Official Website 👉 www.anthonycra... Anthony Crawford discuss his techniques on getting great tones from his bass. Download Anthony's new album. phobos.apple.co...
I think this is one of the best bass learning videos I've seen on RU-vid. He is right about what he says and I bet anyone on here that is making fun of how this guy talks and discounting what he says because he's from the hood or whatever probably isn't smart enough to truly grasp the concepts he's talking about even if they were taught by a college professor with perfect english. Thanks Anthony, for pointing out some stuff I kind of realized but now understand in a more enlightened way about hand placement and settings.
I've never played bass, I'm a piano player actually, but I love how a nice smooth bass sounds and want to get into learning one. So it was nice to see how different areas near your pick ups change the sound dramatically. This gave me a better understanding and some tips for when I start learning bass. Also I don't know what people are talking about when they say he's playing flat, he really isn't at all. The tone is great and the pitches are clear, they aren't flat and if they are then he's playing everything equally "flat" meaning that's by choice and still isn't playing flat. There's a lot of songs created by slightly flattening or sharpening the notes. Prince used it a lot to name a person.
Yeah string height is very important. I forgot to mention that. My stings are very low on my neck so I have a little buzz when I play.... but because I play really soft, the buzz is not that noticeable...lol.
Ive been playing gospel bass for a solid 6 years now. We play everything from Israel Houghton to Tye Trybett to Florida mass choir. Ive been fighting to find that tone warm full tone I know I like. I can get it through eq but when i get exited and play to hard my tome becomes horrible and distorted because of amping the low and hi end to much. I have developed that muted warm feel though my hands and your insight on going up the neck and using that for tone is just great. Im going to do my thing playing flat eq from now on . thank you so much. aJ
i'm not even a bassist rather i'm a guitarist yet i still find your tips to be useful. i've always tried to become more dependent on what my hands and brain are doing rather than what my amp or my guitar is ever doing. thank you!
Anthony this is just one of the best and most honest lesson you could teach any young musician. I'm fender for 58 years! Please keep doing this and keep it simple. I still didn't get everything out of a 4 string yet! Cheers!
I actually love having the bass all the way up. It gives me chills when I'm playing tool through my sub sterling and my fender rumble 100, no pedals. No gain No mids No treble Bass up. It just makes me feel a certain way when playing
A great part of his tone is his bass itself: the woods, the preamp, and pickups. His bass is equipped with custom-wound Roscoe Bartolini pickups which are dual-coil pickups. These pickups have a natural burpy tone. Also, the Bartolini preamp imparts a slight color which is very musical. And as Anthony stated, he plays the bass with a flat eq.
That is a great looking bass too! Great video! I'm a guitar player trying to learn how to better EQ a bass sound and this video is great for understanding some concepts!
Thank you so much for the video Anthony. I actually started totally turning off the EQ on my active Status Graphite S2 Classic 5 Strings Headless Bass, and only use the EQ on the Amp or on my tc electronic Spectradrive High Quality Bass Preamp and Drive Pedal. I've been observing who I consider The Electric Bass Guitar G.O.A.T Anthony Jackson, who's Basses actually have only a volume knob or no knob at all. He relies fully on the EQ on the Amp. It's taken me quite a while and experiments to figure out, I'm finally loving my tone lately. Greetings from Uganda 🇺🇬👊🏿🖤
Thanks Mr. Crawford for the insight, you're an amazing bass player. If there's one lesson I've learned as a musician, you gotta keep going back to basics.... over and over..... Tone comes from the hands!!!
Studio in UK - always had problems mixing electric bass - I am a guitarist not really a bass player but this advice worked 100%. Less is more - no EQ now and just some light compression. £1K bass sounds like a £2k bass now! Thanks. Simon Connor.
