Bass Player (November 2002)

Diving In: No Doubt’s Tony Kanal

Tony Kanal tried his hand at keyboard bass for the very first time when recording No Doubt’s latest Interscope CD, Rock Steady. He ended up using synth bass for four of the album’s cuts: “Hey Baby,” “Start the Fire,” “Detective,” and “Running.” “I had no idea what I was doing when I started playing keyboard bass lines,” Tony laughs. “And I still wouldn’t consider myself a real keyboard player. But that was the cool thing about the way we recorded Rock Steady. We just let go of everything we had done in the past. It was just about trying something completely new.” On many of the CD’s songs Tony tried playing both “real” bass and keyboard bass; a few of them ended up having both, like “Detective.”

Kanal’s keyboard inexperience dictated the kinds of lines he played. “The naive approach simplified my lines. I never would have written those lines on an electric bass, because I wouldn’t have been happy with
them. I tend to overcomplicate things on bass, and this was a way to prevent that from happening. It forced me to play simply—but simple in a way that left me happy with the part. I think that changed my mindset overall, to the point where now I’m okay with playing a very simple part on the electric bass as well.”

Despite his technical naivete, Tony and the rest of the band were highly selective with the keyboard sounds they used. “We’d go through tons of sounds until we found something that just felt right. We wanted something that made us think, Wow—that’s cool and original. We’d switch sounds while we were still coming up with parts, and we’d keep going until we found a combination that just vibed.”

Live onstage, Kanal plays both electric bass and synth bass on “Hey Baby” (synth on the choruses), and synth bass on “Running.” He uses a Midiman Keystation USB49 controller, which controls an E-mu Proteus 2000 rackmount sound module. His keyboard sounds go through a separate rig from his bass signal, and he hears the synth sounds in his monitor wedges.

Did Tony have any reservations about trying his hand at synth bass?

“I’m not so precious about the division between electric bass and keyboard bass. I just dove in and thought, What do I have to lose? If it doesn’t work, don’t keep it. In our case it worked really well, and I’m glad I didn’t get discouraged by the fact that I’m not a keyboardist. It wasn’t about skill; it was all about getting something that just felt great.”