Video by Andrey Lovkach

Here are some funky fretless grooves with thumb & fingerstyle plucking, slides, double stops, staccato ghost notes, vibrato and more fretless fun! Recorded in one take on a pre-recorded drum track, I first write the grooves and song structure just on bass, then record the drums in Cubase with Addictive Drums and jam with it for a while. From writing process to shooting the final take it usually takes around 3 weeks, the challenge of a single take performance is where it’s at for me, no edits. I’m playing my custom fretless Cortex bass with a Nordstrand Dual Coil pickup and 2-band Glockenklang preamp, strung up with Ernie Ball Cobalt Slinkys. The bass has a walnut body, spalted maple top, flamed maple fingerboard and a chocolate maple neck. I added a spalted maple finger ramp temporarily for some sessions. Tuners are Gotoh, single string bridges and a compound radius give great action across the epoxied fingerboard. The signal was recorded with my Eich T-1000 amp’s DI, straight into a Focusrite Scarlett into my laptop. I used 3 pedals: a Darkglass Hyper Luminal, a Rodenberg 707b booster and an Ebs Multicomp, no plugins or digital processing. Drum mixing and final mastering done in Cubase with Izotope Ozone 9. More in the works as always, thanks for watching & all the best for the new year! Check out my new album “Bass From Space“ on Apple Music: Bandcamp: Spotify: Facebook: Instagram: Check out some fine Cortex basses: My Eich Amplification gear: Cheers!