First release by Nilsson – Sjöquist Duo!In this first release, by the Swedish based Nilsson – Sjöquist Duo, we want to show our love for the music of Brazil and this time we feature a Sivuca song!
We play an arrangement by Tommy Nilsson of the song ”Cada Um Torce Como Pode” made famous by Sivuca.
Both Tommy Nilsson and Magnus Sjöqust have been playing in different groups and projects for many years.
The duo format is nice because it gives us a lot of space to express ourselves through our instruments, the accordion and the bass.
Side note: In the recording I used my trusty fretless Kala spruce acoustic/electric ubass. However in the accompanying video you’ll see my new fretless Kala California acoustic-electric ubass!
Quick links to some of the places you can find the song:
Long overdue here’s finally a short travel log about my trip to the 2017 Winter NAMM Show in Anaheim, CA
I have been to a couple of music trade shows in Europe as a visitor but this was my first trip to the Winter NAMM show in Los Angeles. It was also the first time working closely with Kala. My main focus was to release and letting people know about my first Ebook/ePub in my Learn to play the Ubass series.
I started working on the ebook back in 2013 and it has slowly taken its form. The basic idea and the text was ready after about a year but working on how to present it, all the movies and the graphics and navigation took quite a while to finalize. You can read more about the Ebook/ePub and where to find it here.
After a +10 hour flight from Stockholm ARN I landed at LAX and took a bus to Anaheim where I met staff from Kala. I settled in and started to plan the next coming days.
I arrived on Monday, January 17 with the show starting on Thursday that week. I helped out a bit loading in some stuff and setting up the booth. The booth was fantastic with a really well throughout design that got a lot of compliments from many visitors and booth neighbors.
Load in and set up of the Kala Booth
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Once the show started I met a lot of great people, both visitors, other companies and press. Besides talking to some online magazines myself I was also fortunate to get help to set up some meetings and interviews both from Kala and other friends in the music business. It was, for example, crazy to see Nathan East being interviewed in the exact same spot a day before I got an interview from the same online community! 🙂
You can find the news coverage and interviews here.
I got a lot of new friends at the show and also managed to do quite a few nice jams with amazing musicians. Bakithi Kumalo, Miki Santamaria,Corey Fujimoto, Ariane Cap, was some of the musicians I got to play with. Great fun!
Booth and NAMM show pictures
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The Ubass got a lot of attention at this Winter NAMM show. 8 years after the first Kala Ubass was released its still a ”show stopper”! Many musicians, including lots of bass players of course, came by and was floored by the small footprint bass with the huge sound. It’s so great to see the happy smiles on the faces of the first time players
The California solid body Ubasses was revamped with slightly bigger and rounder bodies as one of the main differences. Check them out here.
I also got to try out the prototype Paddle Bass by Kala. A great one string bass for a quick and refreshing way into the wourld of bass playing! Link to Bass Musician Magazine article.
All in all my first NAMM show was a very nice experience. And although it’s quite exhausting being on the show floor with the intense sound and constant stream of people I hope to return and continue my ”IRL” networking across the pond as soon as possible!
A big thank you to all the staff at Kala and the wonderful Kala and Ubass artist I got to hang and work with!!!
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I read a Kala Ubass review in Bass player magazine back in 2010. At the same time my parents happened to be on vacation and they helped me to buy my first ubass at a music store in Honolulu while visiting the islands of Hawaii. l had not been able to try one beforehand but it only took me a few minutes getting acquainted with the short scale length and rubbery strings. After that I have gotten more and more in love with the feel and sound of the ubass. Hope you have or will get the same feeling for these amazing instruments! Read more about my first encounter here!
The ebook is packed with amazing features that make learning about the Ubass a new and exciting experience! I will go through these features in detail in a future blog post but for now, let’s have a quick look:
Picture gallery’s that enhances the reading experience
Multi-angle videos that show you how to get the best out of your Ubass playing
Highlighted words are clickable and explained in pop-ups or in the extensive word list. (I bet you can spend hours just navigating the word list alone!)
