Esperanza Spalding on The Daily Show Last Night

Esperanza brought her 20-something-year-old-'fro and her 12 piece band to the Daily Show last night and it was pretty awesome. Those arrangements are lush and complex, that is some really sophisticated stuff. Check out the harmonies on her singing! All while she is playing fretless too. Dang.

The Look

Here is the full track of "Crowned and Kissed" from Comedy Central

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Exclusive - Esperanza Spalding - "Crowned & Kissed"
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog The Daily Show on Facebook

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.

Bass Link Blast - Semi-occasional version 2.13r4v17

1. Meshell Ndegeocello is giving us all a free track from her new album. She is one fonky melinated womans as Ms. Badu might say, and a seriously sick bass player, so I am sure it is groovy. Pick it up here or from her facebook page.
2. Joe Hubbard has an article about ear training as he learned it from Charlie Banacos, a guy who was the Yoda for improvised music and taught Joe, Jeff Berlin, Mike Stern, Alain Caron and thousands of others. Good stuff indeed.
3. I found some old podcasts that Christian McBride did back in 2006. In this one he talks about the role of the bass, a topic the man knows a great deal about. Listen up!
4. Miles Davis died twenty years ago this week, and here a UK magazine talks about his last couple of projects which included Prince and some rappers.
5. Shockingly, the Pat Metheny and Larry Grenadier duet gigs are freakin' amazing. Um, duh.

15% off "The Book of Chord Tones" Series This Week

All you have to do is enter the promo code OKTOBERFEST305 when you check out. All three volumes are available, Major, Dominant and Minor 7 chords.

And there are plenty of other bass books up there as well, some are really cheap, some are older, some are obscure and they seem cover the range of experience, from rank beginner to more complex. Plus the coupon code is good for any book you buy on Lulu.com until the 23rd at midnight. Of course, I have some pretty strong opinions about which ones you should buy.

Bass Link Blast number oh, 3 or 4 I think...

1. BassLinepublishing.com has released a book of transcriptions from Zander Zon, the guy who made solo bass famous on YouTube. If you are into some very musical solo bass you might dig it. He tunes his bass like a cello, and up an octave too I think. But it sure sounds pretty.
2. If you are in North America, it is Damian Erskine's birthday today, so tweet, email, fb wall, or just call him up and say Happy B-day. I think he turns 14 today. Or 43. It's hard to tell.
3. Christian McBride is going to release an album of just duets in November, "Conversations With Christian" will be released on Mack Avenue Records. "Conversations..." is a CD of 13 duets with some of Christian's closest friends and collaborators - Sting, Angelique Kidjo, Chick Corea, George Duke, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Eddie Palmieri, Roy Hargrove, Regina Carter, Russell Malone, Gina Gershon, Ron Blake, the late Dr. Billy Taylor, and the late Hank Jones. If you like singing and bass, but hate all the other instruments clogging things up, you will probably like this record. Christian is a double-threat electric/upright player, so I am sure he will sneak in a little electric bass playing somewhere on the record.
4. Here are couple of interviews with two of the A-team for bass, Bob Cranshaw ( Sonny Rollins) and Ron Carter (Miles Davis and 10000 others). Both are from a radio show out of Arizona I think.  Bob talks about the business of recording and how it was just that sometimes. Cranshaw is one of the only guys to play electric in a somewhat straight ahead jazz setting with Sonny Rollins so check him out if you can. And Ron Carter, what can you say? He gets called "the most recorded bassist in history" a lot, and I am sure not going to argue with that.

Bob Cranshaw Interview: 

Ron Carter Interview:

All 24 Examples from Book Of Chord Tones for C Major 7 Uploaded

So, all 24 examples from "The Book of Chord Tones" for major chords are now up on Soundcloud.

These sound files play each of the 24 ways the notes of a major 7 chord can be arranged. The book contains these exercises (in notation and tablature) for each pattern in all 12 keys, but these sound samples are just for C Major so you can get an idea of what the exercises sound like.

Each book has a total of 288 exercises (24 x 12 keys). Other volumes do the same patterns for all keys, but use the notes for dominant and minor 7 chords. Take a listen and git yer arpeggios on!

• Exercises 1 - 6 start on the Root ( C )
• Exercises 7 - 12 start on the 3rd ( E )
• Exercises 12 - 18 start on the 5th ( G )
• Exercises 19 - 24 start on the 7th ( B )

Book of Chord Tones - Major Chord Exercise Examples by Basso Ridiculoso

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

Janek Does Yet Another Free Lesson - Triad Pairs

Janek Gwizdala is offering a free lesson on Triad Pairs for the next 24hrs on his videobasslessons.tv site.


