LEGATO PLAYING MADE EASY
Welcome back! This month, we’re going to look at an aspect of controlling your sound that is often overlooked, but which for a number of reasons has become more and more noticeable over the years—giving notes their full length.
The amount of decay we want in a particular note—from ultra‑short palm-muted notes to infinite sustain—is a huge factor in shaping the sound of a line and its impact on the song. Today, we’re looking at the sustain end of the graph.
The reasons why this has become more significant over time are both stylistic and technological. Style‑wise, the prevalence of synth bass in much pop music has brought about a taste for incredibly smooth‑sounding bass‑lines—often with no gap between the end of one note and the start of the next.
Simultaneously, advances in bass guitar manufacture have also impacted the degree to which controlling the tail end of the note is a significant factor. A lot of older basses had a relatively short natural decay. That that’s way easier to fix, and a lot of modern construction methods have caught up with what graphite necks are capable of in terms of sustain. Our basses now demand a bit of a rethink in terms of what
