Xavier Padilla - Brought you by the HG Thor Guitar Lab

Xavier is currently the bassist for the Gipsy Kings. Here are some links:
http://www.gipsykings.com/bios.html
http://www.nonesuch.com/Hi_Band/gipsy_frame.html
See reviews of his new CD release: "Tools For Tales" at Jazz Valley:
http://www.jazzvalley.com/musician/xavier.padilla
Xavier playing his Fender '62 Fretless Jazz Reissue "Jaco" bass with HG Thor Epoxy treatment: xavierjaco1.mp3 "This was improvised around Sony Rollins's Saint Thomas calipso tune. I used only the bridge pickup, all the way open and the tone control 2/3's open. Strings Thomastik-Infeld Jazz Bass roundwound, not new. Recorded to the hard disc of my Mac through a Yamaha SW1000XG sound card linked to Logic Audio. Added reverb. No overdubs. Hope you like it. - Xavier"
You may email Xavier Padilla at: xavierpadilla@online.fr

Foreword:
After many emails and then actually meeting Xavier Padilla, I have come to believe that he is a true artistic genius, an original thinker tempered by a study of history, has solid concepts yet is a good listener with an open mind combined with a strong sense of global oneness. A unique and powerful combination of characteristics which are bound to establish his presence vividly in the contemporary music scene, and for years to come. His killer chops and unique perspective on bass playing, technique and deep historical understanding of music and its mechanics have reshaped my thinking on many fronts. Xavier has many new revolutionary thoughts on bass design, music notation, and is an oustanding composer/arranger. I am honored to be a part of his life, as his friend and luthier. This page will be an ongoing forum for Xavier's ideas, so please check back often for updates. -Harris G. Thor

"I should say first that I've never played before a fretless bass with an epoxied fingerboard. The effect epoxy produces in the sound, for a first timer like me, is amazing: everything is brighter and all details come out clearer. As an instrument, I feel like the bass becomes more sensitive. Vibrato, which is essential in fretless playing, becomes more responsive, as if the rotating movement of the finger upon the string was now better "heard" by the neck.

"Epoxy may be the right transitory layer connecting the metal hardness of a string and the relative softness of the hard wood's neck. Without this epoxy interface a lot of physical data is surely gone. In that sense, I guess the number of epoxy coats is crucial in determining a good balance between both wood and metal sonic properties. I would say that with epoxy coats on the fingerboard a fretless electric bass still gets a woody sound, but with a new element that brings it closer to that of a grand piano. I definitly get that with my Jaco bass now, which I didn't get before with the original polyester finish it came with.

"I now realise that in 22 years or so of bass playing I've never comme accross a neck so well prepared for playing as this. I've been playing it now for about four hours since yesterday, and it's like I've never played a fretless before and didn't know what a pleasure it can be. Only for this you have dramatically influenced my life. I would really like that great fretless players (like Pino Palladino), you know, really famous ones (not like me) become your customers as well. If I meet one, I'll wash his head (remember I got one bass player, perhaps the greatest on earth right now, playing for a bassdom holder like Joe Zawinul). If Fender ever decides to produce another epoxy fretless, you should be the guy.

"I consider an instrument as an extension of the human being. This piece of wood laying under the strings is something I carved and installed myself on my main bass, a 77 jazz bass, around 1988. I have always complained about the flat surface of almost every pickup there is, I've never found reasonable that they are flat when the strings actually decribe a curve. Why not have them to match that curvature? There are many obvious reasons supporting my approach. The fullest sound on any stringed instrument is achieved with a downward (towards the body) struck of the fingers. This was best developed through the evolution of the classical guitar, and is called "apoyando". Sideward strucks result in a less fuller sound, as well as the pull out strucks, which called "tirando". The "apoyando" struck seems to put into action the instrument as a whole, in acoustics terms, and therefore get the most out of it. Now, the guitar strings present narrower distances between them than the electric bass ones, and therefore the articulating fingers, index and middle, don't go as deep between them as they do on the electric's. Going too deep for the fingers in "apoyando" plucking translates into a slow articulation because it demands an extra physical movement of the fingers, which travel a longer distance, and therefore ask for more energy to be spend. Here is where an apropriate underneeth surface below the strings on an electric bass would play an important compensatory role. Unfortunately, the flat surface of pickups do not serve this purpose, almost forbbiding a righteous approach at this place of the instrument where plucking "apoyando" is so important. Pickup designers might argue that their job is principally electronic, not ergonomic. Perhaps they need the imput from players asking for that sort of thing. Now the Fender shape, for example, including that of the pickups, is called classic because so many great players, some of which were actually geniuses, made career with them. But great players and geniuses, in my opinion, would have made career on no matter what. In fact, the whole area from the end of the fingerboard to the bridge saddles should present an adecuate underneath surface for the fingers in order to allow the player to profit from a legitimate, good articulating technique. We can always reserve a very specific area for other techniques like slaping and popping if necessary.

