The Bass Guitar Blog » Lessons http://bassguitarblog.com The Blog for Bass Players - Covering all the basses! Mon, 15 Mar 2010 23:17:03 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 en hourly 1 Practicing with a Looper http://bassguitarblog.com/2009/11/practicing-with-a-looper/ http://bassguitarblog.com/2009/11/practicing-with-a-looper/#comments Mon, 09 Nov 2009 19:46:57 +0000 Benjamin http://bassguitarblog.com/?p=818 I recently stumbled upon this great piece on practicing with a looper over at the Institute of Bass – the post was sponsored By SWR Sound Corporation and written by the ever impress Michael Manring, who I had the pleasure of seeing live with Steve Lawson last month.

Looping History

Looping devices used to be huge, expensive mechanical things, involving spools of audio tape, motors, magnets and generally were a technical nightmare. However, in the age of micro-electronics and flash memory chips, for the price of a few sets of strings you can get yourself a looping pedal. I have a DigiTech JamMan that I use for practice, I know others using the Line 6 DL 4, the Boss RC-20XL, and at the very high end there is the looperlative box. Somewhat ironically, there are now effects out there that aim to reproduce the sounds of the old  taped-based loopers. If you have your bass plugged into your PC, you might want to try out the Mobius Looper (for Windows or Mac), which recreates the interface of the old loopers and is good fun!

Over to Michael Manring for a minute:

As soon as I got my first digital looper, the flagship Lexicon JamMan when it hit the market in 1994, I became interested in the idea of developing some practice exercises with it. As I worked with the JamMan, I kept finding more benefits to loop-based practicing so much so that I’ve come to prefer having a looper plugged in and ready to go permanently in my practice space.

The main benefits of having a looper to hand during practice are:

  • Hearing yourself playing, or rather hear a recording of yourself. Essential for improving your tone and timing too!
  • Capture ideas you come up with – some loopers will even let you save your loop for reference.
  • Play along with yourself – great for developing a better sense of harmony and melody.

Michael’s tips on that last point:

one of the things I do often is to lay down a bass line and then alternate playing melodies and solos over it. This is a great way to work on jazz repertoire, but it works for just about any genre of music. I find I gain a deeper understanding of the music I’m playing when I’ve spent time working alternatively in groove, melody, and solo modes…  …No matter what kind of parts you decide to try, make sure to record the results and spend some time just listening to what you’ve done.

There are a few tips in the article for fretless players too…

Another exercise I enjoy is to play scales into the looper with my fretted bass and try to play along in unison and various intervals with the fretless. You’ll want to do this slowly at first, but make sure to work with faster tempos, too.

It is a great article, well worth the read: “Practicing with a looper” and you can check out the Institute of Bass while you are there too (I’m very pleased to be a life-time member).



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]]> http://bassguitarblog.com/2009/11/practicing-with-a-looper/feed/ 1 Beyond Bass Camp http://bassguitarblog.com/2009/04/beyond-bass-camp/ http://bassguitarblog.com/2009/04/beyond-bass-camp/#comments Thu, 23 Apr 2009 19:44:40 +0000 Benjamin http://bassguitarblog.com/?p=697  

If you can get to London, this sounds very interesting! The acclaimed teacher and solo artist, Steve Lawson is putting on Beyond Bass Camp, a one day event looking at the bass as a vehicle for music, both within the tradition of the bass guitar, and beyond it as a tool for self-expression. Looking at technical, theoretical and mechanical aspects of making music with a bass. Knowing Steve, it will be blogged, tweeted and streamed around the Interwebs. However, being there will be the real deal:

“The idea for BBC came out of the masterclasses I teach in Northern California every January. For years I’ve been doing a day long workshop on bass, varying the focus slightly each time to cover different aspects of what we do as bassists and musicians, but all with the aim of helping musicians unlock their own musical voice, whether that be playing bass in a blues band, or writing their own solo compositions. The attendees reported back that they found it hugely useful, and a many became regulars coming back year after year to develop the themes and ideas of the classes.” Steve Lawson

The workshop will be run in London, initially once a month but with plans to expand. It will also be available as a ‘travel package’ – so get your requests in. There will be more information will be available soon. If you do the RSS thing, then you can subscribe to the RSS feed, I’ll post updates here too.

