Reading Music - The Bass Guitarist's Guide to Reading Music; Book

[Grangur]

Hi All,
This book is new out I thought it could be useful for others to read a review.

Ove the past 2 weeks I've been working my way through the first chapter of the first book; I've got the "Beginner Level" it's from a series of 3 by Stuart Clayton, who also wrote "Crash Course Bass". The other books are "Intermediate" and "Advanced".

This series is published by Bassline Publishing; [url="http://www.basslinepublishing.com/"]http://www.basslinepublishing.com/[/url] and it's spiral bound, so you don't have to stamp all over the spine of the book to get it to stay open.

Right from the start you learn all about the Reading basics from bars, staves, note types, time sigs and key sigs... blar, blar... right up to navigation using codas and repeats etc.

In the past I've done some reading and played the note lengths going by my knowing what the tune should sound like. This last 2 weeks, however, I've been playing from the book with the metronome in my ears and trying to keep strictly to the right times for the note length. It makes a change from knowing the tune and timing the lengths. Wow, it's a new world and it really brings you back to reading at a new level and getting the timing right for once.

Reading properly brings a new challenge to playing, but I'm sure that once I've got it covered I'll be able to really play from music scores in books without reverting to those notes that are the work of Satan himself.... TABS!!

OK it's only my very humble opion, but surely if you play by tabs alone you're really only "playing by numbers". If you're going to play Tabs only why get to know the names of notes at all? Why would you ever need to know that "E3" is a G, or "A5" is a D?

But, hey... back to the book. At the start of the book the examples are a bit lacking in "melodic" content, but in fairness to Stuart it's got to be hard to write lines when all you have to play with is crochets, but as you go through the book the lines get better and in the end you're playing some real-world lines.

What I have found really useful, and worth the price alone is Stuart's really clear description about "Accidentals". I've been confused about those in the past, but his discription is totally clear.

Would I buy it again? Well I'm looking forward to getting on to the "Intermediate" book, so I guess that means something. Yep, it's a cool book.

I hope this ramble helps a few folk.

Cheers
Rich

[Sumbabba]

Sounds brilliant, thanks for the review. I have some reading experience and I know all the terminology from when I studied classical guitar as a youngster. Is there much I could learn from the beginners book you reckon? Or is it all about introducing notes and symbols etc?

Edited September 3, 2013 by Sumbabba

[louisthebass]

I've nearly finished book one, and would echo that it is a really good book to get your feet wet with the reading thing. Will be ordering book two very soon. Well done Stuart .

[Sumbabba]

Well I had a quick look on Amazon and the intermediate and advanced books looks great so I went ahead and ordered them from the publisher. Looking forward to getting started on them!

[louisthebass]

[quote name='Sumbabba' timestamp='1379331672' post='2211277']
Well I had a quick look on Amazon and the intermediate and advanced books looks great so I went ahead and ordered them from the publisher. Looking forward to getting started on them!
[/quote]
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