Good to see you back, Ben! Been a loooong time for you my friend.

I'll give the tunes a listen as soon as I find my headphones--laptop, ya know. Anyway, keep it up. I see your posts on FB a lot so I know you're busy with the band and all.

Are a lot of metal bassists using picks these days or mostly fingers? Just wondering about that 'cause back in the day it was Geezer, Ian, and Steve (finger, pick, fingers). I'm curious as to what the majority is doing.

--Bo

I think a lot of metal bassists are using picks for the same reason a lot of bassists in general these days are using picks. And that is they WANT god to kill 2 puppies everytime they do. But actually, I have noticed lately there really are a lot of pick-wielding bassists out there. I think it is because more and more guitar players are picking up the bass, be that for good or evil.

Guitarists picking up a bass are at least not as bad as guitar tutors who say they also teach bass.

I totally agree. What the guitar gives to the sound of the band and what a bass gives are two completely different things and require two completely different mindsets.

The majority use picks in metal.
It seems to be an arrangement issue in my mind. Certainly the majority of extreme metal bands function around unison riffing, trying to get it to sound big and forgetting it's the bands that sound interesting that people actually listen to.

Hard to tell people that there's no shame and actually a much better overall sound in the bass hitting out 8s during a blast-beat rather than tremelo picking.

Good to see you too mate. You never know - I may actually hang around a bit.

I thought that might be the case. I've been revisiting Metallica's Kill 'Em All over the past few weeks. I noticed that Burton indeed makes good use of eights instead of trying to follow the chug of the guitars. I agree, it makes for better sounding bass, in my opinion (some of that might just be my old school ways though).

When you mention tremolo picking on bass it makes me think of a really bad Jason Newstead solo I saw on YouTube. There's no real balls in the tone. It's almost like a bass note has to have some space to develop a nice fundamental. Of course, my knowledge of things related to note development is almost to the point of ignorance so I can't speak as an expert my any stretch of the imagination. :-)

In some of the newer "metal" I've listened to (I'm talking about the Slipknots, and Avenged Sevenfolds of the world) it sounds like the bass is just a wall of mush in the background and there's no real definition. As you can imagine, I miss the Geezers and Harrises of the old days and long for that music to make a comeback. I doubt it will.

As for the harder stuff (all the ?-cores I've read about), it seems there's more of a "wall of sound" mentality going on rather than a musical, melodic approach. Thoughts?

--Bo

The so-called wall of sound is exactly what most metal bands go for now. Takes 3 guitars to get one riff right apparently.

The bands that stand out now are the ones that do exactly what we're talking about, although none of that means the basslines have to be simplified, they just need to be written with the bass in mind.
Obscura are a great example (fretless bass going completely mental but with great tone and an independent line there is space for within the song, kinda like mid-era Death).

You're totally right about tone by the way, and it's a simple matter of acoustics. Low notes have a longer wavelength, so they take longer to get to your ear. If the bassline goes too fast, there's no chance for the note to swell, and you end up really muddying the sound.

Getting back to my original point though, none of this is to say that there aren't fast low parts in basslines (to an extent at least) that can sound great. What is tricky is getting that tone right. I'm not the only one who has taken to hitting hard enough to always get a click from the end of my fretboard adding to my attack. The guy from Cannibal Corpse does the same, perhaps even to a greater extent. You can hear his really interesting and unique tone really clearly in any of his work with Blotted Science.

So to get that hard hit I assume you're spending loads of time
working on finger strength to get the attack you want. I use a
medium attack so would imagine developing a plucking attack
like an upright player would be a plus in your case. Am I
correct?

What about the attack angle? Are you striking the strings in an
upward motion or towards the body?

aim your finger just to the left of the neck pickup, attack the string from about 1-2 inches away, initiate the attack from the metacarpo-phalangeal joint. your action should be about a credit card's thickness at the 12th fret.

No, have not had a similar journey, but that's how it's done. play hard. I went and checked out our video to see my right hand technique. I'm all over the place with my right hand. I post it for reference. But, you can see at times how hard I am playing and there is PLENTY of attack. A lot of metal players will use a pick for two reasons. One is speed, that is: they aren't fast enough to play with their fingers. The other reason is for attack. You get more attack out of a pick than you do your fingers. But, you can tell from our video that you can get all the attack you could ever want with your fingers. I recorded it with a D.I. and a Mike. I used the mike to capture the attack as you get more attack with a mike than a D.I. This is a Rock song but I play and sound the same way when we are doing metal.






Dave

That's what I'm talking about Dave! Nice tone, almost slappy. It's similar to what you'll hear on a Hrken recording.

Dave, the tone reminds me a bit of John Entwistle !

I use Rotosound strings just like the Ox. I have since I was just a baby bass player.

: )

Dave

Fair play! Can't get on with them myself. It's all about the DR Lo-Rider for me, but I did grow up on a diet of Jamiroquai!

Kiler tone...and I still dig that video !!!
Peace Ed

*Killer
....ugh....learn to proof read LeFave
:P