I can strike them apoyando due to two things:

1)

I do not hold a Fender bass like it is conventionally hold. I use two straps (one in the normal fashion and another that's attached to the lower pin and goes around my waist and returns to the same pin) to get the bass in a more upright fashion, which changes radically the way my right hand approaches the strings. (The reason for that posture of playing has to do with other things too, like diminishing wrist angles for both hands, to gain better acces to the higher register, to fix the position of the instrument relative the my body -independantly of my movement in space- and diminish the weight on my left shoulder).

2) I have built on my main bass (Fender jazz 77) a small structure that can be seen as a complex thumb/ring rest which provides a better hand positioning for that purpose.

But there are also two inter-related limitations to apoyando:

1) High speed of alternancy between upper and lower strings and

2) radiused string disposition. The shorter the radius implicated, the less probable the apoyando is going to happen

"Another underdeveloped issue on the electric bass design, in my opinion, is thumb rest. But that's another whole story which implicates a lot of different parameters of use, like the solution of medically adviced dangerous wrist angles for both hands which remains untreated at present in the modern standard electric bass design. There is a guy who I believe has solved this problem of wrist angle (http://www.littleguitarworks.com/index.html), but there is still a long way to go before reaching the full electric bass "real" standard design. In Fenders there are all the basic elements of the instrument, but they've been called classic too early and mostly as a profitable marketing adventure. When I say "real" I'm imagining something comparable to the violin or the cello, where millimeters are so jealously preserved worldwide. Those millimeters are almost like the official support for both instrumentalistic proven techniques and luthierie secular achievements.

HGT: "What exactly would you like to see for a thumb rest and playing geometry?"

"I have designed a very special and unique system of right hand articulation. You should see a picture.

I use a different thumb rest for each string I play, in combination with a ring finger hole/rest that put my ring finger to function as a pivot for back and forth hand movement. Much of the system is intended to dump the strings that are not being played. The thumb has the function of damping the A and E strings when I'm playing the G and D strings respectively (when I'm playing the G string and my thumb is on the A string, the pinky is dumping the E string. The G string can only be damped by the left hand, while the D is only damped with the first or second finger after they play the G string. If I'm playing on the E string, my left hand damps the other three strings and my thumb is resting in a thumbrest carved into the bass body. Similarly, if I'm playing on the A string the left hand is damping the G and D strings and the thumb is resting in another thumbrest carved into the bass body). I'll try to make a picture of this structure/base, it is really odd and was made to my hand measures ...by myself.

"I have also made thumbrests on the back of the neck! It did weaken the neck seriously, but I gained other things (I've always thought of my bass like a prototype for a future bass, but allways stick with it !!). They had to be eight in number but due to the neck/body joint I could only make six. They are related to an eight position note-reading-fingering-system I figured specifically for the electric bass. This is a very (very) extended matter I worked on for years and hope be able to publish one day. It is an alternative system for reading fingerwise, automatically, notes from the staff.

(To HGT) "I told once I will send you a text I wrote relative to a book I'm preparing, now for years. Here you have it. Its a post I did in a forum and includes parts of what is intended to be the foreword of my book, which is called Note-Reading Fingering System For Electric Bass. As you will notice, once you read the text, I'm sort of engaged in a history/evolution of the instrument thing, which covers instrumental technique as well as instrument conception (dessign). These two thing can only evolve together.