Geez, even getting married over the weekend doesn't slow this guy down. 


I have written about triad pairs before also, so go check out how Janek uses them I am sure there is going to be a lot of good stuff in there on picking which ones to use over what chords and how to make really cool lines with them. 

 Free lesson on Triad Pairs 

More info about "The Book of Chord Tones"

Here are few pages from the Book itself.

If you have played around with the Transmogrifier, some of these may look familiar.

Also here are what the first 12 of the exercise sound like in C Major -

http://soundcloud.com/bassoridiculoso/sets/book-of-chord-tones-major

You can download them as well to get an idea of how they sound. The first 6 start on the root, (C) and then next six start on the third (E). The remaining patterns start on the fifth and the seventh.

2nd Bass Link Blast 'o The Week

1. Eddie Gomez gets interviewed on NPR. He played with Bill Evans, Micheal Brecker, and just about all the jazz heavies for the last 30 years, so check it out.
   
2. The Roots get a new bass player. That has got to be a fat gig, plus being on TV and all that. The new cat, Mark Kelly certainly seems more than qualified. Check out some videos from his days at Berklee at the link.
   
3. Adam Neely, aka Havic5 is doing what can only be described as a dope-ass breakdown of how to do chords on bass, what voicings sound good and why, inversions and arrangement tips. Collect the whole set and check it out. Molto Ridiculoso!
   
4. Believe the hype. Esperanza Spalding live at Small's in NYC, pre-grammy.

Links for Approach Tones

Here are a couple of links to more info on using approaches to chord tones in your solos:

1. A detailed post from a guitar forum (I know, just pretend it isn't) about various approach tones and using chord tones as targets.
   
2. A supposed Mike Stern lesson on approach tones. Written in god-awful brain damaging tab for your mental anguish, but it re-enforces some of the stuff about approach tones and shows a few more kinds.
   
3. This one has notation and a midi file.
   

Bass Link-O-Fest

Here are a bunch of links to things regarding the playing of the electric bass guitar.

1. http://www.jazzcapacitor.com/ - New site that collects a bunch of great jazz transcriptions, a few that have been linked to from here previously. Lots of good stuff, Ron Carter, Scott La Faro and others. All in PDF and free as in beer.
   
   
2. The Bee-Gee's Bass Player - You are going to be famous. I know. A rock star. I know. And make your living playing forever. I know. But, you should read this. This guy played some pretty big gigs and now he teaches at a community college in Florida. So maybe learning the names of those scales isn't such a bad idea after all.
   
   
3. http://deftdigits.com - A new player in town has started a web site with a bunch of musical knowledge, not unlike this humble tome. Check out Joe from From the Woodshed new site for lessons.
   
   
4. A Japanese bass player I haven't heard of freaked out on a plane and then killed himself in jail.

On that cheery note, enjoy your Tuesday.

Joe Hubbard's New Bass Track

Joe is a British bassist that studied with Jeff Berlin (I think), and played with Gary Neuman for many years. He just released a new tune on Soundcloud, so check it out. 

Adventues On Haskell Avenue by Joe Hubbard Bass

Ben Allison on NPR

Great to see bass players getting some love!

I have Ben's record with "Dragzilla" on it..I forget the name of it, but it is a great record. Check out the interview and some of his other tunes on this NPR interview.

http://www.npr.org/2011/06/11/137108909/ben-allison-personal-and-unpredictable?ps=mh_frhdl1

Announcing "The Bergonzifying Transmogrifier" - A Basso Web App

Boy, are you gonna be glad you were not Raptured.

Behold.






Presented for your approval and edification, the first web app from Casa De Ridiculoso, The Bergonzifying Transmogrifier. Perhaps the first of many, who knows.

By way of the following uncharacteristically informative summary you can learn what this thing is and what it is for.

Some Gratzi de Ridiculoso is in order

I am not going to go all Sally-Feilds-at-the-Oscars on you, (go google it, youngsters, or ask your mom) but some definite thanks are in order for some folks who have posted links to the humble musings of your narrator here at Basso Ridiculoso.

Grande Basso Gratzi, my fellow bass travelers.

