The Down Low
The Mars Volta bassist Juan Alderete de la Peña talks about how far the bass instrument can stretch and what gear effects his sound.
By Mark Davie
20 July 2013
While a lot of modern records seem to be asking how low can a bass go… in the mix, Juan Alderete de la Peña has different ideas for his favourite instrument. As well as being one of the most solid, and at the same time, experimental bass players around, Alderete has a thing for effects. He plays with The Mars Volta, and members of it in the Omar Rodriguez Lopez Group and his experimental outfit, Vato Negro. He, drummer Deantoni Parks, and ringleader/guitarist Omar Rodriguez-Lopez have to be one of the most expressive and talented group of musicians going around — not to mention prolific. Big Sir, on the other hand is Alderete’s duo with vocalist/instrumentalist Lisa Papineau, the sculpted, fretless antidote to Vato Negro’s often ballsy, eccentric improvisation. People following Alderete’s career would have heard his bass produce sounds anywhere from beautifully, lyrical vibrato modulations on his fretless, to subby helicopter whooshes that push his Ampeg SVT to its limits. He’s a master of expression, and creativity on an instrument that has typically been given the supporting role. To spread a bit of his wild experimentation with the world, Alderete recently started pedalsandeffects.com. Sick of the stodgy, straight up pedal demos on YouTube, Alderete has decided to populate the online video site with his own off-kilter renditions.
Mark Davie: What inspired you to start Pedals & Effects?
Juan Alderete de la Peña: You can pretty much learn anything on YouTube. I have a little nephew who wanted to learn how to do origami and he went to YouTube, next thing he’s making origami.
I was frustrated with a lot of the music-related instructional videos, especially when it comes to pedals. You always find it’s guitar-dominated people, who are studio guys looking for creamy, subtle nuances from their guitar pedals. Whereas I don’t really believe that it makes that big a difference when you’re in a rock band. Everything in a rock band has to be big, really heavy on the effect so you can hear it through the PA at a rock venue or festival. Pedals & Effects lets you hear how insane a pedal can go.
I’m going to play guitar and keyboard ideas but my instrument is bass so I’m starting with that. But if you’re looking for an over the top fuzz, I’m going to cover some of them. If you’re looking for a really grindy distortion, I’m going to cover a lot of them. If you’re looking for how to make your bass sound like a synthesizer, I’m going to cover that.
I’m also going to talk about pick-ups, strings, instruments, and all the tools for the musician and then have a forum where people can have a conversation about it. And if it’s all in one area the community becomes a lot stronger.
MD: So it’s not going to be how to achieve Mars Volta or Vato Negro sounds?
JA: No. For a recent installment I thought it would be interesting to record a great bass player friend of mine and myself trying to get sounds on a new pedal for the first time. It’s the person, the artist, the individual that has an impact on it, and we ended up getting radically different results out of that pedal when we hadn’t heard each other use it.
LENDING A SOUND
MD: So how many pedals would you say that you have?
JA: In storage or in my studio? Pedals are like books. You loan them out all the time figuring that there’s a good chance you may never see them again. I’d have to say over the last 20 years I’ve gone through 500 or 600 pedals. I probably have about 300 in my studio, another 100 in storage, and probably another 100 out and about with friends. And I probably have 100 that I’ll never see again.
MD: Are you a bit of a snob with pedals? Do you chase particular germanium fuzzes or some specific edition of a tank-built Sovtek fuzz?
JA: I am and I’m not. I really believe that any musical person can take the shittiest or the best pedal and have it work for them for something. You’ll hear something that you can use. Though I’m not one for subtle pedals. There’s this guy out here in California that makes Full Tone pedals. I’ve never been a fan of them. They’re for guitar players who are going for a ZZ Top or Tom Petty subtle sound. I have no interest in that. I go for weirder builders that are just in their garage turning out over-the-top pedals.
But also I have my favourite series of the Sovtek. In Russia they were making them out of whatever components they had access to. So you’ll find from one to another in the same series that they’ll have different parts, capacitors, and sound totally different. So if I buy the first series green I’m not guaranteed to get that sound. I’ve found several of them and they don’t sound the same. I’ve owned ‘Civil War’ versions that are very expensive on the internet, and I hated mine. You’ve literally got to hear them and spend time with them. Modern pedals are more consistent.
