Articles by Evan Kepner - Page 3

This will be an exciting month for Stone Temple Pilots bassist Robert DeLeo and his wife – they’re expecting their second son to be born in the next few weeks. Stone Temple Pilots will also be releasing a new self-titled album on May 25th – the first since 2001’s Shangri-La-Dee-Da. DeLeo had the following to say in a recent interview...

In this lesson we’ll explore the basic forms of Bebop scales so you can start getting the patterns down and experiment with them in your music. There are times when you solo that you may want to do a scale run over a chord. Have you ever noticed that a straight descending scale run as eighth notes over a chord...

In the last tetrachord lesson we went over the concept of tetrachords and how they change the way we think about scale patterns. In that lesson the focus was the major modes and a question was posted asking about the melodic minor and harmonic minor modes. Therefore this week’s article will go over tetrachords in the melodic minor and how...

Whether you’re playing a small gig, major venue, or are signing a recording deal it’s crucial that you know the value of a contract and how to navigate one. This lesson will cover some common advantages and pitfalls to having an engagement-contract for a performance and what to look for in a recording-contract. Keep in mind that the point of...

We normally think of scales in terms of eight-note patterns and treat them as a unit. There are the standard modal forms for both major and minor, the bop variations, blues variations, but all of these still cling to the paradigm of an octave based scale unit (even if the total number of notes in the scale changes). As bassists...

What does it take be become a “great” band? Believe it or not the collective skill of a group is not determined solely by the skills of its individual members. There is a level of ensemble technique that really elevates a band to be beyond average and gets the group noticed. As with all things there is no short-cut and...

As an upright player you have to make many moving parts work together in order to get the tone you want. Both hands play different roles in crafting your tone, but the real voice of our instrument comes from the bow. If you are new to the upright and haven’t taken the time to really find and fine tune your...

How many times have you played a continuous four hour gig? Have you ever had to go from the studio to a gig? Or play two gigs in one day? If you have, you understand the important of having an optimized playing technique. If you have not, and are going to try, you need to prepare yourself to be as...

Previously in the “math and music” lesson we derived equations for expressing intervals as functions of relative frequencies. This week we’re going to define conventions for interval sizes and then derive three variables where we can determine the composition of any frequency ratio. Guess what – all intervals can be described as different combinations of the octave, perfect fifth and...

How often do you hear people claim that it’s not how much your practice but how efficiently you practice? There are always claims that practicing 15-30 minutes every day versus a 3 hour session every Saturday will have a more positive impact on your playing ability – but how do you make the most of those 15-30 minutes? In this...

Every musician should have an idea of the foundational concepts that allow us to create music. This lesson series will explore the basis for tonal structure in Western music. I’ll warn you right now, this lesson is not for the faint of heart, or math-phobic. The purpose of this is to add to the conceptual foundation from which we view...

The upright bass is frequently classified as a “single-line” instrument. In other words, the bass produces a single line of tones and does not play polyphonically. This is certainly the rule in many cases, but there are times where adding additional chord tones to your playing, especially in solos, can add a new dimension of depth to your sound. Given...