“Bach Shapes” For Bass Now Available

Jon De Lucia has just released the print edition of Bach Shapes: Diatonic Sequences for Bass. The 70-page book is full of exercises picked from the Baroque composer’s musical vocabulary to improve your pitch, technique, and intervallic knowledge.

De Lucia, who is a saxophonist, was prompted to put the book into a bass-friendly edition at the behest of the Berklee College of Music bass department. It features a forward by Lincoln Goines, who calls it “a great book for reading and diatonic fingerboard dexterity.”

“Who doesn’t love some Bach?! Jon has done a great job in researching the Bach vocabulary and finding phrases that fit in the jazz idiom,” says Assistant Chair Sandro Scoccia. “Great melodic snippets that can be applied to common standards and in any contemporary music style. And also great reading material, from the intermediate to the advanced player, with enough variations to keep focused on the page.”

All of the exercises are written with the electric bass in mind and range from E up to B in the middle of the treble clef. Each scale and interval sequence is taken straight from Bach’s Cello Suites, Violin Partitas, Inventions and more.

Bach Shapes: Diatonic Sequences for Bass is available now in paperback and Kindle versions.