Some years ago I was thinking of playing electric bass and had a look around for podcasts/lessons that might help me. I found a podcast by Jeff Schmidt. He introduced me to the concept of solo bass as a music genre. I think I enjoy bass for similar reasons I like cello music. It can be very expressive and voice-like. Unlike some others Jeff plays a lot of his music totally solo with no backing tracks or loops, so it can be something like a Bach cello study.
This is just him messing around in his studio. I think I recognise some part of this from his recordings.
Note that he is left-handed and plays with the strings reversed so that the highest string is at the top. He often plays in alternative tunings and sometimes with higher pitched strings.
This is a piece from his album Outre that I bought back then. He is playing a fretless bass and it sounds like he has some delay and reverb effects going on.
He has had various other music projects. Ash On Dust was a collaboration with fellow bassist Steve Uccello that created cool soundscapes which happened to include bass.
A more controversial project is has Ruiner Severhead that put out something called The Jesus Fist Tapes. It uses lots of spoken samples refering to religion and police violence. Not for the easily offended, but I like it. This one contains lots of swearing.
I know he has done various soundtracks for some podcasts, but I have not kept up with him recently. His most recent release seems to be some experiments recording to tape from a few years ago. He puts all his music on Bandcamp.
I may do a series of posts like this about musicians I enjoy. Previously featured:
My own debut album is also on Bandcamp.
Rock on!