Publisher : Sher Music

This book provides you with a complete overview of all the elements of music you will need to know to successfully play bass with others - regardless of the style of music you are interested in, or your current level of playing. Applies to acoustic or electric bass equally well.

Divided into 33 easy-to-comprehend lessons, the book progresses from elementary to intermediate lessons on each topic, including:

• Learning how to hear bars of music and then how to count basic rhythms of quarter notes and eighth notes.
• A painless way to learn to read music, starting with fingerboard diagrams.
• Organizing the notes on the bass into major, minor and mixolydian scales, with a logical sequence of exercises on each, leading to the ability to create your own bass lines in each mode.
• Learning correct hand positions, fingerings and how to shift between positions on the bass.
• Basic ear training exercises 
• More rhythm lessons emphasizing improvising around the signposts of beats 1 and 3, and then learning to hear and play off of "target beats" so that every eighth note in a bar feels like home to you.
• Learning where the arpeggio notes of major, minor and dominant 7th chords are on the bass, and fun ways to turn them into real music right away.
• A system of learning how to connect the roots of chord progressions using arpeggios, scale notes and chromatic notes, creating instant bass lines that will work in any style of music.
• A system for learning and practicing "licks" in each of the main tonalities.
• Creative ways to practice various aspects of one tonality - including interval studies, scale chords, pentatonics, the blues scales, chromatic passing notes, etc.
• Sample bass grooves in different styles of music, including the blues.
• An overview of how harmony works in popular music so that the chords of tunes become comprehensible to you.

Sample Pages