Buzz

Here are the top 10 most popular features on No Treble last week, as determined by you! 1. Lesson: Introduction to Bebop Scale Forms 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. 2. Video: Chick Corea Trio with Frank Gambale, Antonio Sanchez...

The 33rd annual Atlanta Jazz Festival will feature many great jazz artists, including bass greats Marcus Miller, Esperanza Spalding and Stanley Clarke. The event takes place on over May 29-30 at Piedmont Park in Atlanta, Georgia. Best of all? It’s all free. Swing Streets to Swing Beats featuring Esperanza Spalding and Raydar Ellis performs on the 29th, at 7:00 PM....

Tony Levin’s BassCam: Sledgehammer

Here’s Tony Levin giving us a unique perspective of a Peter Gabriel concert in Lima, Peru. I love Tony’s background vocal appearance. Check out more from Tony Levin’s Road Diary.

Bryan Beller has announced his first ever full-band tour of the Northeast. The trek, which is in support of the Mike Keneally Band, is called the “They’re Both the Same Band Tour”… and for good reason. Beller leads a set, and then Keneally leads a set, but the personnel stays the same. Keneally plays guitar, keys, and vocals, Beller holds...

I’ve always loved the jazz-fusion music that came out of the ’70s, and Return to Forever is no exception. Check out this video of the group playing Stanley Clarke’s composition Vulcan Worlds, and watch out for the split-screen solo exchange around the 4-minute-mark.

Level 42 bassist Mark King announced a summer 2010 tour for the band, which stretches the globe. Most exciting is the return to the U.S., which will be the group’s first visit in a little over two decades. King notes that the dates are confirmed early, so “there’s no excuses for you not to be there…” The band is celebrating...

What Doug Did: A Retrospective on Doug Rauch

Doug Rauch (14 September 1950 – 23 April 1979) I’m a huge fan of Doug Rauch, a unique bassist who sadly was taken from us at a young age. He had a funky, bubbling, percolating style based on 16th notes which never failed to ignite the music. I wrote a blogpost about him and am always pleased (and a little...

Marcus Miller Live: Higher Ground

Here’s Marcus Miller with his band in Leverkusen in 2007, doing his version of Stevie Wonder’s “Higher Ground”.

Rush has just announced their 2010 North American tour, dubbed “The Time Machine Tour”. Rush is coming off a year off, and this tour spans 40 cities, from June through October. Time Machine refers to the band’s tour theme: classic Rush. For the first time in their history, the band will be playing the 1981 release, Moving Pictures in its...

The last formal studio recording made by Joe Zawinul has been released. Absolute Zawinul, a project initiated by Kristjan Järvi, who collaborated with Zawinul on the project, was recorded in New York during the winter of 2006-2007, and released in Europe last November. The CD is now available in the U.S. The recording includes several members of the Zawinul Syndicate,...

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...

Robin Koerts: Funk Soul Scream

Robin Koerts is perhaps most famous for his amusing parody videos of Mark King and Michael Manring, but as the following video shows he definitely knows how to play the bass himself.