Bass Links For Friday and Last Day of 20% Book Sale

Some places to hear new bass music this time.

1. Meshell has 4 tracks from her new record “Weather” available on via Facebook. You know they are gonna be funky.
2. Damine Erskine has released a live record of what he calls “weird jazz” of his quartet playing at Portland State (where he teaches). If by weird you mean totally awesome scary grooving bass playing, then yea, its weird.
3. Janek Gwizdala has a free download of 3 tunes (about 30 minutes) from his live gig last week in L.A. that has Bob Reynolds, Dennis Hamm, and Tom Brechtlein playing on it as well. You just have to re-tweet or like it on Facebook.
4. Evan Marien's track got featured in the final 50 on Bleep's contest for new music. WARNING - this page is retarded big and has 50 soundcloud embeds in it. But there is a lot of interesting free tunes there.
5. Ray Reindau's new project Star Monarchy has it's first track up on SoundCloud here.

And today is also the last day you can get 20% off of any and all the Chord Tone and Triad books, hard copy or e-book format. Just use the promo code “Buried” (get it, its a little halloween-y theme thing they did there) and you will save the money on any book you order from Lulu.com.

And if you don't have a Kindle or Ipad, you can still read e-books on any PC with free software so don't feel left out of the flat screen party.

Just download Calibre for Windows, Mac, or Linux and you are good to go.

Three Volumes of The Book of Chord Tones - Major, Dominant & Minor

Next week, all three books of The Book of Chord Tone series will be ready for all your grubby little bass playing fingers. These books cover all the 24 possible variations for the four notes in each of the chord types (major, minor, dominant), over two octaves and with brain damaging tab included.

Also, piasan de Basso, and molto ridiculoso bassist Damian Erskine has decided (very likely against the advice of his agent, his attorney and his doctor) to allow his thoughts to be recorded about this series after he viewed the books himself. And I quote

"The Book of Chord Tones has assembled what I believe to be a terrific resource and a wonderful way in which to explore chord tones. Working through these exercises opens up your mind and ears to what you can do "inside" of a chord while soloing (or just expanding your vocabulary with regard to bass lines). If we take these basic exercises and begin to expand the harmony to include tensions and alternate chord types, one truly has opened a Pandora's box with regard to playing inside any changes. It's this kind of practice which leads to fretboard mastery"

Damian Erskine

http://www.damianerskine.com

Peter Erskine Trio, Teri-Lynn Carrington, Gino Vannelli, Jeff Lorber, Tony Furtado, Solo Artist, adjunct professor Portland State & Marylhurst University, Columnist, Author 

You know that is going to come back and haunt him at some point, but for now, get a copy before he wises up and sends me a cease and desist letter on scary legal looking letterhead. Eh, like I haven't ever got one of those before.....

In the meantime, if you want to get your head wrapped all the various chord tones, from fret zero all the way up to fret 22, check out the link below where you can see the first few pages of each book. They all follow a similar format except the kind of chords they outline changes.

And if you do pick up a copy, please let me know what you think via email or leave a comment here.




http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/BassoRidiculoso

Win Lessons With Some Serious Players

GruvGear, a company that makes hand trucks and other gig related equipment is running a sweepstakes where bass players can win a lesson with various GruvGear endorsers.

They have assembled a serious rogues gallery of killer players to give lessons - Ray Reindau, Damian Erskine, Todd Johnson, David Dyson, Anthony Wellington, Norm Stockton and Derrick Murdock.

Dang. Thats like the Bass A-team. Here at Basso, some of these names are very well known and have been given the coveted seal of Basso Mucho Approvo.

You don't get lessons with ALL of them, geez. Greedy. Each week they pick a new winner and a specific player gives the lesson that week. If you are local to that teacher, you can do a face-to-face, but they will also do Skype lessons for remote teaching.

Sign-ups begin tomorrow, and the first teacher up is Anthony Wellington.

Check out the link below for dates and which teachers are scheduled for each week.

Y'all wanna hear a little bass? Damian Erskine with Alice Dimicele.

