The other week I had a bit of free time, so I had a go at something a bit different. Is 3 basses too many?!

I was borderline obsessed with the album Grace when I was a teenager, and this tune has some beautiful changes. I actually came up with the chordal part (as played by the bass on the left) a few years ago, but wasn’t satisfied with how it sounded on its own. I’ve previously done solo bass arrangements with vocalists and other instrumentalists, but this time I decided to make it challenging in a different way.

The stompbox and the foot tambourine were relatively last-minute additions to the arrangement. I had planned to try playing both at once, either whilst playing the harmony part or the upright, but decided to split them between the two to save my brain too much work!

This is also the first time I’ve recorded a video on upright bass, despite having owned one for 4 years. I’m still nowhere near the standard I’d like to be, but it’s such a demanding instrument, so progress is slow. Watching the video shows me just how dodgy my technique is too – something else to work on!

Another learning curve was the video edit. I’d not tried making a composite shot before, apart from some brief tests when preparing for this shoot last week. It’s pretty basic stuff if you’re a proper video editor, but nonetheless it took me a while to figure out how to blend the 3 shots together. Turns out ‘garbage mattes’ are useful!

Hope you enjoy this one. It was fun to put together!