Talking Style: Oh Freedom

I’ve been wanting to do some Gospel episodes but wasn’t sure where I wanted to start until now. The first song that we’ll look art is the post-Civil War spiritual, “Oh Freedom”. In particular, I’m going to show you some ideas on how to “hear the changes” , an extended Gospel-style turnaround and how you might approach this song if you were playing it on bass with only a singer which is what happened to me the weekend before this episode was produced.

I’m going to do this episode in two parts.

In the first part, I’m going to show you what I think is one of the best ways to become a more well-rounded musician – getting friendly with the keyboard and why its important:

In the second part, I will show you how some ways that you might approach the changes from the bass perspective:

Resources:

Notable recordings:

See if you can take what I show you in the videos and apply it to playing along with these recordings or find singer to work these out with. OR sing them yourself.

  1. Odetta (first video)
  2. Joan Baez (second video)
  3. Aaron Neville (third video)
  4. Golden Gospel Singers (fourth video)

Ted Gould III, also known as “Blyss”, is a bassist and music educator originally from New Orleans now based in the Bay Area. Connect with him at sonofabass.com and check out his new Slap Bass course.

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Leave a Reply to Bob DeRosa Cancel reply

  1. Gareth Hughes

    Thanks for that Mr.Gould, I got a lot from that.

  2. I’m so pleased.

  3. Todd Hamby

    This was just beautiful.

  4. Bob DeRosa

    What a great lesson! Thanks again for another valuable exploration and explanation of what we should be doing as bass players. Some people write thick books that aren’t nearly as helpful as these 10-minute segments. I look forward to next month.

  5. Bob DeRosa

    Oh, by the way, who makes that little keyboard you used? That’s a great tool for hearing harmony.