The Bass Case

This book hopes to address the key question every reader has, “I know the basics.  Now what?”  Specifically, there are two objectives:

1) Help readers become ready to read anything. Given this goal, the exercises are written in various keys, times, and styles. For reference, the book is broken up into four chapters: quarters, eighths, sixteenths, and triplets.

2) Provide tons of reading material. When I wanted to improve reading, I quickly ran into a problem: I’d buy a reading book with great explanations, but only one or two examples to work on the concept! I felt if I spent 15 or 20 dollars, there ought to be lots of actual reading material. In this book, there are 50 full pages of exercises. I felt that explanations and guidance are readily available via the Internet, books, etc. What’s needed is plentiful, helpful, affordable content.

This book will help you most if you:
- Know basic reading rudiments (note names, repeats, key signatures, etc.). If additional guidance is needed, see my website at thebasscase.com.
- Play with a metronome or drum machine.
- Start slow. If necessary, start really slow. One of my teachers in college used to make me practice as slow as it took to play a piece perfectly the first time. It felt achingly slow at first. However, I found that he was absolutely right. Practicing at 40 bpm, with each click representing a 16th note, can be a great way to get better at reading because we’re training our brains to prioritize accuracy over speed. This allows us to make accuracy a habit.
- Do a mental checklist before each exercise. Quick-scan every exercise for three things: key & time signatures, lowest & highest notes, and signage. By signage I mean repeat signs, codas, or other musical “instructions”. These mental notes help us avoid getting caught off guard.
- Get into the habit of looking ahead as much as possible. This is a tricky but super-useful skill because it requires us to play the current material while figuring out what’s coming next. It enables us to interpret the notation before it happens, thus minimizing mistakes. In Studio Bass Masters, famous bassist Nathan East notes his keen support of this skill.
- Remember that variety is the name of the game here. This book was intentionally written with varying levels of melodic content. Some exercises are more of a bass line, others are melodies, while others are more like an etude. The reason is to reduce the amount of music we’re able to predict. If we can successfully read unpredictable exercises, we’ll easily be able to play more predictable ones.

At present there is one way to purchase this one.  Fortunately, it’s by far the easiest method on the planet.  This link takes you directly to a purchase page.  All major cards are accepted and all you need is a valid email!  No need to sign up for anything or enter lengthy forms… pretty cool.  And as always it’s 100% secure!

Here are a few free sample pages:

Sample Page 1

Sample Page 2

Sample Page 3

Table of Contents

Both hobbyists and hardcore bass players at some point ask, “What is a bass solo, and how do I do it?”  Thought I’d weigh in my two cents.  Well, okay, actually I’m hoping to pass along wisdom more than create it, since some very wise things have already been said!

Bobby McFerrin is relentlessly creative, improvising entire songs at his shows.  Music nerds in particular will appreciate his 2009 World Science Festival demo of the pentatonic scale’s innate-ness in humans around the world.  He can sing classical and jazz equally beautifully, and loves to include the audience in his songs.  He once posed a question to an audience of music students by asking what the most important aspect of improvisation is.  He offered several choices like music theory and ear training.  He argued that the most important approach is an attitude which he calls “forward motion”.  He rephrases it to “just keep going, no matter what”.  I love this!  It’s gotten me through some rather frustrating moments in the practice room.  I’m trying to apply this more broadly in my playing lately, particularly during jazz songs.  I used to stop after I made a mistake and start over.  But McFerrin & others challenged me that I was actually training myself to perform badly, since musicians can’t stop during a live performance.  But now, even when I make a blatant mistake during a jazz song, I force myself to keep going.  This felt at first like I wasn’t addressing the mistake I’d just made, but strangely enough it’s doing the opposite.  It’s challenging me to raise my standards since stopping is no longer an option, and I have to commit to whatever I play.

