The Bass Player Book

Great book with tonnes of bass playing nourishment

This book is good for intermediate players or anyone that has had previous experience with string instruments. Basic theory is included; however to an entry level player(me), the theory portion is a little dry and provides no immediate gratification. Having never picked up a string instrument in my life(I did play various brass instruments in high school)I found it difficult to really learn a lot from this book. I do like the rest of the book, the innovators section is pretty cool and the recommended album section would probably help out anyone that may be lacking in musical diversity. This book would be gretly improved if there was a companion book with just the tabs and musical notation. This review may sound critical but as a beginner player I feel this book over complicated things for me. maybe I'm just dumb.

This book is a collection of articles from Bass Player magazine dealing with everything from the basics of bass playing to more technical subjects, like recording bass. I find the articles on improving your sense of time, rock bass playing, and blues bass playing to be particularly informative. The list of essential albums in the back is also great.

This book can put you on the road to really understanding what is involved with playing the bass! This is a collection of BP magazines articles that has been broken into three sections: Playing the bass, Equipment, and Innovators. In the playing section a shallow look into the fundamentals is presented, ranging from a quick set of scales, music theory, rock, country, to reggea. The main styles of bass lines such as walking, slapping, rock, blues, latin, and jazz are all covered here, agian, in artical-like shallowness. The equipment section is full of good info and is, to me, the best reason to purchase this book. Subjects covered are: "how to string your bass", "how to buy a bass", "how to buy an acoustic bass", "Amps and Effects", "Recording", and the "Gear Glossary". The last third of the book covers the innovators with several interviews with Jaco, Jamerson, McCartney, Claypool, Flea, Clarke, and Graham. This is the standard fair of the magazine and doesn't really contribute to the knowledge - I suppose it is inspirational to some extent. The book closes out with a list of the 30 bass albums that you must listen to - and I agree with every single choice. This book runs about $18.36 at amazon.com and please link through this sites home page. I don't know about you, but I would like to see this site kept around for quite some time! Jeff