Fretless Freedom with the Seamoon Funk Machine

Funky good times with my fretless Cortex bass and a Seamoon FX “Funk Machine” pedal! I love envelope filters and this one’s a favorite for sure, it sounds fat and juicy, fully analog with nice sub harmonics. This classic pedal from the 70’s has been revived by amazing bassist Neil Jason with Seamoon, doing the funk a welcome favor. He played the pedal back in time on some legendary recordings and made it now available again, the 70’s ones are hard to get by so it’s pretty cool they got it back into this era. Envelope filters are all about groove and funk, it gives that squishy edge and percussive spark, it’s just fun, period. I think most bassists that have ventured into pedals have been into envelopes, for good reason :) Besides the Funk Machine I used 3 other pedals: a Rodenberg 707b booster, a Boss OC-2 octaver and a Darkglass Hyper Luminal compressor. I used Ernie Ball Super Slinky round wound strings, the flamed maple fingerboard has a thin layer of epoxy to prevent wear. This fretless Cortex bass has a chocolate maple neck, walnut body and spalted maple top, with a Nordstrand Audio Dual Coil pickup and 2-band Glockenklang pre-amp. The signal was recorded with my Eich T-1000 amp straight into my audio interface into Cubase. I made the drums with Addictive drums and korg percussion pads, mastering was done with Ozone. More funky tunes in the works! At the end of the video on the last note I’m leaning forward to the camera until gravity decided to flip the chair haha, gladly I held on to the bass. I’ll share another camera angle of this take on my other socials where you can clearly see what happens. I shift and lean forward quite a bit during these recordings to keep the shot relevant and interesting, since everything is in one take it became part of my videos and a fun challenge. I have to get my fretting hand in all kinds of interesting positions I’d normally never would do if I weren’t shooting a video. My main goal is to keep the groove fluent during the whole take, whatever else happens is cool, usually the improvisations and happy accidents become part of the final composition. I write out all the riffs but always leave room for improv, one of the best parts about music is that you get to paint that canvas again as many times you want :) This song will be played solo at places like NAMM but there’s already work on some horn melodies and bigger instrumentation, this video is the first version, it’ll be out on Spotify Dec 6th on my new EP “Funkometer“! Did you hear “Trill Seekers/Bananas” yet? It’s my first 7” vinyl single with songs from this Groove Lab in full band studio versions with absolute killer players, we’ll have the vinyl in hand this year, they’re almost ready to be shipped to those who pre-ordered! Order my new 7” vinyl “Trill Seekers/Bananas” with The Big Ol’ Nasty Getdown: Trill Seekers: Bananas: Listen to Trill Seekers/Bananas on Spotify: Apple Music: Facebook: Instagram: Check out the full specs of the fretless Cortex bass I’m playing in this video: My Eich Amplification gear: Seamoon FX: This recording is now available on Bandcamp: Listen to this recording on Spotify: Thanks for watching, let’s keep the funk alive!