Bass Lessons - Page 37

This lesson is derived from Jon Burr’s The Untold Secret to Melodic Bass. Be sure to check out the complete method book in downloadable PDF, Kindle Book and the all-new paperback formats. This is the final chapter of “The Untold Secret.” We’ll be continuing the column by posting excerpts from “Another Look at Melodic Construction” beginning next week. As chord...

This lesson is derived from Jon Burr’s The Untold Secret to Melodic Bass. Be sure to check out the complete method book in downloadable PDF, Kindle Book and the all-new paperback formats. One way of developing rhythm is through the use of accent overlays on the substrate. Overlays can come from the rhythm of the song’s lyric, or some other...

This lesson is derived from Jon Burr’s The Untold Secret to Melodic Bass. Be sure to check out the complete method book in downloadable PDF, Kindle Book and the all-new paperback formats. Internal Dynamics is an area that seems to be largely ignored in the teaching of Jazz, while at the same time is one of the most essential components...

This lesson is derived from Jon Burr’s The Untold Secret to Melodic Bass. Be sure to check out the complete method book in downloadable PDF, Kindle Book and the all-new paperback formats. I’d bet that you, the reader, have written something, and then later on felt like you found something else that really should have been in there. Well, this...

If you’ve been keeping up with this lesson series and having focused practice you should be getting pretty comfortable with the fretboard layout. Remember that the drills in Part 1 and Part 2 should be practiced regularly to get the full benefit. In this lesson we’ll work on something really fun: the blues! As a note to those who are...

This lesson is derived from Jon Burr’s The Untold Secret to Melodic Bass. Be sure to check out the complete method book in downloadable PDF, Kindle Book and the all-new paperback formats. So far we’ve covered Anchors, Pivots, and now Lead-Ins… This is all fine for jazz, you might be thinking, but what the heck does this have to do...

David Ellefson, bassist for F5, continues with his Rock Shop series on YouTube with “The Discipline of Practice”. Ellefson explains the many benefits to disciplined practice and ways to make the process enjoyable as well as productive.

This series has been dedicated to learning the fretboard, the previous lesson covered the major scale. In this lesson we will cover an applying the major scale to a basic chord progression, the II-V-I. There are a multitude of ways to think about music. For this exercise we will focus on thinking laterally and vertically. When we think laterally we...

This lesson is derived from Jon Burr’s The Untold Secret to Melodic Bass. Be sure to check out the complete method book in downloadable PDF, Kindle Book and the all-new paperback formats. So far we’ve covered Anchors and Pivots in previous columns. Roots and fifths – the bread-and-butter of the working bassist. Now we start to get into the really...

This lesson is derived from Jon Burr’s The Untold Secret to Melodic Bass. Be sure to check out the complete method book in downloadable PDF, Kindle Book and the all-new paperback formats. Last week we talked about “Anchors”. We introduced the idea of “Pivots” as “the primary oppositional tone to the root (or anchor). Here is some more discussion of...

Bassist David Ellefson continues his Rock Shop Webisodes with Part 6 of “Making a Recording,” a video continuing in his recording focus. His comment on the webisode project: “I’m always asked questions from fans and other musicians about playing the bass, the business side of our industry, and music in general. So, I decided to create these regular video webisodes...

One of the essential skills for any bassist is mastery of the fingerboard. At any point in time you should know exactly where you are and where you can go. Most of us have the first part of that down, it’s rare that you’ll be playing and not know where you are, but how many people have an understanding of...