Articles by Evan Kepner - Page 4

If you are a working musician – or aspire to be a working musician – you need to be able to sell yourself and your music. At some point you may have to present your work to a record label or publishing company and you will be competing against many other artists for a label representative’s attention. Believe it or...

The foundation for harmonic structure is the triad. They are the basic chords of Western harmony, and using them in a solo provides a sense of structure and strongly outlines the underlying chords. Do not be fooled into thinking this is some boring drill where you arpeggiate the triads from chords in a lead sheet – there are lots of...

At some point in your musical career you are bound to be given a melody line… and nothing else. Maybe it’s one you have created, it might just be an idea someone else is working, or perhaps it’s the melody to a standard you have to learn on the bandstand. Regardless of the circumstances the bottom line is that you...

When bassists list people who constitute legends, there is one name that is continually mentioned: Stanley Clarke. There are very few bassists who have been as innovative, who have crossed styles and musical barriers, and who have changed the way we approach the bass in the way that Stanley has over his still-flourishing career. Was this an intentional guided evolution?...

You work really hard a musician. If you’re at the point of publishing your own original music you need to understand a few things about the music business to protect yourself and your work in the form of copyrights. It is not absolutely necessary to file copyright applications for your work, but there are a lot of advantages to doing...

There comes a time in every player’s life where you have to make the next big step in your practice methods: you must do some transcriptions. Suppress your groans, it is not as bad as you think, and it is an immensely useful practice tool. There’s a reason why every player, teacher and book about serious jazz practice recommends it....

Believe it or not pattern recognition is extremely important to being a successful jazz player. There are a few common chord progressions that will pop up in many tunes – having an arsenal of lines or phrases for these different pattern sets can save your neck on the bandstand if you don’t know the tune. In this lesson we’ll go...

There are lots of great ways for artists to connect with fans and the list keeps growing. Wouldn’t it be awesome to have your own iPhone app dedicated to your music, news and shows? Now you can! MobBase is a service that lets artists create custom iPhone apps for sharing music, tweets, photos and video, merchandise, shows and other useful...

It is critical to understand the natural resonances of the bass to get the strongest tone and make a plan for fingering strategies in each key. A working knowledge of natural harmonics and sympathetic resonances will allow you to make more sophisticated choices in your playing approach and ultimately improve your sound (and give you a ton of music-geek points)....

Green Day’s alter ego, the Foxboro Hot Tubs, gave a few select fans the ultimate impromptu show on November 1st in London. The audience included fan club members, competition winners and some invited guests. According to bassist Mike Dirnt “The only reason you’re here is you didn’t go to church yesterday.” The band, Billie Joe Armstrong, Mike Dirnt, Tre Cool,...

Spector has announced the release of their latest line of USA basses: the Forte4 and Forte5. These are the same handcrafted basses we expect from Spector and are new for 2010. The slogan for the new line is “No Options, No Frills, ALL TONE.” The Forte’s have a lot of great features including the original Spector NS curved body scale,...

Brown’s Guitar Factory has announced that they will now retro fit Kahler basses to be piezo and MIDI compatible. They are now prepared to distribute the retrofits and installation materials to retailers, custom shops and the players themselves. Brown’s Guitar Factory has developed saddle pieces that integrate piezo elements with the Hexpander and Graphtech Acoustiphonic systems – providing a full...