I buy backups even three to four deep of almost every pedal I feel is indispensable, just because I know they’re going to break. I have two Boss VB-2 Vibrato pedals, that’s about $800 of pedals right there!
SLIMMING DOWN THE RIG
MD: You can’t take 300 pedals on tour, so what do you take?
JA: In the old days I used to surround myself with four pedal boards that were four feet long. We would ship our gear to Australia and I’d ship two Ampeg SVT fridges, three SVT-VR heads, six basses, four giant pedal boards and then a bunch of spare gear. Then we’d come home and never make any money because we’d spent $70,000 on freight. These days my 12 pedals fit in a Pelican case, it’s different times.
MD: What are those 12 pedals at the moment?
JA: One’s a TC Electronic tuner, and then in this order: Boss CS-2 compressor/sustainer, into the Boss VB-2 Vibrato which goes over to the Electro-Harmonix Ravish Sitar pedal which goes into the Earthquake Devices Organizer, then down into my Boss OC-2 Octave pedal, which goes to my Dwarfcraft Devices Baby Thundaa fuzz, and that goes up to my Digitech PDS 20/20 Sampler/Delay and then that goes into the Boss TR-2 Tremolo, with the LFO on it, and then that goes into the Line 6 DL4, and that goes into the Earthquake Devices Rainbow Machine and then that goes to my DI.
Underneath the pedal board is an old DOD MOSFET preamp that just gives me a low end boost.
And I forgot one of the most destructive pedals. I knew I was missing one, the DOD Meatbox. That’s the one that used to be $40-$60 on the internet and then I started doing a lot of interviews where I was saying the DOD Meatbox blows up P.A. systems and the price went up to $300-$400.
MD: You kind of screwed yourself there.
JA: Yeah, my bad. I remember in particular the 2010 Big Day Out where the guys in Muse were like, ‘What the hell is that pedal? everybody in the audience grabbed their chest when you hit it.’ That’s the DOD Meatbox! That thing is fierce.
MD: Are you ever concerned about the transition from studio to stage? If you’re being experimental in the studio and set up a string of five pedals and then go to another section and you might need to turn three off and another two on with only two feet?
JA: Never. There’s always a way. Especially with a great pedal like the Line6 M9 pedal. If I really start getting that crazy, playing all the songs from the old sets, I would take that pedal and just program everything. It’s not going to sound exactly the same, but my pedals in the studio aren’t going to sound the same in a venue that sucks or through a PA that sucks. You’ve got to give in a little to the odds and say, ‘I hope this all goes well and I get an 80% across this entire tour, and run into more good venues than bad venues’.
You can sit there and work all day on your heavy guitar tones, but if you throw a bass through distortion you’re going to kill people
MOD FACTOR
MD: Do you mod your pedals?
JA: I have some. Like the Baby Thundaa that Dwarfcraft Devices made me. He usually has more knobs and switches, which was just too difficult, especially on festivals, my tech’s not going to have enough time to flip all the switches. I took a photo of the setting I was using and I said, ‘Can you just make it do that?’ And it came back with just two knobs and a switch.
Matt from Wren & Cuff makes me custom fuzzes all the time. Same with William at WMD, he makes the Geiger Counter. He was trying to make me a sub pedal that I really love.
MD: People always seem to mod those TR-2s as well for a volume drop.
JA: Whatever I use I hit it so hard that there’s no way I’d notice the volume drop. I hit it with a fuzz right before, and my compressor’s on. I want to have a lot of attack at the top end so it sounds choppy. Still to this day no tremolo will sound as good as that one. And I own a ton of them.
MD: Can you talk a bit about your rig and basses?
JA: We’re in a period where we’re really trying to be able to pay some bills on this next Mars Volta tour, so I’m renting gear. I have a deal with Ampeg, they give me support all through Europe so we get the gear from a rental place and we pay for the road cases. Ampeg lets me use their SVT-VR’s and as far as my basses I just have a vintage 1970 Fender Precision fretless bass that has been converted to a Precision/Jazz fretless and then I have an available-only-in-Japan 1962 re-issue Fender Jazz bass that is a 32-inch scale and has Ernie Ball flat wounds on top.
