| I ordered Fishin' For Grips on 6/16 and it arrived today (6/20). After having my knee 'scoped this past Wednesday, it provided ample down time to get acquainted with the DVD.
I just finished going thru the DVD and book straight thru without my instrument. Kind of as a way to get a big picture of the material. At this point I have a few comments and questions.
Thumbs up for the audio / video quality. Very professional. Easy to hear and see. Plenty of chapter references on both the book and DVD; easy to get right where you need to be without wasting time getting there.
Other chord melody material that I've used was based on taking the chord and adding the melody above it. Fishin' seems to take the melody and add the chord under it. A different way of looking at a similar result.
For a true solo bass performance, you'd have to add bass notes to the Fishin' method (which isn't covered in this material). I don't know how easy or hard that would be to do.
Thumbs up for a large variety of songs used for the exercises; quite a variety. None of the melodies are included in the book. It's not really hard to figure the melodies out; the video goes slow enough. I'm just curious why the melodies weren't included.
My final issue is what will probably be my biggest struggle. It has to do with linking the specific grips with the melody / harmony of the song.
Part one is the grip itself. The book shows 27 basic grips to learn. I'm assuming you want us to memorize them.
Part two is the melody / harmony. When playing a song for example, the melody may be the sixth of the chord so I'd play the third and seventh below it.
I understand the two parts separately. My question is how do I bring these two parts together? Now I'm asking this after just seeing the material. Maybe it will all come together when I do it with my bass? Maybe it won't?
All in all, I'd say Fishin' is done very professionally and will help anyone become a better bass player.
LeonD | 
