Hector

Just had my action adjusted from the high high high setup I had before to something a bit more normal, and loving how much easier literally everything is! This weekend's gigs/rehearsals should be a blast. First chance to try out the new full circle live as well

I just reckon this sort of thing is easiest explained in person, and a good teacher can quickly help you clear up any mistakes in your technique that might cause damage in the longer run.

Jez I forget but have you had any lessons?

Yeah exactly that JG my man. If you play a straight dominant scale from the root down, starting on beat 1 of a bar notes that land on strong beats are R 13 11 9. Not exactly an over-abundance of chord tones there! But if you add in the natural 7 to play a mixolydian bebop scale the notes that land on strong beats are R b7 5 3. The bebop version makes the chord tones land on strong beats, and the line conveys the sense of the harmony. If you look at some solos by great bebop musicians, you'll see that they have chord tones landing on strong beats a lot of the time. They use different little patterns to make this happen though, and which patterns exactly are a part of the player's personality. You don't have to play straight bebop scales all the time: you can use a large amount of chromaticism, and change directions as much as you want so long as you hit those chord tones. Two books that really crystallised my thinking on this were "Forward Motion" by Hal Galper and "How To Play Bebop" by David Baker (vol1 is a good start, but they're all valuable). Both very valuable reading for getting this stuff together.

The only stupid thing is not asking questions Yeah, it's leading to an E. Part of constructing good lines that clearly define the harmony is making the notes you want land on strong beats (typically chord tones, or some of the more palatable upper extensions unless you want to imply other harmony). One way to do that is via chromaticism, adding in extra notes to make sure the note you want to emphasise lands on a strong beat.

I guess you could see D# as a non-diatonic note that sort of implies a B7 chord - it has the sense of motion towards the target note. But I did then go on to say that I don't think it's useful to think of lines like that in terms of secondary dominants (unless you're gonna go the whole hog and superimpose B7 over the existing harmony). It's better to think of that kind of thing as bebop-style chromatic enclosure of a target chord tone. It'd be a bit more applicable if we were targeting the root note of a chord e.g. playing D Eb B D C over a C-7 chord - you could think that the B was implying some kind of G7 sound I suppose.

In short, yes and yes! It's a great compositional technique, it adds a lovely sense of motion to chord progressions. As an improvisor, you should be looking to highlight these movements, and these juicy non-diatonic notes that take you through the changes. The cool thing is that secondary dominants will only have one note that isn't in your current key, so you can highlight it to capture that forward moving sound. Let's stay in C major: C7 = Bb D7 = F# E7 = G# F7 = Eb (note that this is a special case, because it's resolving to Bb, which isn't diatonic to C) A7 = C# B7 = D# These notes are essential to capturing the sound of the secondary dominant movement. You can add other tensions as and when you want (like I was writing about using different scale options over A7 in the key of C). The best way to get used to the basic sound is play those notes over the progression, and practise chord-tone soloing over progressions with secondary dominants in. You want to play movement through the harmony Related to what Ambient was saying, some of these chords can serve to modulate you to another key more permanently. You could modulate from C to D via E-7 A7 - which is either a iii V/ii in C, or a ii V in D.... Then it's really a question of a more permanent stay in D! As an improvisor, you can use these sounds to help guide you through progressions even when they're not specified by the chords. When you're playing a line and you want to set up a note as a target, playing a line with a semitone below it will guide the listener towards it e.g. you could have a D# in a line which you're resolving to E over a C major chord! I really like little melodic cells of diatonic note above and lower chromatic neighbor below (in any order) to target a specific note. But in that case at that fine a scale I'm thinking more chromatic enclosure than secondary dominants. You could get secondary dominants more fully in your lines by superimposing them over the existing harmony as well.

