4 comments about Slap Bass Lines.

1. This was the best slap bass book I have ever bought in the world. I have been playing the bass for 7 years and was getting interested in some slap so I bought the first one I saw. This book is great for anyone learning slap.



2. The book doesn't really state who the target audience is, but based on the introduction and the material, it seems targeted to the beginning to intermediate player, who has little to no idea of slapping technique, and is looking for a place to start. Unfortunately, the book doesn't talk about how to actually slap and pop with regard to hand position and rotation of the wrist, nor is this knowledge listed as part of the prerequisites in the introduction. Armed with a little previous knowledge or an instructor, the book is useful in providing slap exercises, but don't expect your trombonist to walk away unaided as a Victor Wooten after five minutes.

   The book progress over the course of 8 lessons starting with the simplest One-Chord Slap Grooves and Two-Chord SlapG rooves and ending with the more difficult Shuffle or 12/8 Slap Grooves and Odd-Time Slap Grooves with a few other approaches thrown in between. Each lesson has approximately 10 examples and CD tracks devoted to it, with each example being a two or four bar phrase out-lining an idea for demonstration within the context of the chapter. Each chapter ends with a "Song" that incorporates some of the ideas from the chapter's examples. Most of the examples do a good job of covering the main topic, while introducing some more advanced techniques like 16th note pop/slap combinations, double thumbing, which Santerre calls an "Up Stroke," (hopefully as a reference to the P-Funk song) denoted by a "U" along the way.

   The quality of the CD is medium, consisting of a bass (of course) and synthesizers mixed at a relatively low volume. Evidentally, the mastering step isn't deemed necesary for an instructional book. The music plays twice for each of the example riffs, followed by two times without the bass to let the reader hear himself in his own nakedness. The CD is helpful in providing a musical context for the riffs, and adds dimension to a what would have been just another octave slap groove, despite the 7sus4 chord notation. The over all musicality of each of the examples is good, but the bass lines aren't quite melodic. I guess Santerre wanted to emphasize the groove aspect of slapping technique more than the "how to write a good slap line" aspect.

   Greatly helping the book and saving it from "just another slap book" are the supplemental chapters on basic theory, which are really great for the beginner. Covered are key signatures, basic scale types, basic sight reading, and other topics which greatly add to the usefulness of the book. These chapters could really open the door for getting a newbie introduced to the theory before he's too far down a Tab only road.

   There are a few notational errors in the book, but hopefully none that will throw the reader too far. Tab is included, which is nice for the beginner, and useful with respect to fingerings for some of the techniques, but I think the summary songs could have been notated without tab, to help push the student towards sight-readng. The stated examples in the book for further listening are too vague to be useful. For example, really which one of the gazillion John Scoffiield albums should I listen to, in order to get a wider knowledge? References to specific albums and tracks would have been much better. BPM notation for each of the examples would also be useful as the student approaches each exercise with a metronome, and tries to work it up to speed to play with the CD. Curiously, Santerre uses "L" to denote a "lift-off" for a technique which is more commonly referred to as a "pull-off." I presume this is because the letter "P" is already used in the notation for referring to a "pop." A short discussion of that difference in notation would have been helpful; I'd hate to see a young bassist trying to tell the guitarist in his band that what he was doing was really "lifting off." I also found the notation and transcriptions not to be always accurate. In order to get a little more groove on the playing on the CD, Santerre plays the notes more staccato than notated. This difference betwen notation and playing could be very confusing for the beginner, trying to associate the written music with the sounds of music. Also missing is a discussion of the difference between "Slap Bass" and "Funk Bass." We wouldn't want to confuse the two.

   Overall, Slap Bass Lines is a good but not great introduction to slapping, but would be a good starting point for a bassist who has some fundamental slapping knowlege. However, I can't recommend this book for the complete beginner despite the theory sections, unless he has an instructor to help guide him through some of the missing points.




