Here’s a great clip of upright and electric bass virtuoso demonstrating some foundational walking bass concepts during a clinic. In the video, he plays though the standard ‘Stella by Starlight’ several times – first unaccompanied, and then with guitarist Jay Azzolina – to illustrate the different concepts he uses when playing and teaching walking bass.
You can download the transcription here:
I recently dug out my (now prehistoric) dictaphone that I used when I was a student at the Academy of Contemporary Music in Guildford between 2005 and 2008 and set about reviewing all of the lessons, concerts and masterclasses that I had bootlegged over the course of my degree. One of the highlights was Janek…
In the 2nd post on unusual instructional books for electric bassists (part 1 can be found here) we’re examining the benefits of Franz Simandl’s ‘New Method For The Double Bass’. I discovered this book while studying with Austrian bass titan Stefan Redtenbacher and spent a long time working through it on electric bass years before…
Five of Stevie’s best 5-note lines Stevie Wonder’s vast body of work is rightly revered by musicians (and, indeed, non-musicians…) for its harmonic and melodic invention; Stevie has managed to seamlessly weave jazz-based ideas, such as chromaticism, extended chords, and tritone substitution into his tunes and still sell vast numbers of records. One of his…
Ray Brown’s Half Position F Blues Here’s a great excerpt from an old video called ‘Ray Brown Presents the Art of Playing the Bass’. Ray is talking about the importance of foundational skills and having solid sound and time in half position: for non-upright players, that’s the area between the open string and the third…
September 2017 marked 30 years since the untimely death of Jaco Pastorius, the self-proclaimed ‘greatest bass player of all time’ who completely revolutionised not only the instrument itself but also the way that it was played – Jaco pioneered the fretless bass and helped to make the electric bass a more legitimate jazz instrument (this…
Learning How To Learn Learning a new skill can be a daunting task, especially if you’re pushed for time – which, let’s face it, we all are. The good news is that there’s a straightforward, repeatable process for skill acquisition that works regardless of whether you want to learn to juggle, cook or play decent…
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