 

If you know of other bass events, do let us know – it’s good to spread the word!



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]]> http://bassguitarblog.com/2009/04/beyond-bass-camp/feed/ 5 Bass Fretboard Map http://bassguitarblog.com/2008/10/bass-fretboard-map/ http://bassguitarblog.com/2008/10/bass-fretboard-map/#comments Mon, 13 Oct 2008 08:50:48 +0000 Benjamin http://bassguitarblog.com/2008/10/bass-fretboard-map/ A pretty discovery, via Steve Lawson’s shared feed. Train hits boy (don’t ask me!), aka Wayne, has produced a brilliant coded map of the fretboard, covering standard tuning on a 4 string bass:

Bass Fretboard by trainhitsboy.

Very handy! Print, memorize and then program into your brain and fingers!

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]]> http://bassguitarblog.com/2008/10/bass-fretboard-map/feed/ 7 Learning Bass Parts – checking out iVideo Songs http://bassguitarblog.com/2008/10/learning-bass-parts-checking-out-ivideo-songs/ http://bassguitarblog.com/2008/10/learning-bass-parts-checking-out-ivideo-songs/#comments Mon, 06 Oct 2008 16:30:03 +0000 Benjamin http://bassguitarblog.com/?p=253 I got gently nudged a while ago to use my bass skills to try out ivideosongs.com. In essence it is an on-line, video-based song-learning site, now with support for us lovely bass players. Getting to grips with the service is very straight forward: head to ivideosongs, then click sign up (top right). Bash in your email address, choose a user id and password and you are off.

Music categories are listed on the left of the screen after you login. The service covers acoustic and electric guitar, drums and piano as well as bass. In theory the whole band could learn a song from the site, they even have stuff for drummers (insert inappropriate internet drummer joke here). Actually, the format use lends itself well to guitar.

If you select ‘all’ from the music categories, you’ll see that there are various levels, from beginner, through intermediate, to advanced. There are also some free tutorials – although these are mostly for guitar, no bass ones just yet – so you might want to let your thin-stringed friends know about the site – the CEO is a Grammy-nominated guitarist himself, and the guitar stuff there looks very good.

Having had a tough weekend, I opted for an intermediate song to learn – REM’s Losing my religion. Session bassist Pat Malone is the instructor behind the bass videos. Prices are in the range of  $4.99 to $9.99 per video (the more expensive titles being ones instructed by the original player, so all the bass ones are at the lower end of the price range). You can hit ‘preview’ to watch a clip of the lesson before you buy it.

The videos are high resolution and show left and right hands at the same time (the right hand is in a little video inset – see the pic to the right). So, having put a pick into my hand for the first time since erm… well, since I last played something that wasn’t a bass – I dived in, then checked out. A click later and the video was downloading to my desktop. I like this model, rather than streaming, since it means you can learn off-line and without the need for a broadband connection.

The video was 1/4 of a Gig (I told you it was high quality), so it took a little while to download – time for a coffee/beer/tea to taste! Firing up the video, the song was nicely broken into sections and there was a shot of the tab/charts as well. Very clear instruction, although I can see why people call me a technical player – years of being beaten up as a classical guitarist made me very strict about left and right-hand technique. Pat’s instruction was easy to follow and I’m now all set for my next REM covers gig ;) .

Based on what I’ve seen (no pun intended), I’d recommend checking the site out… Hopefully they’ll be adding more songs as time goes on, but the model of the site is great.