Pat Metheny’s bio is amazing as well.  He’s one of my favorite guitar players and musicians in general, and had a great way to approach improvising.  He says each of us has an “inner listener”, and that our goal is to play what our inner listener hears.  He says you’d think this might happen naturally or intuitively, but actually for most people it takes a lot of work to do that fluently.  Integration of music theory & application is huge here – i.e. tons of repetition of scales, arpeggios, melodies, repertoire, etc.  Metheny argues that when we have the ability to play whatever we want — which is a process, not a destination — our inner listener will tell us what to play.  Our inner listener is influenced by the things we listen to, so many players spend a good amount of time doing non-background listening  to genres they aspire to play or great players of those genres.  So his advice is to listen lots, play lots, and practice lots.  So improvising (connecting what we’re hearing in our heads to what comes out our fingers) is a product, Metheny says, of long-term highly focused practice AND more organic methods.

I can’t remember where I first heard this, but it popped up again on howmusicworks.com when discussing scales:

“…While music can be written directly in one of these scales, they are also often used as the framework for improvisation, the playing of a spontaneous melody line over a backing chord progression.”  That’s a great definition: improvisation is playing a spontaneous melody.

What’s worked for you as you try to improvise better?

Check out Benny Golson’s (tenor) solo:

When you look at the busiest working bass players today, one thing they all have in common is this: they’ve figured out how to practice in a way that helps them move forward.  There’s a self-knowledge they have about the way they practice.  One of my heroes in the practice world is Adam Nitti.  Listening to him explain, for example, what he calls the “movable anchor”, it’s easy to see the long hours he’s spent tweaking his technique, tone, and touch.  So rather than discussing a specific practice technique, I thought it might be worth chatting about how to practice for the long run, or, macro-practice if you will.

A few macro-practice habits that have helped me:

1)      Take a trajectory perspective.  Many players I meet take one of two postures about their playing.  Either they feel depressed about their lack of abilities (I’ve been there many times!), or else judgmental towards other players for being where those players are at.  Neither are much fun, and they tend to isolate us from other people.  But when we’re on a trajectory, we’re suddenly met by a wealth of helpful questions.  Are our practice habits good for our mind and body?  Are they healthy habits?  How can I improve?  Where am I headed?  And of course a trajectory perspective also helps us realize we aren’t doomed to remain wherever we are for long.  We aren’t permanently stuck anywhere.  That’s both humbling and refreshing!

2)      Make every practice session about discovery.  For example, say I’ve been practicing my A major scale in “sequence fours”.  This is a practice exercise that happens in four-note phrases with the following notes: “A, B, C#, D” then “B, C#, D, E” then “C# D E F#” and so forth for two octaves.  Then when I’m at the top of the scale, I’ll descend by playing, “A, B, C#, D” then “G#, A, B, C#” then “F# G# A B” and so forth.  Adam Nitti calls this concept contrary motion.  Here’s an example with a different sequence:

The point is this: after practicing an exercise, there may be musical ideas, melodies, bass lines, solo ideas, etc. that begin to formulate in your brain.  What I do is actually use those moments of, “Ah ha!  I have an idea!” to give me my next practice material.  I’ll play what I hear in my head, play it in all 12 keys, then try playing it in a simple song like Autumn Leaves.  For serious players, it’s easy to get burnt out in rigorous discipline.  This discovery-approach keeps things new and fresh.

3)  Practice regularly.  I used to set my phone’s stopwatch when I started practice, and stopped it when I reached my goal.  I was relentless.  While it’s hard for me to advocate this strategy over and above, say, healthy friendships or a well rounded life, some amount of “I need to do this often to get better” is welcome, in my opinion.  Aristotle says, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”  On the other hand, I hear a few friends use the term “task master”, as if it’s easy to become a slave to our to-do lists, music practice certainly included.  I couldn’t agree more.  Yet I can’t think of another way to arrive at any honed ability than discipline.  It seems key to a lifetime of musical growth – when it’s taken in conjunction with the first two points above.