1. Bopland.org - Nikita from Bopland has linked back here, all the way from sunny tropical Moscow. Bopland is the service used to generate the playable transcriptions on the site, and there is a much more extensive database of licks and musical examples on Bopland itself including licks for piano, guitar and other non-bass instruments. if you haven't checked it out, be prepared to spend a couple hours exploring. Nikita even was willing to write some custom code to make some things work, so Bol'shoe spasibo!
   
   
2. Adam Neely - All the way from sunny, tropical Washington, D.C. Adam linked to Basso from his great bass/composition blog. Check out Adam's site from the list of links over there on the right, or look for him on YouTube as Havic5 for some very informative bass lessons from a Berklee alum.
   
   
3. Joe Hubbard - all the way from sunny, tropical England, Joe added Basso on the Twitters, so molto gratzi , Joe. Joe played bass with Gary Numan for many years and published one of the first transcription books that had Jaco and Marcus Miller transcriptions in it called "Bass Lines". I think it is out of print now, but it is a classic. If you can find one, snatch it up. He also has a great bass site with transcriptions and lessons at - www.joehubbardbass.com/
   
   
4. Stephen Marshal - All the way from sunny, tropical Nashville, (I think) that's DOCTOR Marshall to you, as in a Ph.d. of Bassology. Basso is now medically approved (this claim not authorized by the FDA)! Stephen added his own blog posting about Basso Ridiculoso and sent some linkage our way. Gratzi! Check out his blog at - http://stephenmarshall.org/. Who cares about that fancy university degree, where is that ever gonna get you? Your site is now on the Link's Deemed Worthy list, now that is something to frame and put on your wall!
   
   
5. Tom Kenrick - Also from that sunny tropical paradise that is England. Looks like Tom is another bass player from "over there" and clearly is a man of good taste and fine breeding since he has linked to Basso Ridiculoso over here in the colonies. Pip Pip, my good man! http://tomkenrick.wordpress.com/
   

And for everyone who reads the site, no matter where you are, THANKS!

Speaking Of Play-Along Tracks...

Well, TrueFire, the online music instruction site, has about 200 different blues play-alongs for ya.

These range in tempo from 60 to 200 bpm and are in a variety of styles (chicago, texas, etc). Each one has an mp3 and a chart.

They have bass parts, but you can still solo over them.

Some are, eh, corny, but there are some decent ones up there for sure. If you are looking for some more free play-alongs there ya go.

http://truefire.com/jam-tracks/

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.

Flea Can Run A Marathon?

Apparently he can. Or at least he is gonna try. Glad to hear he is talking better care of himself these days, then uh, maybe he did, before, in the old days. Awesome.

He is going to run in The L.A. Marathon and do it for a really great cause, the Silverlake Conservatory of Music, which gives free music lessons to over 250 low-income kids. It looks like maybe this is something he helps fund or is definitely involved in somehow, which is very cool.

He is offering a free signed RHCP book to the first 50 folks that donate $45.00 to his running team.

All in all, pretty cool. In an era of musicians that are maybe a little too full of themselves and are more interested in discussing how unfair it is to have to sleep on fur pillows, it is cool that Flea is working so hard to help kids get into music and offer his talent and passion to the project.

Here is the link where you can read about more of it and contribute:

http://www.crowdrise.com/teamsilverlake/fundraiser/flea

Freaky Styley is one dang awesome bass record. It was earlier in the RHCP's career, so if you are not familiar with the Chili Peppers before they became mega-mega rock stars check out that record for, in this bassos opinion, Mr. Flea's best playing.

That record shows just how truly funky Flea is. Go get it if you don't believe me. Check out, Jungle Man, American Ghost Dance, Freaky Styley(for some very funky double stops), and of course, Black Eyed Blonde.

Bass Player Magazine's Free Lesson Issue Online

Bass Player Magazine has posted a compendium of a bunch of lesson articles they have published over lo' these many years and bundled it up into something called "Play Bass!". How exciting. The cool thing is they are apparently giving it away.

BUT... it uses this overly cutesy magazine metaphor which is, frankly, kinda lame. It is rare for a real life metaphors to work on the Internets, but they went and did it anyway, curled page corners and everything.

So, um, instead here is a direct link to the 18MB pdf version so you don't have to use Adobe Air (which is a tool of Satan himself) to read the articles and flip imaginary pages.

There are some really good lessons in there from John Goldsby, Flea, Steve Swallow, Ron Carter, and they have the Victor Wooten Open-Hammer-Pluck thing too, so all the kids should love that. It's a nice little file to have around for reference, if I do say so. And I say so.


http://pages.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/newbay/bp_playbass/offline/newbay_bp_playbass_pdf.zip