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]]> http://bassguitarblog.com/2008/10/learning-bass-parts-checking-out-ivideo-songs/feed/ 3 MusicDojo – Learning Bass on-line http://bassguitarblog.com/2008/08/musicdojo-learning-bass-on-line/ http://bassguitarblog.com/2008/08/musicdojo-learning-bass-on-line/#comments Mon, 25 Aug 2008 19:39:55 +0000 Benjamin http://bassguitarblog.com/?p=120 A while ago, I did Norm Stockton’s “The Art of Groove” course on musicdojo.com (Norm pictured here, from his 2003 visit to the UK – time you came back to visit Norm :) ). An email just landed in my inbox, which reminded me about this great way to build your bass skills.

If you can’t get out to a tutor, MusicDojo brings to tutor to you, in a cozy on-line class. You can get a feel for how MusicDojo works with one of the free 5 day classes (see the bottom right of their page here).

 

Norm Stockton Teaching

Norm Stockton Teaching

 

The latest set of courses are starting today. If it’s time to put some funk into your fingers, then head over to MusicDojo and sign up for Anthony Wellington’s courses, and there is also Randy Hoexter’s Harmony and Theory series starting. Norm’s courses are there too, which I highly recommend. There’s a regular rota of different courses, for suite a range of tastes, so have a dig around the site.



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]]> http://bassguitarblog.com/2008/08/musicdojo-learning-bass-on-line/feed/ 0 Bass Soloing http://bassguitarblog.com/2007/09/bass-soloing/ http://bassguitarblog.com/2007/09/bass-soloing/#comments Thu, 13 Sep 2007 19:11:00 +0000 Benjamin http://bassguitarblog.com/?p=15 Some people things that bass solos should be outlawed , but some have a different idea. Bass Soloists, like Steve Lawson and Michael Manring, have championed the cause here in the UK, and in the US. The bass solo as an art in the track, still hasn’t really re-emerged. It can be great when well, done, so get studying with some cool articles over at active musician.


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]]> http://bassguitarblog.com/2007/09/bass-soloing/feed/ 0 Cyber School of Bass http://bassguitarblog.com/2007/08/cyber-school-of-bass/ http://bassguitarblog.com/2007/08/cyber-school-of-bass/#comments Tue, 14 Aug 2007 23:17:00 +0000 Benjamin http://bassguitarblog.com/?p=11
So, someone has to tell me why this guy is eating his bass?!? Maybe it was his on-line bass lessons at www.cyberschoolofbass.com. Who knows! Anyway, cheers for a nice resource for beginners Bunny!


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]]> http://bassguitarblog.com/2007/08/cyber-school-of-bass/feed/ 0 Bassic Bass Lessons http://bassguitarblog.com/2007/08/bassic-bass-lessons/ http://bassguitarblog.com/2007/08/bassic-bass-lessons/#comments Thu, 09 Aug 2007 20:27:00 +0000 Benjamin http://bassguitarblog.com/?p=9 This is a cool site for some very basic beginner bass guitar lessons on-line:

http://www.studybass.com/lessons/basics/

Cool!



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]]> http://bassguitarblog.com/2007/08/bassic-bass-lessons/feed/ 1 Ever Wonder How To Play Bass? http://bassguitarblog.com/2007/08/ever-wonder-how-to-play-bass/ http://bassguitarblog.com/2007/08/ever-wonder-how-to-play-bass/#comments Thu, 02 Aug 2007 20:36:00 +0000 Benjamin http://bassguitarblog.com/?p=6 Wonder no more, the guide to playing bass in 11 steps!

http://www.wikihow.com/Play-Bass

If you are after slightly more in-depth tuition, drop by the Music DoJo. I’ve been through a few of the courses and have to say that they are great. The on-line courses are lead by the likes of Adam Nitti, Norm Stockton, David Dyson, Cliff Engel and many others. If you haven’t invested in lessons before, or no longer have a near-by instructor, Music DoJo is the perfect way to move your bass playing up a notch. Not too expensive, but enough of an investment to focus the practice routine!



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