Legendary Upright Bass Influences of Paul Kowert | Reverb Learn to Play 

Gotta love youtube for these comments only. Hats off to your grandfather!

I am pretty new, actually very new to Bluegrass and I'm loving it. Along with Americana and all that good stuff but what I'm not new to is bass. I love a good bassline and I love watching bass players perform and so imagine my surprise the first time I seen Paul with a bow on his bass. I immediately texted a friend whos a bass player and shared the link with him, asking "what is this I'm looking at? Is this some kind of standard practice I just never knew of because they don't do it in Rock?" lol. He laughed at me and said "welcome to Bluegrass, and the bass that accompanies it, it's kind of cool right?" Yep, definitely cool!

You may need an eye exam sir

That's pretty cool! Thanks for taking the time to explain it!

To add onto that, the thing you're looking at specifically is called a 'gate.' They sit by the extension and can be 'closed' to hold the string down on a note. This means that you can set the lowest note anywhere between E and C. Many bass guitar players go for a similar effect by tuning the string down to D for some songs, but with the extension the string tension remains the same and the notes are still in the same place on the string.

Pretty sure it's "Hometown Blues," a song Steve Earle recorded (and as far as I know wrote) on the "Train A-Comin'" record.

Home sweet home by Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs

It's called "solo tuning" but with one note different like the way Edgar Meyer tunes his bass

@@brittfiddle wow so cool to get a reply from you! I love your music! The stuff you do with Paul and Jordan is totally awesome. Thanks for the explanation, I’m gonna try to experiment with the tuning, it sounds super cool. Greetings from the netherlands!

I have heard them both many times and they play very differently. I've seen Paul the most with Punch, Hawktail, and Dave Rawlings Machine. Edgar was his teacher but he has defiantly gone his own way. He was groomed as a classical player but fell in love with bluegrass. Edgar has a much softer touch then Kowert who has a much more aggressive style. He doesn't need to be Edgar Meyer...he is Paul Kowert!

What do you mean by this, Larry?

@@lucyfoster4082 he tries to emulate him so much. It's so apparent in his playing. Clearly he was a student of him while at Curtis.

Larry King I don’t agree at all. I think he emulates actual fiddle players more, as he aptly demonstrates in this video with that bow rocking technique. Listen to him duet with Alex Hargreaves the song Mangrove which I think may be before he studied with Edgar. He also continues to have his pure kick-ass classical technical chops.

Agreed about his bowing touch, it resembles fiddle influence more to me, which I guess makes sense since his first instrument was violin. Larry, what’s wrong with a heavy influence on someone’s sound? You’re saying it like that’s a negative thing.