David Gross Publishes “The Three Tonic System”
After publishing The Bassis for Transformation earlier this year, David Gross has returned with a new book called The Three Tonic System. The method book, which is applicable to any bass clef instrument, examines chord changes typically referred to as “Coltrane Changes.”
“Having been fascinated by the John Coltrane tune ‘Giant Steps’ for years, I decided to take a serious look at his Three Tonic System and create a book of patterns that will take you through the chord changes using arpeggios starting to the root, 3rd, 5th and 7th degrees,” Gross writes.
The 105-page book thoroughly explores patterns over the changes to familiarize you with the ins and outs of the sequence. Gross takes each pattern to every key to really drive the lessons home.
“All of my previous Bass Guitar books were written with bass tablature and because I feel tab is really doing a disservice to bassists and it is just as ‘easy’ or ‘hard’ to learn to read music, I wanted this particular book to be music notation and music notation period,” he adds. “When I started rereading this manuscript I realized that without tab, this book would be great for anyone who played a Bass Clef Instrument.”
The Three Tonic System is available now through Amazon.
Just fyi, there appears to be an error in the book intro under “what is a three tonic system”, where it says that EMaj7 is a third down from CMaj7 and AbMaj7 a third down from EMaj7, seems both should be indicated as being up a major third rather than down, or alternately down a minor sixth. .