Mark Dresser

DIGIPACK EDITION

Tines of Change features a dozen new explorations performed on unconventional four- and five-string basses crafted for Dresser by the Colorado-based bassist and luthier Kent McLagan. The album’s title refers to those basses’ most striking feature, an array of metal tines affixed to a secondary bridge.

Like the strings these tines can be plucked or bowed, offering a variety of sounds from the percussive to the ethereal that adds sounds resembling both an African mbira and the stroked rods invented by composer Robert Erickson that Dresser employed on his 2017 release Modicana. But that’s just one of the modifications that McLagan has made to translate Dresser’s sonic imaginings into reality. In 2001 he embedded hand-wound individual magnetic pickups into the fingerboard of the bass, one set below the nut and the other at the octave. These additional pickups allow Dresser to sound up to three different pitches on each string, as well as amplify subtle tones and pitches that might otherwise go unheard in a live or collaborative setting.

TRACKS:

• 01. Prolotine
• 02. Tynalogue
• 03. Harmonity
• 04. Melodine
• 05. Bitonetime
• 06. Gregoratyne
• 07. Augmentine
• 08. Chordone
• 09. Nakatanitine
• 10. Tonologue
• 11. Narratone
• 12. Epitine