3. This book is really the typical example of newbie picking. It promises everything and gives almost nothing. I regret buying it 100% and the only reason I did is because a friend bought it for me.
   The material is too little to work with, there are errors in notation and the texts are too small and with no real educative content. The whole book gives the impression that it is made quickly and maybe it's not more than an afternoon's work.
   But what annoyed me the most is that it is obvious that this book is trying to fool all the newcomers in slap and bass generally. The audio quality is terrible and worst there is the statement that this cd is all playing and no talking. But instead of following the standard of split stereo recording everything is played twice (with and without bass). So who is trying to fill a cd because he does not want to get tired? I leave it to you to guess...
   Also, does Santerre think that with 8 examples(2 minutes of playing) someone will learn to play in 9/8 5/4 13/8 11/8 and 7/4 time signatures. Or by double thumping three times he will learn to play like Wooten? AND WORST OF ALL THERE IS NO REAL TECHNICAL EXPLANATION OF SLAPPING AND PROPER HAND POSITION AND WHERE THERE IS IT IS REALLY PATHETIC!!!
   Also the artist references are too vague ant the examples are often meaningless in a musical approach.
   The only thing worth in there is the theory review. And again there are books half the price of this that have a lot more theory and with a much better method.
   I've already spent more energy in this review than Santerre did on his book, so my final comment; DON'T BUY THIS BOOK IT IS A WASTE OF MONEY AND TIME.



4. I really question the review from Mr. Vavoumis from Greece over this book. I have bought six different books on slap bass recently and this one is really the best of them all. It starts out somewhat simple and gets progressively more difficult which is a proper way to teach. The recording sounds fine and the musical ideas are really ear-catching. Joe Santerre is real heavyweight among bassits - just check his credentials. He knows what he is talking about so my best advice is ignore those negative reviews and enjoy the book when you buy it.

   The only caveat I would have is that this book is for a relatively experienced bassist. I don't think a beginner would fare all that well with this book unless they really pick things up quick.

2 comments about Christmas Songs for Bass.

1. You don't find may books with bass scores but this is one. It's great for learning bass and/or spreading a little Christmas cheer.



2. I bought this book as a beginner who was tired of playing basslines (only) of songs. I wanted to play tunes, or melody on my bass guitar. This was one of the few books I could find where I could play recognizeable tunes on the bass. I like to play basslines of course, but it gets boring after a while. When I get really good at playing, I want to play the bass as a solo instrument. I was really excited about this book, because it has all the classic Christmas songs in it. And, it is on my level as a beginner, because I opened the book and began playing right away. I love this book and recommend it to anyone.

1 comments about Mel Bay Faq Bass Care & Setup (Faq).

1. I've been playing guitar for over 20 years, and while I've tinkered with the action, pickup heights, etc., I never attempted truss rod adjustments or had much reasoning behind my tinkering other than curiosity. After I picked up an inexpensive bass, I was quickly frustrated by how awful it played, but I couldn't justify dropping the money on a "good" bass. I also didn't want to throw good money after bad with a professional setup on a second rate instrument. This book is all you need to setup a bass properly by yourself with tools you likely already have in your garage. It takes the trial and error right out of the process. In less than 2 hours, my bass was playing as well as basses priced 4x more. The book is well worth the price.

No comments about Bass Guitar Lessons: Learn how to play Bass Guitar the Smart Way! (Smart Way).

1 comments about Dean Peer's Bass Harmonics: New Concepts and Techniques (BassMaster).

1. This is a well put together and satisfying treatment of harmonics for bass guitar. There is a little more to read than your average music book, which is too often page after page of notation without explanation. The science behind harmonics is presented and how it is applied to the neck of the bass guitar with lots of graphics and photos of hand positions (the pics are too dark for some reason). There are short compositions that are easy to play right away and sound good and the book comes with a CD to check and see if you got it right. The only improvement I could see would be to make the book 200 pages and teach you how to play "Portait of Tracy" (joke). You will like this book, it gives instant gratification to those seeking to make those funny little noises called bass harmonics.

3 comments about Dictionary of Bass Grooves.

1. As Mr. Malone states in his introduction, "the purpose of this book is to introduce you to a wide variety of musical styles and the role of the bass." Thirty-four different styles grouped into nine larger genres like Rock, Jazz, Funk, and Afro-Carribean are explored from the bassist's point-of-view.

   Before I begin to describe some of the shortcomings of this book/CD, I'd like to praise it for what it does right. The musical examples and the notation are excellent. Every style with the exception of theR&B Shuffle is accurately represented with its signature sound, chord progressions when applicable, and sometimes even clichés. The notation is uncluttered and includes chord voicings and tempo. The performances on the CD are absolutely stellar with drum meister Sean Reinert (who played with Mr. Malone in Cynic and other projects) and other guests.

