2.6.11

Happy Birthday Matt Garrison

Happy B-day to the guy that made us all feel the need to grow some extra fingers.

Here he is doing some latin stuff, but there is of course a ton of his playing all over YouTube.

The fun starts at around 2:50 in this clip.

Can A Brother Get An Amen?

Janek Gwizdala continues his interviews with slammin' bass players by sitting down with Andrew Gouche. Mr. Gouche is the musical director for Chaka Khan. Enough said, huh?



Here is Mr. Gouche backing up Chaka, Prince, and Stevie Wonder. All at the same time.


Chaka Khan Tribute Prince, Yolanda, Stevie... by tanjah93

Todd Johnson - Playing Through Standards

6-string player Todd Johnson has a short clip showing video from his series "Playing Through The Real Book" where he breaks down standards like Autumn Leaves, All The Things You Are, Solar and others and takes you though how to play over them.

Each lesson covers a single song and they are only $2.00 each. You can pick from a lesson on either the bass line, comping (using his 6 string chordal ideas) or soloing.

I have Todd's "Fishing For Grips" DVD and it de-mystified chord voicing on bass for me, so it comes with the Basso Seal Of Approval solidly stamped upon it.

30.5.11

Amber Rubarth - Washing Day

Some very nice arco upright on this tune, and whoever it is even gets a solo. It is some serious classical cat, only those guys have that much bow together. Maybe Edgar Meyer? I don't know where she recorded it, but if it was in Nashville maybe it was him. Or it could just be some other monster bad ass with a bow.

She won 1st place in the International Songwriting Competition with this tune.



And here she is discussing her creative process and how she goes about writing. She has a very interesting story. She has only been playing guitar and writing songs for about 6 years, because before that she was in an apprentice program for...chainsaw carving. No kidding.

The video is about 45 minutes long, but if you are interested into hearing about how others unwind their creative process, check it out.

29.5.11

Janek Webcast In 1 Hour From Now

Janek Gwizdala will be doing another of his free webcasts in about 1 hour from now, at 9 AM PST.

Here is the link:

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/video-bass-lessons


Ask him anything! Well, bass related of course.

28.5.11

More Random Notes for Pitch Recognizing

The last page of random notes was surprisingly popular, so here is another pdf with random notes on the bass clef.

This one is in eighth notes and has a lot of notes above the staff so you can practice recognizing those higher notes up on those ladder rungs.

Again these are not very realistic musical examples, the point is just to recognize the notes on the lines and spaces. The notes were auto-generated totally random, so there are jumps and lines that don't make any sense in there musically speaking.

This is not unlike most of the other postings up here, but at least this time you have been warned. Enjoy.

Gil Scott-Heron - The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

Mr. Heron died yesterday at 62.

Here is his iconic track, with Jerry Jemmott on bass laying it down.

27.5.11

Free Album Download from FreekBass

Boots Collins protege Freekbass has made his latest album available for free on BandCamp.

On the one, baby.

http://freekbass.bandcamp.com/