As someone who’s gone through burnout, these three things have revitalized my practicing more than anything else.  What’s worked for you?  Leave a comment below!

I had to record myself for my senior recital back in ’07.  For me, the benefits were pretty great.  I get a snapshot of my playing abilities 4 years ago.  It helps me to see where I need to grow.  It gives me a chance to share a bit of my soul with the world and see if I can’t foster something good in others.  Here’s that recording – an original composition temporarily titled “On A Mission”, an experiment with tapping and chords.

I thought about titling this post “a case for bass”, but, in the immortal words of Happy Gilmore, “I’d have to kick my own a…..”

Here’s five great reasons to play the bass:

1) Possibilities.  The electric bass is still only about 60 years old – it’s pretty crazy to think there are living bass players who themselves are older than the entire history of the instrument.  There’s still a lot of uncharted waters.  If we talk about the life of the soloing electric bassist, the history is shorter still.  There’s an ever-growing list of people who are doing innovative things with the instrument, and it’s super-fun to play a cutting edge instrument whose role seems to change from context to context.

2) The power to make or break someone else’s performance feels fantastic!  If the bass player is playing wrong notes or out of time, there’s only a small handful of people who can tell whose fault it is.  Conversely, if us bassists are laying down a meaty, juicy groove, and we’re cutting through the mix with punch and growl, my experience is there’s still only a small handful of people who can tell who’s lending to that great feel.  Either way, the bass player has great influence over an audience’s experience, whether they know it or not!

3) Because bass players have the unique role of influencing rhythm and harmony at the same time, we’re often asked to do different things for different people.  In one band, or city, or studio, things are done a certain way.  There’s a culture.  Go somewhere else, and the context changes sometimes entirely.  It could be that the musical style changes, or it could be the personality mix is different.  Either way, I love the opportunity to provide the “bottom voice” in a variety of circumstances.

4) It’s easy to start, yet can be studied for a lifetime.  As a wannabe stock investor, I often hear about the importance of investing in businesses that have a competitive edge.  One competitive edge is called “barriers to entry”, where it’s hard for new businesses to enter the field.  For example, there’s a high risk for failure if my goal is to popularize a new computer operating system.  So Microsoft and Apple have been on many investors’ list of favorites for a long time since they dominate that market.  One thing I hear over and over from new bass players is, “I’m so good at the bass!”  It’s much more rare that I hear, “I tried bass, but, I couldn’t seem to play anything.”  At least in the beginning, bass players often deal with playing single notes, so the barrier to entry is low.  Almost anyone can put one finger on a fret and pluck a string with another, so it’s easier to get started right away.  But of course, like anything probably, there’s a lifetime of learning and growth to be discovered.

5) Good bass players are in high demand.  Like anything it depends on context — Nashville is different than my town of Twin Falls, ID — but it’s hard to find bass players that are fun to work with, can play well, and are trustworthy.  I’ve had some friends who got jobs or gigs because of how they made the other players feel, not just how well they could play the instrument.  Both are important, to be sure, but — despite what any cultural pressure may say — being a well-rounded person does have its place in the music world, and sometimes it can win us jobs.

So, there you go.  What would you add to the list?

Runners Up:

-  Kicks and giggles at the ability to make the house next door vibrate.

-  Ladies.

-  The jokes.  ”What happened when the drummer locked his keys in the car?  It took him 3 hours to get the bass player out.”

A few years back I had the fun opportunity of taking bass lessons with one of my favorite bass players, Dave Buda.  Look Dave up on Youtube sometime if you haven’t yet… I love his tone and touch.  You can imagine how thrilled I was when during my third semester at Berklee, he asked me to join him for a song onstage at a local music store for a bass clinic!

