The Hal Leonard Bass Method thread

#1,481
EddiePlaysBass said:
Do I understand correctly that you first worked through the Method book, and THEN the Pop Bass Lines book? Sounds like a good approach. I'm going to order the first EPBL book anyway, but I want to move forward.
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I worked through Book 1 of the method book at the same time as "Easy Pop Bass Lines". I finished both books at about the same time.

Then I worked through Book 2 of the method book at the same time as "More Easy Pop Bass Lines". I finished Book 2 of the method book but was only halfway through the song book. So I am finishing up the song book before moving on to Book 3 of the method book.

Just like the method books, the song books are progressive. So the second song book is quite a bit more difficult than the first.

For example, I found the octaves in Crazy Train difficult for my fingers, and the tempo for me was a little quick. The rhythm for me was not intuitive on Heard it Through the Grapevine, so I got stuck for about 2 months! In many songs a person really has to think hard to find the best position for the fingers. Rhiannon changes strings and jump strings on the same fret with the pinky finger, and for me this is challenging.
 
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#1,485
KindofBlues71 said:
...Is there a specific exercise in Book 1 where we should start the Easy Pop Bass Lines book?
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The first song is Imagine, and it has E, F, G, C and D notes. The C is introduced on Page 18, Exercise 24. So this is a good place to start the song book.

After that, aim to learn a song every 2 pages or so of the Method Book.
 
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#1,487
edfriedland said:
It makes me happy to see soany people working with the method. After all this time, I still believe it’s a pretty airtight program that offers things no other method does. I think the parts about learning how to make bass lines from chord symbols, using movable boxes, and such make this a method that does more than teaching you how to read.
Anyway, thanks again for your support. I don’t know if it’s out of line to mention that I am available for private lessons, if I’m crossing a line, sorry… tell me and I’ll remove that.
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I'll see if my wife is happy to sell up & move to Tucson AZ, then I'll take up that offer of private lessons! :D :thumbsup:
 
#1,488
Hit the book again tonight. At this rate with me dabbling between bass and guitar I'll maybe finish book 1 in another 10 years.

Wish I would just find my focus between bass and guitar and motor on! Anybody with a similar struggle?

Anyway, right now I'm reviewing material that I had previously covered. Always a bit of fun to play these and to work at the game of sight reading. Rewarded myself by jamming some punk tunes at the end of my session and think I figured out a bassline by ear as I was noodling around.
 
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#1,489
I had my monthly lesson today. I like posting here when I have them as a way to add a bit of accountability, but I'll try to stay on topic as well. Shouldn't be too hard as we're working through the books, but today was a bit sideways (because my practice this month has been).

I'm in the middle of Book 2 and was more interested in the scales and theory parts than the new timing parts. I know I'll need both eventually, but scales and theory ended up taking most of my time this month. I've already mentioned the extra exercises I made (a few posts up---check them out!) to help with scale degrees and I also started working on a simple (allegedly) Bach piece that seemed very scale-based. The stuff in Book 2 was a great start, and I still need to internalise the non-universal scale shapes that incorporate open strings, especially for the minor scales, but expanding that portion on my own and then hearing loads of cool theory stuff the the lesson today has been really useful, I think.

For the coming month I'm going to continue to work on the scales, and there's plenty to get better at there, and get back to covering the other aspects in Book 2. I might start Book 2 over to re-orient myself and make sure I've got everything down properly, because I've been skipping back and forth a bit. But looking at the table of contents now, I think getting some of the more complicated 8th-note-based rhythmic things down are the only big items still to cover, so depending on where I put my focus (and how hard I find it) I might get to the end of Book 2 this month. We'll see.
 
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#1,490
Had a stab at working through book 1 a couple of times before and got about halfway, but bass is my second instrument and more often I just wanted to pick up my primary. Still, the posts here inspired my to give it another go, so have been doing 30-60 minutes most nights for about month and after starting book 1 afresh, I finished it tonight.

On the "final exam" I struggled most with Shift-Crazy Blues as I just couldn't get it to sound like a tune. Those sorts of intervals are not familiar to me, and I've found throughout the exercises that I've picked things up much more easily when I can feel where the music is going. So that took me a session and a half to get to 120bpm. Once the shifts were figured out, Stones-y was quite a bit quicker to pick up, and Etude Brute was the easiest of the three. But both of those last two are only to 80bpm and both could stand a bit more polishing.

So next session will probably focus on those three for a while longer, and then...book 2!
 
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#1,492
Mark White said:
Had a stab at working through book 1 a couple of times before and got about halfway, but bass is my second instrument and more often I just wanted to pick up my primary. Still, the posts here inspired my to give it another go, so have been doing 30-60 minutes most nights for about month and after starting book 1 afresh, I finished it tonight.

