Chromatic Scales Are for Wimps: Check Out this Microtonal Bass from Callowhill

Honestly, I had never heard of Mono Neon before. His music doesn’t really fall into our realm of coverage on this site, although I liked the couple songs I heard after looking him up. Oh… why did I research him, you ask? Because his bass is completely fucking bonkers. It has twice the number of frets than average, so instead of 12 tones until the next octave there are 24.

“My fascination with microtonality is ‘casual’, similar to my fascination with Dadaism, Color Field, and other visual art stuff,” he explains. “I was introduce [sic] to microtonal music by David Fiuczynski, I met him during my brief stay at Berklee. Ever since then I’ve been kind of a ‘micro-dilettante’ and really been trying to embrace my desire to inhabit another pitch space that is not only 12 sounds. Hopefully more people will begin playing microtonal music, not only in the avant-garde classical stuff but combining the sounds of Julian Carrillo and Albert King, Ivan Wyschnegradsky and The Bar-Kays, or Easley Blackwood and Rev. Milton Brunson… just ideas I think about.”

The Honduran Mohagany bass was painstakingly designed by Tim Cloonan of Callowhill Guitars. He managed to install Nordstrand MM5 pickups and an Aguilar OBP-3 preamp before going mad and painting the walls with his entrails, which were also carefully divided into 24 equal parts. His last whispers beckoned to the old gods, who will rise from a long sleep to devour time and memory.

Source: No Treble