The venue that night was a sea of bass players in the audience, eager to see Dave.  And Dave tore it up – people were “ooh”ing and clapping and jumping spontaneously out of their seats.  Near the end, when I joined him for our song (I found out 10 minutes before the show that we’d be doing an up-tempo funk version of “So What”), I ate it.  It was terrible.  I couldn’t keep the form of the song, my timing was off…  remember in That Thing You Do when The Oneders play for “Boss Vic Koss” and knock over the cymbal stands?  Next to me they sounded like Miles and Trane feeling kind of blue.

After leaving the stage to silence — the infamous cricket chirping with two or three distant coughs — Dave generously offered, “He’s a good sport, isn’t he folks?”

It was clear I needed more experience.  Dave recommended a way to get better in this area.  He recommended printing a bunch of flyers and posting them around campus. So I did, and I couldn’t believe it – when I got home that night I had something like 7 voicemails with people asking me to play. (Apparently they hadn’t seen me play the night before…) And just like that I found myself playing with different groups, meeting tons of people, and playing a variety of styles. I made sure to ask lots of questions! Around Berklee, bassists were in short supply, so folks were eager to recruit. Though it would have been easy to crawl into a hole for a few months, my awful night with Dave provided a great opportunity to grow.

Any notable failures you remember learning from? C’mon, it’s the internet! It’ll be our little secret.

One really fun part about attending Berklee included hearing from fantastic guest musicians.  Trumpet player Chris Botti stopped through to do a “clinic” (lecture/performance/Q&A) and recommended picking a hero.  Botti then recommended a rather peculiar, perhaps unintuitive, roadmap to achieving our dreams:

1) Let’s say Person A wants to become a great musician.  Her ultimate goal, Botti argued, is to develop her “own voice” on the instrument.  For example, think Miles Davis (Botti’s hero) – even if we were blindfolded, we could hear just one of Davis’ melancholy, introspective squeals and recognize him immediately.

2) Person A’s roadmap to this ultimate goal is to pick a hero and emulate them.

3) She should, according to Botti, “… duct tape an iPod to her head for 6 months and listen to everything by her hero.”

4) As she practices regularly, plays with others, and grows as a musician, a strange thing happens.  Out of a deep study of an idol/hero, she develops her own sound.

I thought Botti’s suggested destination for the musician, about finding your voice, was interesting.  But what really grabbed me — I remember sitting in the front row and lurching upright in my seat! — was the way he argued we arrive there.  Maybe you could paraphrase it like, “emulation unleashes individualism.”

I wonder what you think of this!

Along these lines, I have one group of heroes currently: late night talk show bassists.  Mike Merritt on Conan, Rickey Minor on Jay Leno, Owen Biddle (recently replaced by Mark Kelly) on Jimmy Fallon, and Will Lee with David Letterman.  These guys have to deliver perfection on demand.  Any genre, any speed, and on cue!  It’s so fun to watch.  I love their professionalism and ability to deliver at a high level for a sustained number of years.

Who is your hero?

I still remember the first day.  Fourteen years old, a friend called me up and said, “Hey, I’m starting a band.  Do you want to play bass?”  I said, “Great!  What’s a bass?”  Excited but unsure, I went to his house.  He showed me this large, shiny, black guitar-that-wasn’t-quite-a-guitar.  He let me hold it, laughed, and then taught me how to hold it more properly, to pluck the strings… and that’s when it happened.  We plugged the bass into his 100w amp, and, the room shook.  It was glorious.  I remember thinking, “Wow, I can do that?”

I’ve always been a person with many different interests, from stock investing to writing to interviewing.  But years later, the bass is something I find myself returning to again and again… in the same way the bass anchors the rest of the band to a specific harmony or rhythm, it seems to somehow anchor me in life.

Thus, the blog.

It’s fun to share my passion with others who value different elements of music – the business-minded, the artistic, the ambitious.  On this blog, I hope to teach useful information, share what excites me, and learn from other passionate people.

Shoot me a message or comment any time, and here’s to some more inspiration!