On the "final exam" I struggled most with Shift-Crazy Blues as I just couldn't get it to sound like a tune. Those sorts of intervals are not familiar to me, and I've found throughout the exercises that I've picked things up much more easily when I can feel where the music is going. So that took me a session and a half to get to 120bpm. Once the shifts were figured out, Stones-y was quite a bit quicker to pick up, and Etude Brute was the easiest of the three. But both of those last two are only to 80bpm and both could stand a bit more polishing.

So next session will probably focus on those three for a while longer, and then...book 2!
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Wow! Nice work and kind of similar situation to me. You've inspired me to keep chopping away at book 1.
 
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#1,493
edfriedland said:
It makes me happy to see soany people working with the method. After all this time, I still believe it’s a pretty airtight program that offers things no other method does. I think the parts about learning how to make bass lines from chord symbols, using movable boxes, and such make this a method that does more than teaching you how to read.
Anyway, thanks again for your support. I don’t know if it’s out of line to mention that I am available for private lessons, if I’m crossing a line, sorry… tell me and I’ll remove that.
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Are you back in Arizona? When I lived there you were somewhere else. I always wanted to take lessons with you but it never worked out that I could
 
#1,496
Gopherbassist said:
How's Bass Aerobics? I've been eyeing it but don't have time for much more practice than I'm getting now.
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SteveCS said:
It's good and will keep you busy, even if you only play a few measures per day.
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What @SteveCS said. I immediately let go of the "one song per week" idea and just started working through them, one by one. It did wonders for my technique and approach, as well as speed and stamina. At the same time, I do take my time with the book and there have been looooong spells where I simply do not look at it.

Incidentally, yesterday I randomly selected an earlier "week" again, to brush up on. Lots of triplets which always take me a minute to get back in my fingers - but when I was working from the book on a regular basis AND was still in a band, a lot of those triplets found their way into my bass lines :D

In short, it's a really fun book and I would recommend it.
 
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#1,497
My "monthly" update after a lesson today. (Scare quotes because we've switched the schedule up for summer and it's only been three weeks.)

Again, the lesson itself was mostly outside the book: a couple of left-hand questions, scales, related theory and a Bach piece I've been messing with. But the book work has progressed as well. I'm now at the end of Book 2. The last two tracks still need more work, and I'm struggling to make the shuffle time feel natural when just using a quarter-note metronome more generally (I'm fine when I add in subdividions), but it's all basically there.

Plan for the coming "month" (also about three weeks) is to nail those last couple of Book 2 tracks and edge into Book 3. Along with that, a good amount of time will go on scales and Bach.
 
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#1,498
OllieVT said:
My "monthly" update after a lesson today. (Scare quotes because we've switched the schedule up for summer and it's only been three weeks.)

Again, the lesson itself was mostly outside the book: a couple of left-hand questions, scales, related theory and a Bach piece I've been messing with. But the book work has progressed as well. I'm now at the end of Book 2. The last two tracks still need more work, and I'm struggling to make the shuffle time feel natural when just using a quarter-note metronome more generally (I'm fine when I add in subdividions), but it's all basically there.

Plan for the coming "month" (also about three weeks) is to nail those last couple of Book 2 tracks and edge into Book 3. Along with that, a good amount of time will go on scales and Bach.
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May I ask what piece by Bach you're wroking on? If from Bach2Bass I'd be curious what key you chose also.
I printed out the Back Cello? Prelude in G, and the Bourree's 1and 2, in C and C minor.
Going to start playing through them a little daily for a while.
Happy practices.
 
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#1,499
Yep, Bach2Bass, linked from a thread here.

It's Bourree #2 in A minor. I can't remember why I chose A minor, but I do remember flicking between the options before making a decision. Maybe I thought it was the easiest key signature? I printed it out with no tabs to give my reading a little boost and it's turned out to help my scale theory a good amount too. In any case, I've been finding it very rewarding and just right for my level. I now understand natural minor, melodic minor and dorian mode in a way I was nowhere near before. (Disclaimer: this might not be the correct/best way to think about what's there, and we talked about thinking of one switch as a modulation in my lesson today rather than a mode switch, but even if it's not right it's given me new tools.)

There's one other listed as easy and I'll probably try that next. Or maybe Bourree #1, even though it's intermediate. I'd be curious to hear how you find it/them.
 
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#1,500
In MB1, page 27, exercise 57, 2nd measure: The note-head is G yet the letter ID is B-flat; a typo, or am I missing a concept?

More generally, what is the purpose of the letter ID of the first note of each bar? Reading the definition of "tonic" isn't resolving the question for me (unless it's as simple as "it starts with F and ends with F", which makes me wonder about the reason for the other letter IDs). I see the pattern of letter IDs that's repeated on each four bar sequence of the three lines, and the 13 bar ending in F but I'm pretty sure that there's something going on that I don't grok.

A little help please!
 
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