Thanks for posting this. I've known about tone coming from the hands for awhile but I had not thought about a lighter touch. I'm going to give that a try and see what happens.
dude you can get so much different tones out of the two volume knobs on a jazz bass. i dont even have a tone knob on mine, just the 2vol, its enough to krank the living hell out of them.
great advice and great sound, i have been discovering this style for a while now and also playing softer and letting the amp do its part leaves you more options to discover when you play. love the low action too
Thanks Anthony for your insight on sounds. Something I have been battling lately. I feel as though I just haven't found the sound I'm looking for. .but I guess in time with practice, I will stumble on to something that tells me, yes ! That's it ! ...Thanks again for a good video explaining the different techniques.
I think the EQ can be very useful, because you can just cover a certain range with your hands, if you want to play in a very warm kind of way, so you would have to play with your fingering hand on like the 12th fret, then you should defenitly use your equilizer to adjust that
Slamming !!! Great advice and I really appreciate it. It’s so funny because when record, it’s always the first take or two, and then the first version of my mix that is the closest to my heart. The more EQ, compression, and plugin tricks I add the “better it sounds” but also the less real. I really enjoyed your slap example
The woods on this bass produce a slightly warmer sound. It also sounds like he might be playing nickel strings, but I am not sure. As Anthony stated, his hand placement is a major factor. Jaco Pastorius sounded the way he did because he played right at the bridge, which has a more nasally sound, and he also rolled off of the neck pickup and only used the bridge pickup.
Anthony your 100% correct. Tone comes from the person. Heart》Hands. SRV could have played through a Gorilla combo amp and it would have sounded like SRV. I've also found that in most small to medium venues, let the PA handle the Bottom. If your stage volume is less low frequency that's where the audience here's alot of your notes. So true.
Tone comes from the soul and hands my bass brother awesome video man. Flat eq and just different hand locations some bass and Treb boost for slap and pop or double thump. When I first started I jacked the mids way up or scooped em super hard depending on what I was playing. Now I give a slight boost to my high mids just for a little added to harmonic range. Also how percussive you hit strings with your plucking hand(finger style/slap pop) keep it low Man.
Excelent video! But it's good to remember that when it comes to jaco, having a fretless bass, boosting the mid a bit, and playing only with the bridge pickup and over it are essential things to get near his fantastic tone! But most of it really resides on your hands. Great job!
Brilliant ! So true it's all about how you play,.....obviously good instruments and amps help......but a great player will never sound bad even on bad gear!!! ......great advice AC!.....actually saw a clip of Jaco playing the Chicken on a fretted maple neck jazz,yet it sounded just like his famous fretless.....it's the player not the gear!!!!!
Well said my man. It's never the gear. It's all about the player and what the player brings to the gear thats in available. Thanks for checking out the video.
Thanks for the words of wisdom, man! This is the first of your vid I have seen, I loved it! You are a very authentic and relaxed speaker, I could listen to you all day. Your confidence comes from experience and success - so I'm gonna do exactly what you say: go light on the touch and experiment with plucking hand placement. Do you have any advice for the fretting hand as far as tone?
And a decent enough touch to reflect your bass - I think these things work together once you start getting past intermediate skill level, but not so much before that.
Exactly! Some players don't understand there's a tradeoff for lower,faster action!! Some basses do respond decently with lower action but,they still don't sound as full...string doesn't vibrate the same.
Anthony. First of all, thanks for taking the time to make this informative video. I'd like to comment on one of the suggestions - not turning the bass control on the amp to 11. I play in a classic country band in South Texas and have worked with a lot of weekend bands over the years. I normally play a telecaster or the pedal-steel. In my experience, almost all country bass players do indeed turn the bass control on the amp to 11 and the other EQ controls to 4. As well, they will turn up the volume to compensate for the lack of actual tone. When it's all said and done, they (not me) are the bass player, so I just do my thang on my tele and let them do the same. However, it would be so refreshing to be able to hear the bass as a tonal instrument, rather than the muffled thump I usually hear. Do you have any thoughts on the differences between rock, commercial pop, country bass styles? Thanks - Ben Price - San Antonio
Hey Ben, thanks for the questions. I do prefer the bass as an actual tonal instrument rather than a thump. I find that players that does not understand the tonal aspect of the bass are only just have the mind set that the bass should be all bass frequencies. The bass is composed of multiple frequencies that makes a bass sound like a bass. As far as different styles of bass playing. I try to stay true to the genre that I'm performing. I listen to the genre and understand what makes that genre unique and I try to capture that same spirit when I play different genres.