He's talking about secondary dominants - dominant chords that aren't necessarily diatonic to the key you're in. For example, iii VI ii V I in C: E-7 A7 D-7 G7 Cmaj7 That A7 there is a secondary dominant (in our key of C the chord it should be is A-7). It has a C# in rather than plain old C. It provides a sense of motion towards the ii chord. You can think of it in all sorts of ways - basically, it very temporarily, sets up a V-I resolution in the key of D minor. Secondary dominants allow all sorts of interesting note choices: you could play D harmonic or melodic minor over that A7 (I love the harmonic minor for the juicy Bb it brings to the party), or you could play A H/W diminished, or A altered. You could even do a D minor blues scale or pentatonic thing. Season to taste You can temporarily tonicise any chord in a diatonic progression by treating it as the I chord of it's own key and preceding it by it's own V chord (where that V chord is not diatonic to the current key, and is therefore a secondary dominant). Staying in C major, you could have a D7, which would be tonicising the G7 chord. You could have E7, which tonicises A-7 etc. The shorthand notation for these is to put that it is a V chord followed by the diatonic chord it is tonicising. E.g. a iii VI ii V I could be more accurately rewritten in roman numeral analysis as iii V/ii ii V I. Anthony is also saying that you can tritone sub any of those secondary dominants, e.g. E-7 A7 D-7 G7 Cmaj7 ----------> E-7 Eb7 D-7 G7 Cmaj7 --------------> E-7 Eb7 D-7 Db7 Cmaj7 Hope that's helpful!

Obvious question but do you get this playing acoustically?

I see what you mean for sure, a good teacher should inspire and should be constructive in their criticism. Nobody wants a teacher who puts students off by making them feel incapable, or who fails to encourage. But equally who wants to teach someone who isn't mentally prepared to take criticism? To an extent the analogy holds that good tools are made in the furnace. Bird became the musician he was after being laughed off the bandstand. As someone who both does a fair bit of (non-music) teaching and also studies music/bass privately, I've found that it's a two-way street and would caution placing too much focus on a teacher's abilities to inspire endlessly, or pander to students who don't have the right attitude. The process of teaching is a very difficult and heterogenous one, but at it's essence is an interaction of both teacher and student. By definition it involves some acceptance that there is something to learn on the part of the student. That the student is not yet what they could be. The role of the teacher is not that of the validator, of someone to simply say "yes, that's good"and to give them enough bits of qualification paper - they're there to criticise constructively and help realise the potential of their students.

[quote name='fatback' timestamp='1394709117' post='2394195'] Confidence building or confidence-wrecking? [/quote] Depends on the type I reckon! Misplaced confidence needs to be ignored, and genuine confidence (in yourself and in others) needs to be earned. Sometimes those lessons where you're almost ashamed at how little you truly know about the bass and playing music are the best ones for motivating you. I think every artist (of any kind) goes through a relatively long phase (sometimes returning to this phase) of creating things that aren't quite up to the standards we have in our heads, that somehow don't match up to what we're trying to produce. In this context, the mindset of a musician is a tough balancing act: enough insight and self-criticism to recognise areas to improve in to get your playing closer to that ideal, but going easy enough on yourself to still enjoy it and accept the level of music you're currently making. Andrew, I'd love to know who it was gave you this lesson...? PM me if you want.

[quote name='TheRev' timestamp='1394539146' post='2392356'] I have Christopher bag like this one: [url="http://www.thomann.de/gb/concord_pv502_kontrabasstasche_34.htm"]http://www.thomann.d...sstasche_34.htm[/url] It has lots of padding where it counts! [/quote] Seconded on that case - got one as christmas present and really like it. Good price and well padded. I don't have any specific advice except be overly careful when putting your bass in a van. Be so careful people think you're being a bit funny about it, you can never be too careful. I've had some damage in the past after someone else was tasked with transporting my bass to a gig with the rest of the gear. Never again. Luckily fingerboards aren't too hard to glue back on, but it could easily have been the neck/scroll or even (as I've also had, let's say no more on that) through the ribs/top.

Sometimes even not practising is a form of practising. Clear your mind and come back to the instrument refreshed! Taking tongue out of cheek briefly, why not try posting with our american friends over at talkbass.com? Someone might be able to help you out.

If you're interesting in developing your ear, I got turned onto this book by Hal Galper and have ordered it on amazon: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Primacy-The-Ear-Ran-Blake/dp/0557609127 Looks interesting, could let you know what it's like when it turns up?

Bilbo's spot on of course - there's always a delay between then things that happen in the shed and things that you play on the gig. I'd also add that lots of theoretical concepts can be grasped in an afternoon, but might take months to apply properly on your instrument - it's the difference between experiential and academic knowledge. Sometimes you'll definitely feel like you're not making progress, but just remember that every time you learn something new about playing or theory, no matter how miniscule, that you're now a better musician than you were before. A really solid resource for learning fingerboard shapes and relating harmony to the fingerboard is this (which I harp on about a lot....sorry): http://www.amazon.com/Serious-Electric-Bass-Contemporary-Series/dp/1576238830 This book is used and enjoyed by many: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Jazz-Theory-Book-Mark-Levine/dp/1883217040 This is a [u]great[/u] book for the more conceptual side of things and about constructing lines: http://www.halgalper.com/forward-motion/ Other than these books, a great way to learn theory in terms of how to make sense over changes is to transcribe as much as possible. It's an art form you get most from listening rather than from reading. Of course, there's always the great resource that is basschat - serious amount of accumulated knowledge on here.

