TKenrick

What's that old phrase, beware of internet tutors bearing warmup exercises? How to tell if what you're practising is doing you any good, and how to turn a bad exercise into a good one:

Some concepts that I use and teach for learning/practising grooves, framed in the context of Bernard Edwards' wonderful part from 'Le Freak': Full transcription of the aforementioned disco classic: Chic - 'Le Freak' bass transcription pdf

There are some other boards offering graded exams for contemporary music that might be a better fit than the ABRSM stuff; both Rockschool and Trinity Rock & Pop offer non-classical music exams that offer the same level of accreditation as their classical counterparts. None of them are cheap, mind... I did A level music (not music tech, sadly) without having done GCSE and it wasn't a problem, so if your son doesn't need a bit of paper to get on the course then it's possibly more a case of sitting exams to give him recognition of the level that he's at.

My faithful laptop has died after 11 years of service, so I'm exploring new options for notation software. I've been using Sibelius 6 exclusively since 2006 on pretty much a daily basis, but I'm not keen on forking out for Avid's new subscription model. Lots of my students use Musescore and seem to like it, Dorico SE seems to be a viable alternative, too. Does anyone have any experience/opinions on any of the above? I don't need tons of bells and whistles, just the ability to write out bass parts and the occasional guitar ensemble arrangement.

Pete bought a ditto looper pedal from me and was a pleasure to deal with from start to finish, highly recommended!

No surprises there, then 🤣 As @jrixn1 and @ChrisDev have already said, the 'odd' bars are 7/4. Yes, you could write/think them in 14/8, but I've never seen that time signature on my travels. 14/8 also means you'd be constantly referring to an 8th-note pulse, which at 145bpm seems a bit stressful...

What sort of bass are you using? If there's a bridge pickup, then play over it (harder to play nearer the bridge on P-style basses...). Higher string tension nearer the bridge should result in a punchier, more defined sound. For me, rest strokes (playing into/through the string and coming to rest on the string below) are the cornerstone of a strong, defined sound - you can get greater volume/clarity with less effort than if you pluck 'away' from the strings. I am not a fan of the low action/light touch/crank the amp approach favoured by Gary Willis and others. I find that playing with low action feels like all the notes are being choked out prematurely - this might be down to a slightly agricultural right hand technique on my part - and results in permanent fret clank, which is not to my taste.

My 2010 ears, it seems, had some very strange ideas about what was happening in this tune. The chart has now been overhauled, phantom odd-time bars removed and now contains chord symbols, along with much more detailed articulation instructions: Abba - 'Money, Money, Money' bass transcription I'm sorry for the Fb, it was unavoidable.

I had a relatively poor experience with Charlie Chandlers (pickups wired in back to front, bass came back filthy) but I'm a fan of Richmond Guitar Workshop if that's not too far to go. Andrew who works there does all the bass stuff.

Here are some of my favourite exercises that I suggest to students who want to maintain their technique while practising things that actually get used in the music they play:

Having given it a quick listen I'm not sure that the sheet music is totally correct, which doesn't help matters at all. It feels to me like the B chord isn't really Bm, but rather it's more of a Bsus4 thing - there's frequently an E melody note over it in the instrumental sections. The bass also plays a fill that sounds distinctly major in character at one point. So I'd think of it as being in E major, but nobody is really committing to playing the 3rd on the B chord, giving us I - bVII - V (or Vsus4, if you like). The D major chord is a very common substitution, it's a borrowed chord from the parallel key of E minor and is labelled as 'flat 7 major'. This chord crops up all over the place, often with another borrowed chord (flat 6 major) before it. Think about the turnaround of 'Crazy Little Thing Called Love', we're in D major, but we get Bb - C - D (bVI - bVII - I) Totally agree on the first point, being able to actually play the thing takes top priority. But... it's hard to 'learn the language' if you don't know what the words mean. A trained ear is a wonderful thing to have, but we need labels to put on the sounds we hear so we can categorise them - that, for me, is the value of theory.