Stuart Clayton’s New Instructional Book Is a Deep Dive Into the Art of Solo Bass

Stuart Clayton has added another edition to his incredible instructional book series for bassists with Solo Bass: 18 Solo Pieces for Bass Guitar. The pieces include original compositions, technique-focused studies, and arrangements of popular classical pieces to expand your solo chops and repertoire.

“Taking the approaches and techniques made popular by bassists such as Victor Wooten, Stuart Hamm, Billy Sheehan and Michael Manring, these pieces will provide you with many years’ worth of study material and inspiration,” Bassline Publishing explains. “Detailed performance notes are included for each piece, as well in-depth tutorials for many of the required techniques. Also included is an exhaustively researched history of the solo bass genre and of the use of looping devices.”

Clayton focuses on different aspects of solo playing with chordal fingerstyle studies, harmonics studies, two-handed tapping studies, and more. Check out his playthrough of the “Contemporary Techniques Study.”

“This piece was inspired by the work of virtuoso bassists such as Victor Wooten, Michael Manring and Jeff Schmidt, all of whom have been very successful in combining multiple techniques into one seamless performance,” he says. “Consequently, this piece requires a solid grasp of a wide range of techniques such as slapping, strumming, harmonics, tapping and palm muting.”

Solo Bass: 18 Solo Pieces for Bass Guitar is available now via Amazon.

Solo Bass: 18 Solo Pieces for Bass Guitar Song List:

• Chordal Fingerstyle Study #1
• Chordal Fingerstyle Study #2
• Chordal Fingerstyle Study #3
• Harmonics Study #1
• Harmonics Study #2
• Solo Slap Bass Study
• Solo Plectrum Study
• Two-Handed Tapping Study #1
• Two-Handed Tapping Study #2
• Two-Handed Tapping Study #3
• Two-Handed Tapping Study #4
• Looping Study
• Contemporary Techniques Study
• Bach Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major
• Golliwogg’s Cakewalk
• Für Elise
• When Johnny Comes Marching Home
• Laura