Guide’s Goal Is To Inspire Improved Music Careers
A new book from Hal Leonard Corp. aims to help aspiring music artists. Five Star Music Makeover: The Independent Artist’s Guide for Singers, Songwriters, Bands, Producers, and Self-Publishers, written by five industry experts, covers five key skills: improving vocal production/technique, songwriting, recording an EP, music publishing, and promoting your music. The authors share industry insider stories, inspiration via celebrity interviews...
Package Teaches Hundreds of Double Bass Scales
Interested in honing your skill with double bass scales? Bass educator and founder of Discover Double Bass, Geoff Chalmers has created a digital ebook and backing track package, Double Bass Scales: The Play-Along Collection. The package covers 17 different scale types in all 12 keys, over one and two octaves. The package includes 408 written scales and 800 backing tracks....
Oz Noy Gets Funky on Latest with Will Lee and Roscoe Beck
Guitarist Oz Noy, whose music blends jazz, funk, rock, blues and R&B, focuses on the funk this time around with the appropriately titled album, Who Gives a Funk. Bassist Will Lee, most well-known for his work in the bands for David Letterman’s late-night shows, and a longtime Noy collaborator, appears on the album, as does bassist Roscoe Beck (Robben Ford,...
Lita Ford Plucks Previously Unheard Music From the Past for “Time Capsule”
Guitarist/vocalist Lita Ford, best-known for her time The Runaways (which also produced Joan Jett) and her solo career peak in the late 1980s, has released Time Capsule, an assortment of songs recorded with a host of famous friends back in the ’80s. Ford says she rediscovered the 24-track analog recordings in her Caribbean home. “This is some of the best...
Ace Frehley Releases “Origins Vol. 1”
Former Kiss guitarist Ace Frehley has released Origins Vol. 1, an album almost completely comprised of rock covers. His onetime Kiss bandmate Paul Stanley guests on the album, as does Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash, as well as vocalist/guitarist Lita Ford and Pearl Jam guitarist Mike McCready. Chris Wyse (The Cult, Owl, Ozzy Osbourne, Mick Jagger) handles bass, as he...
Dave Roe Plays on Sturgill Simpson’s Latest
Country artist Sturgill Simpson has released his followup to 2014’s Grammy-nominated Metamodern Sounds in Country Music. Called A Sailor’s Guide to Earth, the Nashville-recorded album features soul-inflected vocals from Simpson and bass work handled by prolific bassist Dave Roe (Johnny Cash, Loretta Lynn, Jerry Reed, Chet Atkins, Dan Auerbach). Esquire magazine has already said of the album, “It’s hard to...
Joe Hubbard Authors Book on Functional Harmony
Top bassist and bass teacher Joe Hubbard (also a No Treble contributor) has released the book, Functional Harmonic Concepts. Hubbard is known for his recording work with artists such as Mose Allison, George Benson and Dave Garabaldi and his instruction (The Who’s current bassist, the prolific Pino Palladino, was one of his students). According to Hubbard, the 120-page book will...
Classic Santana Lineup Regroups for “Santana IV”
The majority of the classic Santana III lineup of guitarist Carlos Santana’s eponymous band, Santana, has reunited to record together for the first time in 45 years on Santana IV. Sadly, the new record could not include Santana III bassist David Brown, who died in 2000. Instead, current Santana bassist Benny Rietveld (Sheila E., Miles Davis) holds down the low...
Bassists Galore Featured on Alberto Rigoni’s Latest
Alberto Rigoni’s new album, which mixes funky, electro, ambient, rock, pop and experimental vibes, is all about the bass – it’s even called Bassorama. Italian bassist Rigoni (TwinSpirits, Kim Bingham, The Italians, and his own solo work) pulled together an extraordinary assortment of bassists for the album, including Doug Wimbish of Living Colour, Divinity Roxx, Stuart Hamm, Steve Lawson, Nik...
Aidan Hampson Transcribes Blur, Green Day, The Killers and The Stone Roses
Transcriptionist Aidan Hampson has released bass transcriptions of Green Day’s Dookie and The Stone Roses’ self-titled debut album, as well as best-of compilations for The Killers and Blur. All the transcriptions are PDF downloads, easily purchased with a click, for less than $8. Check out the songs covered in each book: Blur (Best Of) Song List: There’s No Other Way...
App Makes Transcribing Easier
If you’re in the market for an app to help you transcribe the songs you want to learn, Transcribe+ aims to help. The app, designed for iPhone and iPad, allows you to import a song from your music library, change the speed and key, create loops, see the music’s waveform and even take notes. A version of the app, with...
QRATES Aims to Get Your Indie Vinyl Into Stores
You’re a musician and you love LP records. You’d love to press your music to vinyl to enjoy and for the world at large to hear. But even with the resurgence of vinyl, how do you begin pressing your music to vinyl discs, particularly on a small scale? The platform QRATES aims to answer that question. QRATES is a service...