Compiled and written by Bass Player and Music Educator George Urbaszek
www.creativebass.com and www.creativebasslessons.com

A special welcome to all new subscribers to this eMag and to Creative Bass Lessons Online.

The lessons contained in this eMag are not as complete as the online bass lessons at www.creativebasslessons.com but will nevertheless contain material useful to all subscribers. This edition of the Creative Bass eMag contains several links (as promised) to websites with useful information for your bass playing and musical development. I continually surf the net to find useful links that I can pass on to you. Before I include links, I make sure the websites are of a high enough standard to warrant viewing and investigation.

Today’s Q and A
Q: “What is the difference between an amateur and a professional musician?”
A: “An amateur musician practices until he/she gets it right. A professional musician practices until he/she can’t get it wrong.”
Now that’s dedication!

Advice follow-up
Did any subscribers follow the advice given in the previous eMag (Number 7) in relation to getting into a band? If you did, please share your experiences so we can learn from each other. Send an email to lessons@creativebass.com and I will publish your results and recommendations in the next eMag.

Today’s Advice
The following is based on years of experience and observation and is exemplified through the experience of a current face-to-face student.

“Guilty of Good Practice”

While discussing the importance of groove, Brendan (a 19-year-old bass student at Southern Cross University in Lismore, Australia www.scu.edu.au) told me about his “parallel experience” with a bass-playing friend.

Both Brendan and Friend decided to begin playing bass at the same time. Right from the start, each decided to go in different directions. Brendan wanted to be a “simple” groove player while Friend wanted to be a “flash” slapper. Both fulfilled their aims.

To cut to the chase, Brendan is now gigging at least twice a week, plus touring and recording with a band that is receiving airplay on national radio. Friend is working an undesirable day gig and is not playing in a band (although he would like to). And from what I hear, both Brendan and Friend have done equal amounts of practice.

The advice? Do your own spin on this story.

Personal *
I am still ocassionally teaching bass students in the Contemporary Music Department at Southern Cross University (www.scu.edu.au) in Lismore, NSW, Australia, as well as supervising Performance Ensembles. This is a continuing fill-in position and I am loving it!

During the upcoming semester break my wife and I are going on our first holiday (vacation) since the year 2000. (All of my trips since then have been music related, not real holidays.) We are taking a campervan and travelling up the East Coast of Australia, possibly as far as Cairns (or farther) with no set plan. We love the adventures this type of trip always provides.

Gigs have been as usual, some jazz, some very groovy blues, and some gumbo.

Links
Here are links to useful websites. You may have received some of these links in previous newsletters, but I thought it advisable to list them again just in case you missed out.

1. Be-bop style soloing – this lesson has downloadable notation and audio
2. Speed Training – this is a lesson on how to systematically get faster. (It is different to the sample bass lesson available through www.creativebasslessons.com)
3. Groove Creation – this lesson shows how to use information already within you to create grooves (and is an extremely condensed version of the CD “Groove Creation for Bass” available at www.creativebass.com/items.html

Each of the three lessons is very brief, concise and very useful. Click this link to take you there: www.creativebass.com/lesson.html

Global Bass (www.globalbass.com) is a very resourceful website containing hundreds of lessons and interviews. Although no new content is being added, the website remains online “forever”. It is definitely worth a look. Yours truly has also contributed several articles.

Have you ever wanted to work out a very fast bass line (or even a very slow one) off a recording and had no success? Of course - it happens to all of us.

Recently a student asked me to help with a transcription. I obliged – and was flabbergasted by the speed of the bass riffs, the very low tuning, and my inability to play the line fast enough, let alone work it out quickly. So what did I do? (I must say right here that I like the challenge of solving problems. Maybe that is why I teach.)

I took the recording home to work on it in my own time. Although I progressed in little steps, there was no success yet. Next, I used my old Portastudio 4-track tape recorder to copy the piece in double speed. I then played it back at normal speed, effectively making the track half as fast as the original. This was OK, but with one problem – the bass notes were almost out of hearing range (because the original was already so low).

Around this time I came across a software program that enables slowing down to ANY speed (even stopping on notes) while retaining original pitch. The program is called Transcribe and is available at www.seventhstring.com. Seventhstring.com offers a 30-day trial version.

With the aid of “Transcribe” I was able to easily work out the bass riffs. And even more so, I found why I was not able to play the riffs with ease on my 5-string bass in standard tuning. That is because the bass on the recording was tuned to “open Ab”, something I had not come across before.

I solved the problem and along the way learned much more than my student did. In case you are wondering, to this day I still don’t know the title of the track, the name of the bass player, or the name of the band.

Today’s Lesson? There have been many. Next eMag will contain a lesson on the craft of transcribing.

Until then, Bass of Luck!

George Urbaszek
Bass Player and Music Educator
Serving Bass Players Worldwide since 1996

PS
If anyone finds a decent software-based online drum machine, please email (lessons@creativebass.com) the link to me for inclusion in the next eMag.

* Please note that personal info in this and other eMags may be outdated. This is due to the fact that I decided to keep many of the eMag editions running due to their valuable and timeless lesson content.