I have a four string Washburn bass its the mb 2 from the mercury line so its passive bass with p style pickups, playing with a pic myself but I'm learning so I appreciate you doing this video thanks, right now I rest my hand on the bridge my pinky finger hooked under bridge at bottom so can move strings without having to actually eyeball and seems to work for me right now at least. I like to play rock and newer stuff but still learning so ill take onboard all advice I can get :) thanks again for making this vid I noticed when moving pic up and down trying find where I wanted to play that sounded diff but I thought was just me being silly haha
That was a nice, helpful, informative and honest video. I can't understand why some people find the need to make jokes. My view is anyone who can find the time or indeed has the ability to help others along their way when learning any type of skill deserves a big thank you and some respect. Anthony you kept everything concise and to the point. As a fairly experienced bassist myself I totally agree that the majority of the tonality when playing comes from variations within the players hand positions on the instrument. (Although this can be affected by the quality of your backline and it's interpretation through any PA system that may be in use on a live stage setting).Who cares whether your headphones are cheap or not, and how you pronounce certain words. Come on now folks let's get ahead not be dragging each other backwards. If I could make a suggestion I would perhaps do a lesson using a four string bass. Some begginers may be intimidated or feel inadequate by your 6 string. The reality is a truly good musician can make even the cheapest instrument sound great. All the best to you..
True words Anthony, that's the key. In the beginning do not use any effects and go directly into the amp. If it sounds like shit, then work on the sound that comes from the hand. All the best, take care...
Hey Anthony, thanks man for your great vid. I play a splendid Sadowsky 5-string bass amped by Epifani UL502 amp and NYC212 cabinet. Since I have this gear I ALWAYS play with the EQ flat. It does help when you have great gear though.... keep on groovin'
Ok to everyone who is quoting Jaco, watch a live video and tell me he's not constantly tweaking eq. Being able to play and being lazy as far as tweaking things goes are two separate things.
Hey man, I agree entirely with this. I didn't start sounding articulate until I started really honing in on my accuracy as a player. I'm just curious dude, what tuning are you using for this video? Is your bass a whole step down?
This is great advice. It's been said many times before, but still: Don't mess with the EQ, keep it as flit as possible. Same goes for most other instruments as well, and vocals. Use decent equipment and master the playing technique instead of putting lipstick on the pig with effects. (No offense intended to pigs, it's just a saying.) I was trying to get a better bass tone and had been messing around with the EQ too much. Then I saw this video, realised I'd done it all wrong, turned the EQ knobs to flit, and everything improved. Flit is the way to go.
OK guys, I know some of you are just having fun with this guy's accent, but here's the point I got. EQ and preamps and build quality are all there to help you with the sound, but it's all crap if you don't learn how to get the best tone from the start. I've been playing for years, and only now started recording myself. I always got great praise for my playing, but now that I'm trying to record, I find I have no control over my tone. So I tried to use EQ, compression and various bass amp plugin settings, but there were still annoying sounds. None of it sounded like I think it should. Like everything else in music production, you need to start with the best quality at the source (and for the bass, I'm now a believer that it starts with complete control in the hands). Once I can play more cleanly, consistently and intentionally (rather than accidentally), the rest of the tools will all serve to enhance. Abe Laboriel plays $3K - $5K custom basses, but he also sounds awesome on a $200 bass. (I saw this up close and in person.) So I'm gonna practice with the bass "FLET", the amp "FLET", maybe even turn off my active onboard preamp, and use "NOYEQUE" or compression in my DAW until I like my basic sound. And then move on from there.
