Hardian Feraud playing "Port Of Entry" with Zawinul Legacy Band

Here is the Zawinul Legacy Band's take on the Weather Report song "Port of Entry" which has an epic Jaco bass solo in it. Hadrian quotes from it throughout his solo, and does some shredding of his own. Ridiculous.

Chris Tarry's Site Now Free

Per his email:

For over a year Chris Tarry Lessons has been a membership-only site, and we've had a thriving community of like-minded bassists studying with me through the use of the video lessons and virtual one-on-one mentorship. Unfortunately, touring, a growing family, and other time constraints have made it difficult for me to continue the commitment, so I decided to throw open the doors and make the entire site free.

Come on by and check it out! With over 150 lessons, backing tracks, interviews, and more, Chris Tarry Lessons is now one of the largest FREE bass instruction resources around.

Chris is a monster player with multiple albums and Canadian Grammy awards under his belt, and he is out there living, playing and teaching in NYC so this is some great real world stuff. There are a ton of great lessons here! Check it out and let him know you appreciate his generosity.

http://christarrylessons.com/lessons-map/

Jaco Playing Chromatic Fantasy Live in California

Before Jaco went back to Florida (where he would eventually die) he played in the San Francisco bay area with drummer Brian Melville and even recorded an album with him.

This clip is from that time period, and although not the Jaco from 10 years before, it is still amazing what he could do. It looks like he is playing his famous Bass of Doom but with a fretted neck on it instead of a fretless.

This might be the only footage of Jaco ever playing his adaptation of Bach's Chromatic Fantasy. Watch a bit of history.

Jaco In Seattle...from 1976

This must be from the first Weather Report tour with Jaco in the band. Here is a pretty decent audience recording of Jaco taking a solo in front of the Wayne Shorter tune "Lusitanos".

You can hear some classic Jaco-isms in his solo - pentatonic runs in odd note groupings, playing all the color tones and extensions, and of course, the tone and the groove. Oh the groove.

This was at the Paramount West Theatre in Seattle on May 27th, in 1976, so Jaco was just starting to be heard by the world.

NAMM 2013 Bass Shred Porn

It's NAMM time again, so there are of course a ton of youtube videos of great bass players showing off just how much better they than you (and me). Here are a few of the folks whose names we all recognize filmed at this years NAMM show doing disgusting things to various bass guitars.

Marcus Miller on Travis Smiley

Marcus playing an unaccompanied version of "Detroit".  He has the melody and everything in there. He splits it up on the record, but you can hear how he must have written this one on bass since it is all there even when it is just him. 

New Evan Marien Tracks

Evan Marian has just released  a new 5-track album, some of which he recorded at Matt Garrison's ShapeShifter lab in NYC.

Evan mixes some serious shred into electronic music and the result it some dub-stepy electronic music with electric bass all over it, so check it out if you want to hear how you don't have to leave this stuff to just synth players.

http://evanmarien.bandcamp.com/album/collection

New Link to Autumn Leaves Transcription

Looks like the site I was hosting the PDF file on has died, as things do on the internet, so here is a new location where you can download the transcription of the bass line to Autumn Leaves, as played by Sam Jones.

Autumn Leaves Transcription