MY BASS GUITAR JOURNEY
I'm DD. I started playing around 12 years old. I was in bands all the way through high school and stayed with it until the end of college. Then, as is common post-college, I switched gears and focused most of my attention on my non-music career. But the desire to play and write music never left me and I knew I had to give it another shot. That's when I decided to go back for lessons.
And that's when I met the amazing guitarist, composer, and teacher Brett Miller. He's been one of the biggest influences on my playing since I first picked up the bass.
Since then, I've concentrated on three projects: Radius80, 1-900, and instrumental/experimental bass.
MY BASS PHILOSOPHY
My philosophy is pretty simple. I want to be net-additive to a song. That can mean a lot of things. Maybe it's simply dialing in the right sound or adding a lick at the right moment or finding a rhythm that complements a complex guitar line. Or, when I'm writing more bass-centric music, it's finding a balance between harmony and melody and having some fun shredding it up.
My journey is on-going, my gear stays the same (see below), and I continue looking forward to playing, learning, and creating music with such an amazing and expressive instrument as the bass.
BASS GEAR I USE
DAW, MODS, & OTHER STUFF
Software: Cakewalk Sonar, Darkglass Ultimate, Parallax X, AmpliTude 5,
EZ Drummer 3, EZ Mix, EZ Keys, various MIDI & Expansion packs, Guitar Pro 8, Transcribe!, RipX DAW
Hardware: ASUS ProArt Station desktop, ASUS ProArt monitor, Focusrite 2i2 Gen 4
Strings: GHS Bass Boomers (since '87!)
Accessories: MusicNomad
ibanez SR1320SB-AVL (2026) | latest 4-string
ibanez SR800LE-BK (1987) | First ibanez
IBANEZ - The Past, The Now, The Forever
Late 1987.
The year I unwittingly found the bass that would change my musical journey forever. At the time, I didn't know anything about Ibanez SoundGears. Besides being a new line of basses, a line Ibanez introduced early in 1987, information was hard to come by. Remember, this was the late '80s, a time long before the Internet and social media. You learned about up-and-coming instruments from a magazine, if you happened to come across an ad or article, or if you were lucky enough to stumble upon one when you were out and about at your local music store. If the store even carried that specific brand.
Since I was in the market for a new bass, I made a trip to one of the larger music stores in my area, about an hour south of me. Going in, the only thing I knew about Ibanez were two things: all my favorite guitar shredders played them, and the guitars came in quintessential '80s colors (cool, but not for me). I didn't know anything else, least of all anything about the basses they offered.
After walking in and making my way to a row of new basses hanging from a half-height wall positioned close to the registers, I saw it. A sleek, all-black Ibanez SoundGear, the SR800LE. Everything was black on this bass, from the glossy finish (which was also used on the back of the neck), to the pickups, to the unique, rubberized black knobs, to the badass, black Gotoh tuners (a big improvement over the typical, goofy bass tuners of the day), to the dark, rosewood fretboard. Everything looked metal about this bass without it being obnoxious.
And then there was the playability. Pure joy. A very slim neck, a nicely contoured body without the bulk or weight of other basses, and just enough active electronics to dial-in a solid tone. A perfect blend of form and function. Thirty minutes later, along with an official Ibanez hardshell case and a very-metal studded leather strap, I was on my way.
And I haven't danced with another partner since.
IBANEZ PERFECTION
As you can probably tell, I'm a huge Ibanez fan. Some say I might even have a slight problem. I don't think so. No, not really. Well, probably not.