"I have even tought of a bass made specially for reading music, based on the system I invented. In the text below I don't say I have already invented one system, only that it is necessary. I wanted to see the reaction among players in the forum I posted it. I tell you, I was a very polemic forum:

"Open letter to all of you who think -or do not- that electric bass players need a legitimate fingering system for reading:

'To read music in general we must understand first the standard music notation system, of course. But to read music with an instrument it is required to know, in addition, the particular fingering system of that instrument. That means that reading with an instrument is a more complex task, for it supposes the good combination of these two independent systems. While one is related to the eyes and the other to the hands, in the end both are nothing but conventions that need to be learned separatedly first, as each contains lots of specific information on its very own.

'It is a general belief, though, that written music teaches the player along how to finger any instrument, taking for granted that sight-reading notes from the staff would lead our hands automatically to the right places. Unfortunately, this can only be effective for instruments whose "closed physical structures" produce what is called "fixed fingering systems", as in the case of saxophones and trumpets. These instruments simplify enormously the inmediate fingering of first-time seen material -and therefore the conversion of new music into live phenomena- because all the notes they read find strictly non-flexible correspondencies on their bodies, every pitch
disposing of just an exclusive physical place on them.

'The electric bass, on the contrary, being an instrument widely characterized for allowing many fingerings -and places of the fingerboard-
to a single note, prompts instead the player to continuously choose where and how the information is going to be handled. Its "open physical structure", in itself a precious inherent flexible condition that favours the freedom to personalize our playing, turns suddenly into an obstacle: the paradoxal condition of been limitated by having so much to choose from.

'In a sight-reading situation, knowing where all the notes are on the neck not necessarily means to know how (that is, an exclusive or prioritary way) to finger them immediately. The electric bass fingerboard presents, in fact, too many wheres, and therefore too many hows.

(Not only that it has many wheres for almost each note, but that each where doesn't contain exclusive hows. Prioritary hows, in turn, are only possible if two or more wheres are related as previously prioritary wheres!)

'If we didn�t have always that many options at hand while in a sight-reading situation, the mission of finding instantly related fingerings on the bass wouldn�t, as it does, consist on an obvious display of choosy mental efforts. We would instead focus better on interpretation and follow more confinedly the part. The complexity of the task, however, doesn't seem to get us to the subconcious required reflexs.

'A comparative regard upon the greatest variety of musicians shows that sight-reading with an instrument is a task generally best covered by instrumentalists other than electric bass players. Whereas for most instruments "where" and "how" mean more or less the same thing, on the electric bass these words can be so particularly dissociated that some diligent (but too courteous maybe) professional rules, like giving the bass players the parts before anyone else, are sometimes fully justified. Definitely we need an alternative method (a system) to show us how to finger on the electric bass any written part instantly!

'Too often we tend to think that the solution lies outside our instrument. Incidentally, the general qualified advice of teachers and professionals is to strive for improving our ability on what actually are only "page matters", i.e. the half of the story: "train hard yourself on sight recognition for pitchs, intervals and rhythms; get a degree of eficiency at absorbing musical contents through the standard notation system". It is presumed implicitly that by doing so the relative �instrument matters� would fall along into place.

'From those qualified, official recomendations, the aspiring bassist infers that reading much ahead on the staff is what it's all about, a "gain-time" solution that really works against the abundant fingering choices always available. But that's a deviation, a misleading omission which unfortunatly most educators and players have been insisting on for decades, disregarding the essential open structure of the electric bass as a real problem in sight-reading.

'The topic of fingerboard employment has been usually smoothed out behind the obscure nomination "reading skills", aluding to those mysterious capabilities that all experienced players are suposed to have but not one finally breaks down into a system for others (sometimes under the excuse that "what works for me not necessarily works for you"). A doubtful, anyway, propietary circumstance which evokes top clearences to sacred places, self spreading mystifications, though in reality it might be nothing but the idealization of an unsuccesfully conquered professional area. Meanwhile, it is a well paying secret which usually we believe will be revealed to us if going to the right schools and pros.

The problem lies decidely not in the page. Our bass neck have a totally variable structure which does not tell alone the player an exclusive way to approach them, the amount of theoretical fingering choices being overwhelming: 80 locations on a Fender�s neck where to put a finger!