MD: Do you prefer flat wounds?
JA: On a fretted. If I was playing bass in the Queens of the Stone Age I would use round wounds. But a lot of the bass on the new Mars Volta record was flat wound.
MD: And why the VR head as opposed to the classic?
JA: For starters, it’s louder and more aggressive sounding. It handles the effects better, and there’s more headroom.
MD: And what rig do you use in the studio?
JA: In the studio I use a vintage Ampeg B15 a lot. If I’m doing a real hectic, distorted, sub, weirdo, loud, feedback thing I’ll use the SVT-VR. But if I’m just using straight, flat wound bass I’ll use my B15.
MD: The new Mars Volta record seems to be a bit lighter on the bass effects?
JA: Sure. Omar really wanted me to play what he wanted me to play on the record, so a lot of it is what he played on demos. Sometimes you can hear me do what I always do, but a lot of it is just straight. It’s one of those records where he played 95% of the keyboards on it as well as all the guitar.
MD: So Vato Negro is your experimental outlet?
JA: That and Big Sir. In Big Sir I really try to craft songs that sound good with my fretless bass. I really want to be a songwriter. Vato Negro is where I try to show my taste for making sounds and riffs and not being held to any restraint. Because when you’re in a band with a singer you’ve got to write songs. But when you are just playing with a drummer, you can go ape-shit crazy with sounds and it doesn’t matter. I do a lot of improvising.
We’d come home and never make any money because we’d spent $70,000 on freight. These days my 12 pedals fit in a Pelican case
GUITAR V BASS
MD: How far do you think the bass can stretch as an instrument?
JA: I think it can stretch way farther than guitar can! You can sit there and work all day on your heavy guitar tones, but if you throw a bass through distortion you’re going to kill people. When I put my bass through a Sovtek and a compressor and a Microsynth there’s no guitar in the world that’s going to be able to mimic that, because I’m in a low register. It’s going to be beefier, it’s going to be heavier, it’s going to be giant. Lightning Bolt eats up any guitar band and it’s just two dudes. I think that and I also think that if you really want to get up in the register of guitars you can octave pitch it or play baritone bass. I believe it’s a tighter frontier. It’s easier to play chordal things on guitar than it is on bass, so it’s more flexible for ensemble band purposes, but for experimental purposes I think bass packs way more momentum.
MD: Can you walk us through one or two sounds off the new Mars Volta album?
JA: The last song on the record I got to use my P-Bass maple neck. It weighs 14 pounds and it sounds heavy as well. Omar let me use my fuzz distorted sound on it so you hear that big heavy Girls Against Boys type sound.
MD: How do you approach time-based effects?
JA: You’ve got to listen to dub records and see how the art of delay is used and just apply that to what you’re doing. They don’t always have to be in time. There’s a Portishead record where the delay is out of time with the beat, and it’s sick sounding. Just be musical with it. Look at these guys out of Low End Theory like Flying Lotus, even J. Dilla, they’re messing with the timing of the loops, there’s no rules. As long as it’s musical I don’t give a shit if it doesn’t rock it, if it’s making you feel something, go for that.
MD: Is there ever a time when you can have too many pedals?
JA: I don’t know if anybody needs 40 reverbs. But I don’t know if you can ever have enough delays. I think you can have too many digital delays, but you can’t have enough analogue delays, they all sound so different. I don’t think you can have enough distortions and fuzzes. The trend is for people to make pedals that are basically just a pitch-shifter with a delay on it. They’re making it in one pedal so it gets a certain sound and cuts your learning curve of having to get two pedals, map it, and figure out how to get that guy’s sound.
I have the Electro-Harmonix Ravish Sitar and it’s not like there’s this chip in there that only does sitar sounds. You know it’s a combination of a few different things that already exist, they just gave it to you in one pedal. The Rainbow Machine is the craziest delay, pitch-shifter, chorus pedal I’ve ever had. It’s all those things, but he put it all in one pedal, which makes it The Rainbow Machine, not five pedals. A lot of people are going that way.
