Mel Bay Walking Jazz Lines for Bass download epub

Let me qualify this by saying I am not a bass player, nor do I aspire to be. I do however have a need to record credible basslines for my guitar soloing. In that regard, this book fits like a glove. There is no unnecessary theory or confusing sidetracks to the goal of playing credible jazz basslines. The book is easy to read,(spiral bound so it opens completely), with large notes. Each jazz standard offers a different lesson which is an ingeniously effective device. This book would have gotten 5 stars from me if it weren't for the small number of typos I found. Most of these are obvious,(page 23, 1st note under a B flat major 7th chord is obviously not going to be a B natural) but perhaps I'm being too hard on the book. It's been said that any fool can make a complex subject complex but it takes a genious to make the complex simple. This is probably the only book on bass guitar I will ever need for my purposes and so I thank you Jay for that !

I'm learning bass, focusing on walking jazz lines and I'm finding this book very helpful. The book assumes some basic skills and a little basic theory. Hungerford's approach is mechanical (in a good sense) rather than theoretical. It illustrates how walking lines are built. The principles are easy to grasp. There are lots of examples and room to experiment.

Best of all, the book includes the chord changes as well as a transcribed bass line for 20 recognized jazz standards (good ones too). On the CD, the bass is in one channel the other instruments in the other.

After some months of practice with this book I've edited my comments. I've used and/or seen many other books on this subject and the approach used Walking Jazz Lines for Bass is sound. The author is clear enough that this book should not be your only source of learing and playing this music. Using this book alone would be far too narrow. There are other good books and practice CDs. Get some of them. But this one is simple, clear and easy. it will get you off to a very good start.

I bought a copy of this book and loaned it to the bass player in our jazz trio. It seemed to be what he needed as we noticed and improvement in his playing shortly afterwards. When he returned the book to me, I looked it over and found the concepts very helpful playing left hand piano bass lines with our guitarist alone. The exercises and 20 songs are so good, I use the CD and book often in my home practice. Turning the stereo balance right or left allows me to play along with bass and drums or piano and drums. The staff and print are large enough for easy reading at my piano.

I bought this method after reading the reviews, and I was not disappointed. The approach is different, as it relies on memorizing patterns and then mixing them up to produce an original line. It is hard work doing each exercise thoroughly, but I am about 1/3 through, and the result is there. Highly recommended.

Great instruction!

I have struggled with site reading and just some of the basic structure of how to put a line together. In just the first few pages, I have had the "light bulb" turn on. Can't wait to see where the rest of the book will take my playing ability to.

It will be a good reference and teaching aid for the beginner to intermediate bass player as well.

This book is really great! I have been playing bass for a few years and I am trying to learn walking bass lines on my own. This book is really helping a lot. It starts off by giving the basic patterns which will help you get started and improvising walking bass lines really fast. Highly recommended.

I have recently come back to having bass as my main instrument after 5 years of performing as a singer/songwriter/guitarist. I used to be quite good in genres other than jazz, but really wanted to get to where I could do session work and start playing in a jazz setting.

I have spent a few hundred dollars on different bass books and play a-longs in the last 3 months, and while all of them are helpful in one way or another, this one is by far the best.

I already know some of the theory and can read music (more comfortable with treble clef), but this book can definitely take you from knowing nothing to playing as a pro. It is definitely more geared towards electric (fretted) players, but it can easily be transferred to upright (I can't imagine anyone not taking lessons for upright and having a teacher that could help "translate" the necessary ideas).

Here's some specifics:

1- The book does a really good job of giving you a little theory and then teaching you a new song so that you can apply it in context. You need both.

2- It is spiral bound. It totally escapes me why all music books are not this way. The pages won't stay open on most books without me having to use some clip or weight to hold them in place. I'd gladly pay a couple of bucks more for books that are spiral bound.

2- It gives the interval numbers for the bass lines as well as the notes being played, which enables you to play the parts even if you don't know how to read the music. For me learning to get comfortable with reading bass clef, this is awesome. I can play 1000% times better than I can read, so I just learn the parts from the intervals (which is really how all bass players think about what they are playing anyway) and then go back and practice reading what I am playing. This also makes all of the lines instantly transferable to any key.

3- There are numerous different bass lines given to be played over each chord and in different situations. There are enough to keep me busy learning different lines for quite a while, but the way the book is set up I can just learn one or two types for each situation and be able to play every song in the book. They also give you an idea of the thinking and "rules" behind them so that you can create your own. Each so also lists the page where you find the appropriate list of lines to play under each section.

4- There are 20 standards and 2 simple blues progressions in the book and they are ones that all of the jazz players I know recommended me learning. They are great for being able to sit in at jazz jams, but even more importantly they give you common frameworks and chord progressions that you find in many, if not all jazz tunes. There is also a bunch of different variations on the blues and the Rhythm Changes progression. There are no play a-longs for these, but you wind up with another 10 or so songs if you count these.

5- All of the tracks have stereo separation so you can eliminate the bass and play along with just drums and piano. You can also just listen and hear what your aiming for. The recordings are just bass, drums, and piano which makes it easier to learn your place in the rhythm section without filtering out the horn section, singer, ect. For copyright reasons there are no melody lines written, but the piano fills in enough of it to make it sound genuine.

6- There is also a certain amount of subconscious ear training that happens playing these lines and learning these specific songs that is useful in all kinds of music. I wish now that I had started my learning here when I first started playing. It has already made me a much better playing in other genres.

7- The book gives props to Ray Brown, who is one of my favorite bassists, by giving a transcription of what he actually plays. This made me think that the author at least had good taste, when I was looking through it.

8 - There is a list of other songs worth learning and a list of bassists to check out. I have listened to jazz on the radio for years, but aside form the biggest names (rarely the bassist), I really didn't know where to start when buying cds. I would also suggest Jamey Aebersold's free Big Red Jazz Book's list of quality recordings worth getting. So many old albums have great playing, but are horrible sounding. He does great play a-longs, but his materials are really more geared towards lead instrument thinking and I really think there is too big of a learning gap to try and imitate the bassists he has on his play a-longs.

My only complaint with this book is that there is not a chapter on the Cycle (circle of 5ths/4ths) and Chordal progressions (the Nashville Numbering System).

There are so many things that memorizing the Cycle is good for that I think it is simply indispensable. I think that it is much better to work on Chordal scales, ii-V-I progressions, ect. than to spend any significant amount of time on running up and down regular scales as the last part of this book recommends.

Otherwise I would give it 5 stars.

Edit -

After having worked with the book longer I have dropped it down a star.

I think that giving plug in bass lines is a great idea for someone who has already learned to build very basic lines on their own and knows how and why they are built that way. The huge advantage of doing it this way is that you learn how basslines have developed through the history and different forms of jazz (subconsciously). Most of the lines in this book are more modern versions, which would not fit in a swing, second line, ect. setting. The problem is that the person using only this text wouldn't know why.

The book's pluses, including the lines once you're actually ready for them, is totally worth the money, but I would suggest that you start with either The Jazz Bass Line Book By Mike Downes or Creating Jazz Bass Lines by Jim Stinnett. Mr. Stinnett also has an article online that covers his general approach that you can use while waiting for the full method to arrive in the mail, which covers quite a bit that isn't mentioned in the article.