Mr. Erskine soloing over singer/songwriter progression #3 : D - C - G. Sounds pretty tasty though, simple doesn't mean lame. It's nice to hear what chops like that sound like over a "normal" progression that anyone in a cover band might come across.

This must be from relatively recent because he is playing his signature model 6 string.

The stuff worth learning. That's what Damian says.

I know re-posting articles is not exactly the height of insightful blogging...but this article by Damian Erskine is right on. When someone like him says "this is the stuff you need to know and should be practicing" it is worth listening too.

There is a reason there ain't no TAB up in here. It's gonna mess with your mind, son. Screw you up and hold you back. TAB takes away more than half of the information in any piece of music it represents. It's a trick that makes you think you are learning things and it is actually making you understand less about what you are playing. It is the pornography of bass playing. It puts all kinds of crazy ideas in your head about what bass playing is about that ain't real.

Damian Erskine's NoTreble article.

Lets see, what's Mr. Erskine talk about in that article...knowing how to spell chords,Um, check.

Let's see what else..um, arpeggios and their inversions, oh yea, check, check, and lets, see, check!
So there ya go.

Who ya gonna believe?

How good do you want to be?

Facebook Fame Smiles Upon Chateau de' Ridiculoso! Thanks, Damian!

Damian Erskine happened to notice the humble goings on around here and he was so kind as to post a link to the Circle of Thirds post on his Facebook AND his Twitter status today. Now that explains all the traffic. He gets a huge molto ridiculoso for that! Thanks!

Glad to see that post helped a few folks, and hopefully we have exposed ourself, er, I mean, more people know about us now. Bookmark away, people!

And for those of you who don't know who he is, Damian is the Pacific Northwest's secret weapon on bass. Well, not so secret. He is one serious cat (to use the parlance of our times) on bass. He has an instantly recognizable rhythmic and harmonic style that includes chords and some quantifiably viscous funkosity. He grooves is what I am telling you. He has been playing six strings for quite a while (but is just as deadly on a 4 string) and has a signature six-string bass by Skjold that is up there with any custom bass you could get. His latest album "So to Speak" was released in 2010 and has some serious latin, funk and jazz grooves on it in, how shall we call them, non-standard time signatures? 13/8 anyone?

He also gets to play with some heavyweights - Jeff Lorber, Gino Vannelli, Tony Furtado, and appeared with the whose-who of bass playing in the Gospel Chops bass video (along with his uncle, Peter). Check that groove out.

Damian has recorded a trio record with Peter Erskine on drums (yes, its his uncle, I just said that) and Vardan Ovsepian on piano and it is set to be released later this year. Can't wait for that.

He also writes for No Treble, an online bass magazine, and he just released a method book called "Right Hand Drive" that goes into detail about his very cool right hand 3-finger technique. If you were moping around because you just couldn't find a book that had grooves in 15/8 and included chords in the bassline, well, quit your mopin, today is your lucky day my bass playing friend. Check out Damian's book.


And since no good deed goes unpunished, I am going to post a link to a trio gig Damian did from several years ago with Chris Mosley from Porland Jazz Jams. Even though it is older it is a great video because you get to hear him play entire tunes and take solos in a tight little trio. There is a classic public access interview for about 9 minutes (out of the total show of 28 minutes) before they start playing, but after that you can check out Damian in action. He gets a couple of great solos in, and always grooves, and the TONE oh the tone! Check him out on the 6 string Modulus.



This site does not appear to stream the video, but if you have the free player VLC (for mac, windows or linux) all you have to do is copy the link below and choose "Open Network" from the File menu (command-N on Mac) and paste in the link. I like using VLC for longer stuff instead of my browser, it just is more stable than plug-ins I find, but role the dice, just clicking the link may open it with a plug-in for you. You can also use "Open URL" in Quicktime Player, which is on every Mac.

http://media.libsyn.com/media/portlandjazzjams/PJJTV_Episode_03_Chris_Mosley.m4v

Damian is going to be in LA for NAMM this next week so be on the look out for him if you are attending.

Thanks Damian!