Chords for Gruv Gear FretWrap with Norm Stockton **ArtOfGroove.com**

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_ _ _ _ _ _ Hi, I'm Norm Stockton.
Welcome to Grace K Studio.
It's my home studio here in Orange
County, California.
I'm here today to talk about the Groove Gear Fret Wrap.
And you've
probably seen this, you know, online, Bass Player Magazine.
It's becoming very popular.
[N] And it's this really cool little device that _ you can attach to your neck and it takes care
_ of muting.
And it's, you [D] know, _ _ as opposed _ [N] to_
It's an interesting situation. _ _
_ _ Groove
Gear is a company I've been working with for a while and they make an amazing cart for
lugging gear called the V-Cart Solo that I've been using for years and love it.
And when
I first started working with Groove Gear, _ I was sitting down talking with Jay Baltimore,
the owner, [Ab] and he was asking me if there's any other things that, you know, any other
musical products that I feel like there's a real need for that aren't out there right
now.
And I was telling him, you know, _ it would be awesome if somebody could develop a better
hair scrunchie.
You know, you may be remember back in the day that people used to get _ hair
scrunchies and kind of bring them over the tuners and they'd slide it over the neck when
they wanted to mute something, you know.
And _ it's funny because Jay kind of looked at me
and smiled and he pulled this drawing out of his bag and it was a drawing for the first
prototype of the fret wrap, you know.
And so that was, I think the first one came out
in late 2011 and I've been using these ever since and they're really quite amazing.
Now,
let me just really quickly emphasize that I'm not advocating fret wraps as an alternate
to developing your muting technique.
You know, anybody who's seen Art of Groove, my instructional
website or any of my instructional DVDs know that I'm definitely a big advocate for developing
your physical approach to the instrument to make it where you don't have impediments down
the road and [Gm] muting is certainly one of the main things that really kind of separate,
you know, an okay player from a good player.
So, but there are times that depending upon
what techniques you're using, _ _ that conventional muting technique doesn't really work that
well, you know.
_ Or alternatively, maybe you're, you know, if you're doing something where
you're in the recording studio and you're trying to punch a line way up [D] high, _ _ _ [N] _ whatever,
you know, and you just want to make sure that no other notes can ring. _
_ You know, this will
make it where you could do the whole thing in one take instead of, you know, eight or
10 takes where you maybe have a little bit of sympathetic resonance happening or whatever.
So, but I use the fret wrap frequently _ live when I'm doing my solo version of the Star
Spangled Banner and I'm not going to play the whole tune.
You can find that on YouTube
if you want to, but in a nutshell, there's a part in the song where I'm slapping and
tapping at the same time.
So conventional muting technique doesn't work there at all.
Let me play it once that section [Fm] once without the fret wrap, and then you can hear it with
the [G] fret wrap.
So check [A] it out. _
_ _ _ _ _ _ [D] _ _
_ _ [Dm] _ _ [D] _ You know, you've got all sorts of strings ringing, right?
So if you [A] bring the fret wrap over, then it's like _
_ _ _ _ _ [Ab] _ _ [D] _
_ _ [F] _ _ [D] _ _ _ [N]
very, very convenient.
_ So check it out. _
If you, by the way, _ _ there's a, so I have an old hair scrunchie here.
So aside from _ _ _ _ _ _ the
As a grown man, you go into the aisle of the drugstore and you're checking out these
flexibility of various hair scrunchies to see if it'll fit over your tuning, your tuners.
You know, it's like, that's kind of uncomfortable anyway.
But in addition, once you get them
[Bm] _ over the tuners, _ _ [G] _
_ _ like so, the bottom line is that they tend to be fairly ineffective.
Check it out. _
You can even kind of look at the waveforms and I'll kind of fly this in
later.
I'm recording all the audio and Pro Tools so you can actually see the waveforms
and how they work, but check it out. _
With the hair scrunchie, I'm going to strum the
strings.
[A] _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
[Bm] _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ Notice how the decay was just going forever.
Now check it out.
With the fret wrap, _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ it goes away real quickly, you know?
And so you can actually kind of adjust the level
of how much tension you want to have with this.
I tend to use it on some of the lower,
_ sort of the less _ muting _ _ settings just because I feel like it kind of leaves the tone a little
bit more open.
But check it out.
I mean, even for stuff like tapping, for instance,
you know, _ if you're doing_
[E] _ _ _ _ [B] _ _
_ [E] _ _ _ _ _ _ [B] _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
[C] _ _ Got it in my way there.
But anyway, bottom line is, you
know, here's [E] the A take without the fret wrap. _
_ _ _ [Am] _ _ [Ab] _ Here's the A take [A] or the B take with the fret
wrap. _ _ _ _
[D] _ [N] Here how it just kind of cleans it up and gives it more focus.
So again, if you're
doing any sort of _ other techniques that are involved in the contemporary bass vocabulary,
then they're really, really effective for that.
But again, _ [Am] even for just day-to-day stuff,
it's really [A] sometimes convenient in the real world [Ab] when you're trying to punch something
really quickly and it [N] involves string skipping, for instance, you know, _ _ _ just to be able to go. _ _ _ _
_ _ It just kind of cleans it up and you're done and you can move on.
_ Or if you're playing a line and
the way it's falling on the fretboard, you're hitting some natural harmonics, for instance.
Again, you can kind of take care of a lot of different things.
So I am a huge fan of the
groove gear fret wrap.
And so my solution _ for effective muting for you is if you have a hair
scrunchie, do [Gm] something along these lines _ _ _ and go get yourself a groove gear fret wrap as soon as
you can.
They're amazing.
[C] And I'm really excited because my MTD Norm Stockton Artist Edition bass
will be getting released in the fall of this year, 2013.
And there's a custom fret wrap with custom
colors that's coming.
So go check it out.
Go visit groovegear.com. God bless you.
I hope to see you on the road.
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