   There are some things, however that could have been better. The descriptions of each style are loose and very broad introductions, and that's all. Mr. Malone lists for every style five representative bass players, when perhaps for some styles ten or fifteen names would have been better. There are no listings of typical or representative songs or albums in the style, which is unfortunate for those using the book without a teacher familiar in the styles to make "for further listening" recommendations. Sure, someone could search for recordings based on a player's name, but the point of a reference work is to help remove some of that effort from the reader. For most of the descriptions only a half page is dedicated, perhaps two to five pages would begin to provide the level of depth necessary to really understand the styles.

   The description of the styles generally have only a sentence or two about the historical context of the style, and a paragraph or two about the harmonic content. Naturally, some styles require more treatment than others, but the consistent sparseness of the descriptions is disappointing.

   As to the styles represented, the book covers a broad swath of modern music, and while it wouldn't be possible to cover every sub-genre of all types of music, the book performs admirably in this regard. My only complaint is that the R&B Shuffle has no shuffle parts for the bass player since the bass line, as written, is almost entirely quarter-notes. Shuffle happens on the second note of an eighth-note pair, and this example does nothing to help the reader to learn to shuffle. Even the Jazz section does little to cover the topic of swing, which is a huge part of the Jazz repertoire. Swing notation is, however, used in the Reggae style example, but there's no mention of how to play swing or shuffle.

   Even though the book is intended to be from the bassist's point-of-view, descriptions of the styles and their harmonic content as representative from the other players' point of view would also be useful. Bass players, more than anyone else in the band, have to know what the entire band is doing, and this bit of wisdom escapes the book.

   Performance notes on each of the pieces would have been also helpful. Something along the lines of "Be careful at measure 10, the time change is tricky..." would go a long way, especially for students not familar with some of the more esoteric styles.

   Back to the CD. As good as the CD is, its major shortcoming is that there's no count-in at the beginning of each track. The reader hits play and hears a song, there's no way to begin playing immediately; the reader will always start a measure or two behind.

   In short, the book is a welcome addition to the library of bass instruction books. It performs its stated purpose well, but there are some small things missing that are absolutely necessary (like the track count-in), and larger things missing that would have made the book more definitive, rather than just introductory.




2. This book is excellent for those of you that just started learning bass.

   This book has examples of music styles up to the 90's.
   For example: southern rock, prog rock, prog metal, jazz, blues, country, death metal, punk, salsa, bossa nova, etc.
   There is little example on the recent music styles *well you can say that current music styles are just derivative of the examples given*

   The examples are easy to follow, even for beginner. They're also pretty accurate in explaining the music styles.

   I use this book to teach my student.




3. . . . the second or third. Bass is my third instrument after roughly 35 years apiece of piano and guitar.
   
   IMHO, one's first book should be Mel Bay or maybe no book at all if your bass teacher has his/her own great handouts instead. The only good place to start anything is at the beginning.
   
   But after that, this book should come next. Though I don't necessarily agree with all of the history portions and how they are presented (I think someone else mentioned this too -- we need a big, extensive discography for further exploration!) the groove transcriptions themselves are excellent, along with the recordings.
   
   It's a good thing chord progressions can't be copyright-ed. Those of us who catch on to the fact that we're playing "Bo Diddley," "Eight Days a Week," "All The Things You Are," and either "So What" or "Impressions" (Miles or Coltrane? Ginger or Maryanne? Whatever . . .) will try not to spoil anyone else's innocent fun.
   
   One last piece of advice: practice s-l-o-w-l-y. In fact, maybe the next edition of this book should have two takes per piece, one at performance tempo and one at ultra slow practice tempo. Seriously, if you make yourself practice at what we of the vinyl generation used to call "speed 16," you'll be amazed when you're performing up to tempo 5 times faster than the folks who try to do it all at once and keep stumbling.
   
   Besides, playing slow is a lot like meditating -- you'll be surprised how you bond with your instrument and appreciate the beauty of all those pretty bass lines.
   
   And wait till you see the changes in your guitar and piano playing -- but that's another conversation for later.

1 comments about Chord Studies for Electric Bass: Guitar Technique (Workshop (Berklee Press)).

1. I purchased this very hopeful it would help me advance my playing. But, while the technical information is excellent, it's not easy to understand. Mostly it's just musical notation of lots of scales that directly relate to specific chords. Nothing really new or insightful.

   As a REFERENCE book, this might be good, but not as a student workbook (the title says "Chord Studies" so I expected some form of lessons).

   Another serious shortcoming is the lack of a CD. This compounds the problem of understanding WHAT the authors might be trying to offer as instruction.