[quote name='Clarky' timestamp='1393842676' post='2384809'] On Friday, I just used an fdeck HPF-Pre into the house DI box and a cr@ppy bass combo and it sounded great. The fdeck is a smart little device that buffers, gives you a phase switch (which saved my bacon at the gig as it was feedback city otherwise), and a high-pass filter that takes out boominess. Maybe worth getting hold of one of these as it doesn't have EQ and doesn't colour the sound but it does give feedback/boom fighting properties that your LM amp wouldn't have. You can't buy an fdeck in the UK but as it happens there is a UK effects manufacturer (4114) that is making me a clone of the pedal for about £70 (I have a BC thread about this) [/quote] Interesting, I do often have to turn down the lows on my amp..... I think part of my issue is that I understand my amp much better than I understand the PlatPro, so can get a usable sound more easily (although perhaps there's the potential for even more usable with fishman).

Funnily enough, I used to do that but progressed to running the fishman into the front input of my little Mark head, and now to running direct into the front input without the fishman. Anyone know if this is legit? Sounds alright to my ears. I use a shadow nanoflex pickup (under Bridge feet) which has a "preamp" included attached on the afterlength, so I'm not sure of the impedances etc

https://www.facebook.com/groups/218293068360578/ A spin-off version just for bass players focusing on walking lines.

Have a google of "bass visualisation practise" and some interesting stuff will come up. Edit - I personally love practising my scales in my head. For example, take a scale e.g. Db major and imagine yourself playing it in your head (I do this from first person view). Focus on how your hand would look on the fingerboard while you do this, what your fingerings would be and how it would sound. Try playing it with different fingerings, in thirds etc. Can be done with licks and arpeggios. If you can't visualise it clearly, try to slow down and work it out.

You thought right, thanks man

https://www.facebook.com/groups/jamoftheweekgroup/ The idea is that every week, a new tune is called, and musicians around the world upload a chorus of their solo. Constructive criticism is welcomed, but no bad vibes otherwise. Seems to be a great idea! Really nice to see a broad array of players at a variety of levels sharing their lines with one another.

[quote name='ambient' timestamp='1391347779' post='2356021'] Tony Grey plays 6 mostly. [/quote] Yeah, he's a great player and I love his work with Hiromi. How are you getting on with the lessons on his website? Have you found them helpful? My complaint about the Bartolo book is very minor - he gives more than enough information in the form of scale/arpeggio patterns that it is trivial to work out how to expand everything into 5 or 6 strings as and when the player likes.

[quote name='ML94' timestamp='1391248078' post='2354892'] +1 on this book I started on this book a couple of months ago and my playing has become much more fluent as I know what harmony lies under my hands in certain position. Now I feel more confident with the fretboard and not jumping up or down to the sections where I feel comfortable. [/quote] I know right? Love his enthusiastic/encouraging writing style as well. My only gripe is that anyone playing more than 4 strings is kind of left to their own devices, but the patterns given for the 4 strings are easily extendable. I suppose including 5 and 6 string patterns would make the book far too long.

I really like this book for helping you learn the bass inside out, and understand how to relate those fretboard shapes to theory: [url="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Serious-Electric-Bass-Complete-Contemporary/dp/1576238830"]http://www.amazon.co...y/dp/1576238830[/url] Stick with it, and it will do wonders. Scales and arpeggios are your bread and butter regardless of style, and this in an invaluable resource. If you'd like to learnt to read music with the bass, this will get you up and running: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Simplified-Sight-Reading-Bass-Josquin-Pres/dp/0793565189 EDIT - Since you mentioned slap bass, I loved working through this back in the days of VHS, but it's still out on DVD: [url="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Alexis-Sklarevski-Slap-Bass-Programme/dp/B000FKOZPG"]http://www.amazon.co...e/dp/B000FKOZPG[/url]

Really wanted to buy his DVD for a while and this thread was the reminder I needed but it's out of stock now! Bah.