Hello,
My name is Scott Dunbabin. I am a bass artist from Melbourne, Australia.
Please take some time to get to know me and my bass, or get in touch.
My dissatisfaction with what I considered to be the limitations of the contrabass to facilitate my music making and most importantly my incessant wonder and restlessness to see what might happen once I began this journey. I wondered what I needed to do to create my own sound palette. To become sonic painter, if you like; creating spontaneous sound landscapes to play within; to push sound around like paint on a canvas.
This lead to my first prototype - a 5 string, solid-bodied, electric upright bass: There were some practical considerations that steered me to the design and development of this instrument. The fact that I am left handed limited my accessibility to an existing upright bass of quality.
The current model was completed in 2004; and comprised of a combination of European and Australian timbers. Sporting 6 strings, this bass was made to be semi-acoustic, incorporating both Pizo electronics and magnetic pickup systems.
Wanting to test the limitations of this new bass, I set about exploring and developing new and unique sounds - an experiment which ultimately lead to the creation of Resolve: Works for the Solo Bass.
Hailing from a non-musical family in Brunswick, Victoria; I began my creative exploration at the age of 13 with a second hand electric bass guitar. A short five years later I had moved to the upright bass, and enrolled in the RMIT Bachelor of Fine Arts program, where I was able to experiment with audio and visual media.
I have always experienced a strong link between sound and imagery: My affinity with these two modalities facilitated my desire to create an instrument that embodied both the sonic and visual elements of my internal world, creating a bridge between my past, present and future.
Since then, I have worked with many artists, including Bob Sedergreen’s Blues on the Boil, Brian Brown, La Mama Theatre Company's Snake Skin Fence; and currently with James Wakeling and Serge DeLucio.
In 2007, I released, Resolve: Works For Solo Bass, which you can sample here
I hope you enjoy my improvisations and compositions.
You can reach me through my email address, posting on MySpace, or by making a comment in my journal section.
Feel free to contact me any time about any matter!