   Truth is, for the scales and chords presented in this book, a Bass Student could find all this on the Web, For Free.

4 comments about Gig Bag Book of Bass Scales (Gig Bag Books).

1. This book is quite useless!!! It cover about 15 scale forms but it tell me nothing about when to use the scale forms! Save your money and buy other scale form related books! Moreover, it cover these scales with all notes... I think it is a BIG WASTE OF PAPER!!!!! Do you think it is needed? If you're a bassist, the answer is so clear.



2. Disregard the bad review - This book does not claim to be any more than a clear and concise book of bass scales. For that it is excellent. It's small size (thus the name Gig Bag) makes it easy to carry around. The scales are neatly presented in note form as well as tab (for those of use learning to read this is helpful). A good foundation book that any bassist can use.



3. This book is exactly what it says it is...it is a very handy gig bag book to have if you play the bass. The scales are easy to read if you use tab or read music. It has all the different varieties of way the scales are played. It is just great...I highly recommend.



4. If you are going to play serious bass you HAVE to practice your scales, period. This book is an absolute perfect tutor for EVERY scale and EVERY key, and, it includes not only all the major, minor, and church scales, but, everyone's fave pentatonics (majors and minors), jazz melodics, whole tones,and the all the variant blues scales. The book is in a narrow, incredibly sturdy spiral bound hard laminate that fits perfectly on your music stand. Any reviewer that doesn't give this a five-star must lip-sink or play air guitar. This is the book, bar none, for in-the-trenches practicing at my studio. Its taught me so much that I cannot express the value after all those hours. We need one for chord progressions, too! This is a must buy! Keep on practicing and jammin'!

4 comments about FastTrack Bass Method - Book 1.

1. This book helped me to learn the basics of bass very quickly. It has tabs as well as regular notation for each song. There is a CD which is very helpful. I made it through this book very quickly and look forward to moving on to the next book.

   EXCELLENT choice for a beginner.




2. THIS IS A GOOD BOOK FOR BEGINNERS. THE CD MAKES IT VERY EASY TO GET A RYTHM, IM NOT REALLY INTO THE ROCK MUSIC. BUT IT HAS SOME NICE BLUES TRACKS ON THERE AS WELL. THE LAST LESSONS ALLOW YOU TO PLAY WITH OTHER INSTRUMENTS SO YOU ARE THE ONLY BASS THAT YOU HEAR. AND IF YOU ARE STARTING A BAND THERE ARE ALSO 3 OTHER BOOKS THAT GO ALONG WITH YOURS, AT THE END OF THE LESSONS THERE ARE 3 SONGS. EACH INSTRUMENT WILL LOOK AT THERE OWN BOOK, AT THE SAME SONG AND PLAY TOGETHER, YOUR OWN BAND. (BASS,KEYBOARD,DRUMS,GUITAR)
   HIGHLY RECOMMEND.



3. This book lives up to its title. The combo of the CD and written material (tab + instruction) is excellent. The book has both tab and sheet music to learn from and you get to play along with the CD. This really enforces the concepts of time (rythum) and harmonics (chords, scales, etc.). Many different styles and tempos really help accelerate your learning process. For me timing was a very tough concept to grasp and playing along and viewing the various tempos and riffs in the book has brought me a long way toward being a respectable bassist. I still jam with friends who can play lead, rythum and drums and that just reinforces the concepts.

   One thing I have to mention to be fair in the review is that I have bought a lot of the available "Learning" Books, DVD's, etc. that are on the market. This one is by far the best at teaching the conceptual and physical (real world) playing concepts. If you really want to play bass and want to learn quickly I highly recommend this book.

   Another note - read some theory. At least enough to know the notes on the neck of the bass and how to find them. A little scale and chord construction will help you out a lot. Oh- and read up on timing and rythum as it applies to the bass. With this background and a concerted effort to play the material in this book you will progress quickly.

   Guitarnoise.com has some great Bass Sections on timing and theory as well as cyberfretbass.com. They're both free and will help accompany the concepts and playing material in the book.

   In short - for the money this is the best da#! beginning bass book on the market.




4. The book arrived in record time. Thanks for a great transaction.
   Jim

1 comments about Mel Bay's Encyclopedia of Scales & Modes for Electric Bass.

1. Not much to be said. If you're looking for exactly what's stated in the title, you get it. Complete and , for the use I made of it so far, reliable. I've always found Mel Bay ( and Hal Leonard too) publications up to their fame