TKenrick

This week's groove involves playing hip hop with a pick... There's also a strong whiff of The Jacksons to this one: Notation and waffle here: Groove Of The Week #53: Q-Tip - 'WeFight/WeLove'

This is one of the most important - and overlooked - areas for anyone wanting to make a living out of playing an instrument. There are bright spots to be found in even the most banal music, and it's vital to find them if you're going to survive playing Brown Eyed Girl 100 times a year without wanting to physically hurt people...

This week's groove is a bit of vintage Jamiroquai. Great playing as always from Stuart Zender and some tasty harmony to boot: Dots etc here: Groove of The Week #52: Jamiroquai - 'Manifest Destiny'

I'm resurrecting the Groove Of The Week Series, starting off with a look at a straightforward groove and a challenging lick from MonoNeon: Full analysis/notation here: Groove Of The Week #51: Ghost Note - 'Swagism'

Great idea - I don't know where such a thread would live; maybe keep it in theory & technique as it's probably a fairly niche topic? Oteil is a player who I know very little about, but I always hear other players speak very highly of him. Most of my favourite Jaco moments are actually him as a sideman; the Joni Mitchell stuff, Metheny's Bright SIze Life album and his solo on Ian Hunter's All American Alien Boy are the ones that I keep coming back to (I transcribed/analysed that Little Beaver tune a while back, some great stuff in there, especially considering his age at the time!).

It's roughly 80 mins a day, which isn't that much - I do an album each way on my commute, I also stick on albums in the background if I'm cooking dinner or similar. Just had a baby, so there's a lot of time sitting around feeding him at the moment when I can't get any other work done, so that's now prime listening time. I'm the same - I was basically raised on Dire Straits, The Eagles and very little else, then spent my teens listening to nothing but metal. I'm doing a blend of CDs and Spotify for precisely the reasons you mentioned. I wasn't going to make a list, but it might be good to make it public as a way of holding myself accountable and making sure I don't quit by March!

Some thoughts on listening habits in the age of streaming, and why I'm challenging myself to get through 100 albums in 2020: New Ears' Resolutions - 100 Albums in a Year?

Her first two albums are such great encyclopedias of groove; I'm in the process of tidying up some more charts from Peace Beyond Passion, so they'll be here in due course.

As something of a reluctant slapper (that's what she said...) I definitely prefer the 'chunkier' old-school slap sound of flats or tapewound strings. I find that an EQ pedal* is useful on function gigs where 90% of the set is P-bass with flats territory and then someone decides that they want to play 'Never Too Much' - I'm much too lazy to bring a second bass with me, so this is the best compromise. *a source audio programmable EQ, for those who are curious.

It's one of my favourite books for reminding myself that my reading isn't what it should be 😂 A great practice resource and a serious workout; most of the studies are rhythmically straightforward but challenging it terms of pitch, especially given JP's preference for using all of the ledger lines above the stave.

This. Or, keep some dry signal in along with the 1 octave down - I find that this helps to fill things out a bit more and maintains a bit of clarity, especially in smaller venues where it's easy to overdo the sub bass thing.

Changing tack from posting charts of tunes that I have to play and turning my attention to things that I want to play: Meshell Ndegeocello - 'The Way' bass transcription PDF

Funnily enough that's what my wife never refers to me as 🤣 Nailed it. Notation is a language, just like any other - you have to get a firm grasp on the individual syllables before you can expect to string words together with any degree of fluency. Books like Bellson etc do this in a systematic way, which is why I'm such a fan of them. Anthony Vitti's Fingerfunk Workbooks are also great for working on rhythmic lines in a more musical context than a strict rhythm reading book.

Another one that seems to get called on gigs with increasing frequency and is hard to blag: Queen - 'Bohemian Rhapsody' bass transcription PDF

Thanks, Joe, much appreciated - I keep meaning to catch you at the bass show, and then I remember that I'm allergic to them... The notes from our lessons are still keeping me busy after all these years!

Hey Joe! Any advice on walking concepts for tunes in 3/4 time? I already have your (excellent) walking bass book.

It's cropped up on a bunch of gigs recently and I've had to confess to not knowing it. As I've said before, everyone has principles until their mortgage is due...

I'm in the process of getting the store page updated to show a few page previews, it should be up in a day or two. EDIT: Sod it, I'll attach some here rather than waiting for my website guy to do it

An absolute guilty pleasure of mine, with some very silly fills towards the end: Toto - 'Africa' bass transcription PDF

Not at the moment, only doing a PDF version to start with (this may change if there's enough demand for paperbacks)

A bit more Bowie - 'China Girl' transcribed in full: David Bowie - China Girl Bass Transcription PDF There are tons of bass books out there that tell you what to practise, but very few that detail how to go about it in the best way, so I wrote one... Better Bass Practice eBook

Sleep. Well, that's my guess, at least. I find that I can practise something as much as I like on a given day with only marginal improvement, but if I get a decent night's sleep and come back to it then it's somehow just there, much as you described. Something to do with the brain consolidating information and strengthening neural pathways blah blah blah...

I'm keen to point out that in spite of transcribing a lot of music over the last 10 or so years I'm by no means quick at it - most of the charts that I put up take a few hours of solid work, others much more. One trick that I use when I have a lot of charts to write in a short space of time is to spend my 'first pass' of the song listening to structure only. If you know where the pulse is, then you can create a neat little list of how many bars each section is, which might look like this: Intro 4 V1 8 Chorus 8 V2 10 Solo 16 V3 (breakdown) 8 + 4 Chorus 8 + 8 This gives you a head start when putting things into notation software, and gives you a bird's-eye view of the 'geography' of the song, which can be helpful when it comes to memorising it for a gig. Rhythm is one of the most frustrating aspects of transcription, but all I can say is that over time you'll begin to build up a library of 'patterns' in your brain and instinctively know how to write out what you hear. I'm also a firm believer that better reading = better writing, so keep up the Louis Bellson torture... FWIW, 'I Feel The Earth Move' is a tough one to write out because of all the syncopation, so fair play for not making life easy for yourself!

New videos/articles focusing on the much-hated topic of music theory: How much theory do you need to know? Bass Player's Book Club #3: Harmony & Theory