End of lesson quizzes – check and see if you have understood the lesson you just worked with
Marking text and make notes – find something especially interesting? Mark the text/or make a note – these are collected and can be browsed and/or searched
Abraham Laborial and me before the Open Hands concert in Sweden this past July
Hi,
One day in July I got the news that one of my bass heroes would come to Sweden for one gig. We are both Kala Ubass Endorsees (which is pretty amazing to start with) so I managed to hook up with him through the company.
The meeting/concert was in the southern parts of Sweden and I traveled there with two of my Kala solid body ubasses.
Who is Abraham Laboriel?
Some of you may know about him and some don’t so I’ll give you a brief background here.
Let’s start with some of the artists he has worked with as a session musician in Los Angeles:
Abraham Laboriel Sr. (born July 17, 1947) is a Mexican bassist who has played on over 4,000 recordings and soundtracks.[1]Guitar Player Magazine described him as ”the most widely used session bassist of our time”.[2][3] Laboriel is the father of drummerAbe Laboriel Jr. and of producer, songwriter, and film composer Mateo Laboriel.
Abraham trying out my Solid Body fretted 5-string tuned EADGC
Meeting Abraham was such a joy. He’s a wonderful, warm human being with such a big heart. Hearing/seeing him play live has knocked me every time. He is an ”all in” performer that really speaks to you from heart to heart. He has been in my musical life for quite some time. I told him about hearing/seeing him at concert in the mid 80’s and even in the town where I work now on a gig probably more then 10 years ago.
We started talking and I showed him what I have done on my blog, video lessons and recordings. What was supposed to be an interview became a nice chat about music and life, almost as we had known each other since the mid 80’s…
I really hope we can meet again soon and continue of talk and I might even get around to ask him my prepared questions! 🙂
As I wrote earlier my two solid body’s were on the trip with me and I wanted to show Abraham these. You might have picked up that I have experimented with ”new” strings on these two 5-strings. (I will do a proper blog post about these tests soon!) Anyway, Abraham started playing on the fretted one, unamplified, and after a while I grabbed the fretless one and join in on the quiet jam. It sure was nice to get to play with one of my bass heroes!
5-string fretless. Body finish done with neck in neck pocket
Hi,
I’m finally done with phase 1 of my ”Build your own ubass” series. In this series I will build a Kala Solid Body Ubass. All the parts are from the Kala web shop!
In the first phase 1 worked with the finish of the body. As you might have seen on my instagram or facebook page I wanted to get close to the finish of my Bakithi Kumalo signature solid body 4-string fretless. I’m quite happy with the result and learned a lot in the process!
All associated blog posts regarding this project will be accessible on the DIY page!
I will go into the details about the first phase, but first, let’s check what you need to build your own ubass.
Step 1 – Buy the parts
You need to decide what model you want to build. There are four options:
4-string fretted
4-string fretless
5-string fretted
5-string fretless (the one I’m putting together!)
When I got the parts to my UBass there was a kit option with all the parts included. This is not available anymore so you need to add all the parts yourself at the Kala Web Shop.
Step 2 – Decide on the body finish
I choose to mimic the look of my Bakithi Kumalo signature ubass and went for a so called ”tar” finish. I will not go into detail of the different products I used since these will differ from country to country. It is of course possible to do whatever you want with the body finish!
Please send me pictures of YOUR custom UBass finish so we can show them to the world! 🙂
Step 3 – Put the ubass together
I have compiled a guide from the instructions you could find on the previous version of the kalabrand.com web page.
I have wanted to write about this for quite some time now. I got this kit last year and my plan was to start the project early August…this wasn’t possible because of my hand injury…
But now I’m back on track and will get started with the Kala Solid Body Ubass Kit!
EDIT: This kit is no longer available, you have to add all the parts to the shopping cart in the Kala Web Shop! See more here!
I will build the 5-string fretless based on the US made California series.
I will do this in a couple of phases. First phase has just started, working on the body finish. The goal is to mimic the espresso finish of my Kala Bakithi Kumalo Solid Body.
You will be able to follow each and every step/phase of me putting together the Ubass. Every phase will be a separate blog post, but they can all be easily found on my DIY page. I will update that page as the new blog posts rolls out.