'At the same time, there are mostly 5 different possible fingerings (if we use a standard position of one finger per-fret and occasionally extend one onto a fifth fret) for each of these 80 finger-places. That makes about 400 fingerings in all (5 x 80), to which it must be added the fact that multiple locations do exist on the fingerboard for almost every single pitch to be found on the staff. This, again, is an enormous exponential increment of fingerings to choose from, which can only further complicate reading. It tell us that out of all 36 pitchs actually contained on a typical Fender, 6 are located simultaneously in 4 different places of the fingerboard, 10 found in 3 different places, other 10 in 2 places and only a small remainder of 10 pitches located each in one exclusive place of the neck.

'On the �fixed� structure of other instruments either do not exist multiple pitch locations, or these are contained in much smaller quantities. A saxophone or a trumpet, for example, only very exeptionally allows more than one fingering for playing a pitch: generally just 3 notes can be played differently within the saxophone�s full extention, and there are only about 6 of the same sort in the trumpet�s (against 74 alternative fingerings -out of 26 multi-location pitchs- on our bass!).

'On the other side, while those wind instruments allow the player to �assume� the music that�s being played from a steady physical base, the electric bass player is obliged to move constantly in search of a place (position) on the neck where to finger the notes. The best way to move accordingly, says the common belief, is by looking for keys in the music as to quickly define positions and fingerings. This also supposes to reduce the amount of alternative fingerings to choose from along the course of a piece. Nevertheless, this key dependency presumes that players would always be conscious about the current key, which in reality is not so. Instrumentalists aren�t always informed of the key by the page, nor the notation system is intended to count on their ears. Even sometimes there are not tonalities at all in a tune (atonal music) to provide key positions or sugest any of our eventually well learned modes.

'Let us be clear, electric bass players have tried for years to get away with what they�ve got, developing fast and complicated shops that rely exclusively on their capabilities for looking much ahead into the page (a skill they�ll try to develop not just in order to avoid been surprised by tricky lines, but to quickly figure out fingerings for upcomming written passages -which already shows a double responsability). Subsequently, they would be constantly turning back their eyes rapidly into the fingerboard as to perform imperative shifts without failure, but then getting to finally watch the conductor (if there is any) only in their dreams!

'The eye-to-page effectiveness is in obvious contradiction with the eye-to-neck dependency.

'Please, then, let us get to work and find once and for all a solution to this dilema (one that would work for all of us). The books we own don't have it. The one we are looking for hasn't been written yet. So let us find a fixed fingering system (which I believe to be the apropriate kind) that would work solidly in every case, and avoid passing this problem on to the next generation of players over and over.

Xavier Padilla"

The problem of standing vs sitting playing position examplifies how little luthiers have thought about designing an electric bass that stays exactly the same in both ways. But it isn't exclusively their fault, since we as players are also responsible for telling them what we need, which in this case is crucial. Honestly, when we regard the situation, what an omission!

This shows that practice, practice and practice, as Mr Anyone says, and which is of course a positive thing to do, won't be enough for him: he"ll need practice, practice and practce in sitting position, and then he'll need practice, practice and practce in standing position.

Your training of muscles in one position doesn't address the other if the bass you are using doesn't stay "the same" in both ways.

If things, at present, were more developed (as we tend to think they are) such an elementary detail would have been already covered and standarized by the majority of bass factory conceptors. If times were so, normally before buying an electric bass we should have to ask the vendor what are we buying: a "one-way-playing" instrument or a "both-ways-playing" one. But today we wouldn't be understood inmidiately if asking so: the state of things regarding these (and other) design topics isn't really so evolved yet, as the prices we pay would make us believe.

To avoid treating superficially (or pseudo-solve) the problem of sitting vs standing, we should try to talk more about instrument design, instead of advicing others to hold the bass higher, or put efforts in looking for similar shortcuts. As someone pointed out in an internet forum, "holding the bass higher makes the right hand wrist bent at an extreme angle". Angled wrists are highly dangerous on both hands and are therefore medically counter-recommended, which is another issue to be properly addressed in bass design.

Nowadays, if we find an electric bass that can be hold and played in exactly the same position while sitting or standing, it would be an exceptional instrument (when, in fact, it should almost be the rule).

It is clear that, as of now, all efforts and research on bass conception have been concentrated on materials, electronics, hardwear, esthetics and construction methods. Ergonomics, or which is the same, human oriented instrument design in conjuction with human oriented playing techniques, represent but a very small percentage. We rely on designs over-exploited and sacralized by mass production companies that say too little of how ergonomical or instrument could be today.