Fretless Bass for an intermediate Bass Player?

by Ari • 10 Apr 2017 — 1 minute read

DIva fretless by Marleaux — Marleaux Diva Bass

This is a Diva by Marleaux. It has 26 “frets”. Or, rather, it would be more appropriate to say it doesn’t have 26 frets, since it is fret-less. You get the idea. But any brand will work. My first fretless was an Alembic where I removed the frets. That is a nice way to get used to a fretless model as well: remove the frets from a fretted bass you are used to and fill with a color sawdust (I’d have that done professionally!) that gives you barely visible lines.

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Hi. I'm Ari.

As a bassist, I have toured/played/recorded with a variety of rock, Jazz, and funk bands, I have worked with some incredible producers (Keith Olsen) and musicians (Paul Hanson, Muriel Anderson) and I toured Brazil with Stu Hamm as a duo.

As a bass teacher, I have taught at London Bass Day, Gerald Veasley’s Bass Boot Camp, SBL, Truefire, notreble… I even ran my own music school for a few years before gigs took me back on the road.

One thing to know about me is that I teach because I am absolutely fascinated with the learning process. And I am obsessed with helping others realize their musical potential.

When I started playing bass, I excelled very quickly because I had an amazing teacher who taught me using a powerful method. This method transformed my playing so quickly that I passed a bunch of high-level university auditions and even tested out of entire classes at university even though I had been playing for only a very short time.

That’s what, many years later turned into one of my books, co-written with Wolf Wein, called “The Pattern System for the Bass Player”. I created entire systems of learning based on some of these ideas and wrote books and created courses together with Wolf. Our bass books have sold over 30,000 copies and garnered rave reviews.

I started teaching online in 2009 and have embraced technology as a powerful learning tool since then, never losing sight of the importance of providing feedback and personalized guidance to learners.

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