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.
From the newsletter: Education material for the Ubass
In this next issue of the newsletter I will finally let you try out a portion the educational material I’ve been working on for quite some time now.
These so called Lesson Packs is aiming towards different topics and since I haven’t been able to play with my right hand because of a hand injury (more in the newsletter) the first thing up is part of a lesson focusing on the hammer-on and pull-of techniques from a future Lesson Pack 3 ”Etudes and dexterity” lesson.
In the lesson you will be able to try out the interface. I will start by releasing these Lesson Packs in the iBooks format.
This format is available only via the AppStore/iBooksStore so iPhone, iPad and Mac users (Yosemite 10.10 and up) will be able to uses these.
To check ”the market” I have made a little survey trying to find out how many of you that have access to any of the above mentioned platforms. If demand is high, I might put time into transforming/developing versions of these lesson packs for other formats/platforms.
Please fill in this survey (will take 1-2 minutes tops!)
The first lesson pack to be released is Lesson Pack 1 ”Basic techniques”.
I’m still in the process of making the video portions of these lessons, and it takes a lot of time to get these right. Can’t yet let you know about an exact date for the release but my goal is the beginning of 2016.
I get a lot of question about different Kala Ubass models so I decided to make a little chart. In this first chart the focus is the acoustic/electric models.
