Victor Wooten's bass strings: the Béla Fleck + virtuoso canon, sourced
Documented bass-string gauges, brands, and tunings Victor Wooten uses with Béla Fleck and the Flecktones (1989-present) and across his solo + session catalog. Fodera Yin Yang signature bass, defining modern bass-virtuoso vocabulary. With citations.
Béla Fleck and the Flecktones · written with AI help · updated
Victor Lemonte Wooten (born September 11, 1964, Mountain Home, Idaho) is the bassist for Béla Fleck and the Flecktones (1989-present) and one of the defining modern bass-virtuoso figures. Plays the Fodera Victor Wooten Yin Yang Signature bass, his canonical instrument since the early 1990s. Five Grammy Awards. Solo career since 1996. The SMV trio (Stanley Clarke + Marcus Miller + Victor Wooten, 2008-2009) brought together three of the most-cited modern bass figures. Authored The Music Lesson (2006), one of the most-cited modern bass + music-philosophy books. Operates Wooten Woods, a music camp + retreat in Nashville. The defining post-Jaco bass-virtuoso voice.
Who Victor Wooten is
Victor Lemonte Wooten, born September 11, 1964, in Mountain Home, Idaho, has been Béla Fleck and the Flecktones' bassist since the band's 1988-1989 formation. He is one of the defining modern bass-virtuoso figures; the Flecktones catalog + his solo records + his Wooten Woods music-camp pedagogical work make him one of the most-cited bassists of the post-Jaco generation.
Plays the Fodera Victor Wooten Yin Yang Signature bass, his canonical instrument since the early 1990s.
Five Grammy Awards. Authored The Music Lesson (2006), one of the most-cited modern bass + music-philosophy books. Co-led SMV (2008-2009) with Stanley Clarke + Marcus Miller.
Style signatures
Three things across Wooten's catalog you can identify as his:
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Double-thumb slap-bass technique. Wooten popularized the technique that adds a second downward-thumb attack alongside the standard upward-thumb slap; the technique doubles the rhythmic density of slap-bass passages.
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Tapping + chord-playing on bass. Wooten's solo records use bass as a chord-melody instrument; the technique extends what bass can do as a solo-instrument voice.
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Cross-genre flexibility. Newgrass-bluegrass + jazz-fusion + funk + R&B + world music; the Flecktones catalog is one of the most genre-promiscuous in modern instrumental music.
Related
Bassist hub. All bassists on CYS. Tier A virtuoso bass canon parallel: Jaco Pastorius (Weather Report, defining fretless predecessor), Marcus Miller (SMV co-member), Les Claypool (Primus, contemporary peer), Billy Sheehan (Mr. Big, Winery Dogs, lead-bass and tapping-technique parallel). Profiles for Stanley Clarke + Stuart Hamm pending.
Related locations. Nashville, Tennessee (Wooten's current base + Wooten Woods music-camp location).