering…

For most of my life as a music listener, I’ve been somewhat resistant to genres of music that a) largely eschew vocals and b) don’t rely on tight, memorable melodies or pop-centric structures. Whether it’s classical, techno, or jazz, I’ve always had a hard time connecting with forms of music that aren’t interested in giving…

I love lyrics, both reading and writing them, but as a bassist, I tend to compartmentalize thes kills I cultivate as a bassist and think of them as being separate from and unrelated to the skillsI cultivate as a writer. I think a lot of musicians operate in much the same way, especially when they’re…

One of the most infamous signs of a novice bass player is the infamous “scooped mids”. When I started playing gigs regularly, I learned fairly quickly that that wasn’t a good way to go when playing with a band, but it took me a little bit longer to really understand just how valuable the mid-frequencies…