Sean Malone

Early in his career, Malone played as a session member for groups ranging from latin jazz and bossa nova to British pop music. His first high-level experience in metal music was in 1993 with the progressive metal band Cynic from Florida. Malone became Cynic's bassist quite unexpectedly; the band had a scheduled recording of their debut album, Focus in a studio in which Malone was working as an assistant engineer, and session musician. The band had suddenly parted ways with Darren Macfarland (who also had a brief stint with Atheist), and hired Malone to play bass on their soon-to-be-recorded LP. Malone proved to have ideal musical chemistry with the group, and ended up touring for Focus in 1993.

After the band's first split-up, Malone continued to work as a session bassist, performing on over fifty records. He has also authored four books, "Music Theory for Bassists", "Dictionary Of Bass Grooves", "Rock Bass", and "A Portrait of Jaco: The Solos Collection" (a book of transcriptions of Jaco Pastorius' bass solos) for the Hal Leonard Corporation. In the academic field, Malone has papers on theory and music cognition published and given presentations at conferences such as the Society for Music Theory, The International Conference of Music and Gesture, and The Glenn Gould Conference, and has taught at the University of Central Missouri and Carnegie Mellon University as assistant professor of music theory.

Malone has made one album under his own name, Cortlandt, which was released in 1996 and reissued in 2007. He also assembled and recorded the Gordian Knot debut, Gordian Knot, released in 1999. The album has contributions from Trey Gunn (King Crimson), Ron Jarzombek (Watchtower, Spastic Ink, Blotted Science) and John Myung (Dream Theater). A second Gordian Knot album, Emergent, included performances from Bill Bruford (Yes, King Crimson), Jim Matheos (Fates Warning), and Steve Hackett (Genesis, GTR), as well as Cynic members Sean Reinert, Paul Masvidal and Jason Gobel.

He re-joined Cynic with Reinert and Masvidal in May 2008 and recorded on their comeback album titled Traced in Air, which received very high critical acclaim. The album was released 14 years after the release of their previous and highly successful Focus. However, he did not tour with the band because of his university teaching priorities. In September 2011, Cynic confirmed that Malone has recorded on their EP titled Carbon-Based Anatomy.[2] On 12 December 2012, Cynic announced that the band has entered the studio in a trio mode with Malone to record the new album, Kindly Bent to Free Us.

Malone’s last known publicly released recording with Cynic was on the single, ‘Humanoid’ released on January 15, 2018.

On December 9, 2020, Paul Masvidal announced that Malone had died.[3]

“For anyone who thinks this is about pencils, it's not — they're just pencils. It's about caring for something very deeply.”

Malone with Eberhard Faber in Wilkes-Barre

Malone took a scholarly approach to the subject of pencils, and spent years documenting the cultural significance of the Eberhard Faber Blackwing 602 pencil. He also travelled around the US and Germany, interviewing both Eberhard Faber IV (head of Eberhard Faber in the US) and the late Count Anton von Faber-Castell (head of Faber-Castell in Germany). He was known in pencil circles as the creator of both Blackwing Pages and Contrapuntalism.[4]

Malone was also interviewed on camera for the 2015 documentary film No. 2: The Story of the Pencil.  He mentioned completing almost 300 pages of a pencil book, though he doubted the commercial viability.

Malone was an assistant professor of Music Theory at University of Central Missouri in Warrensburg, MO for the academic years of 2007-2009, and at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA for the fall semester of 2009. In addition, he was a teaching assistant at University of Oregon.

• University of Oregon Humanities Center Graduate Fellowship

Malone has played three basses, each marking different chapters of his career. During the Focus era, he played a Kubicki Factor 4-string fretless bass. Later on, he started using Ibanez GWB1 5-string fretless, most notable for his Gordian Knot and Cynic's Traced In Air era. In recent years, he became an Ibanez endorser and started playing a custom Ibanez SR5005E 5-string fretless, most notable for the recording of Cynic's Kindly Bent to Free Us. He played a Chapman Stick throughout much of his career.

• Custom Ibanez SR5005E 5-string fretless bass
• Ibanez GWB1 5-string fretless bass
• Kubicki Factor 4-string fretless bass
• Chapman Stick

• Sean Malone discography at Discogs