Roy Vogt's Bass Ed Think Tank

I'm starting this as a continuation of the 3 Jeff Berlin Music Education Threads. This has been such a positive experience for all concerned that it seems only right to continue it.
Let's try this approach:
There are a lot of people on TB with lots of teaching experience. There are a lot of people on TB with lots of questions. I'll answer whatever I can and I invite anyone else who has answers or questions to chime in.
A little about me:
I've been the Electric (and now String Bass) instructor at Belmont University in Nashville since 1983. Prior to that, I taught at The University of Miami at Coral Gables, where I received the first Masters Degree in Jazz Performance Awarded in the US (to my knowledge anyway) on Electric Bass way back in 1980. I've lived and worked in Nashville since 1980 and have toured with major Country and Contemporary Christian Artists, Rockers like Dickey Betts and Joanna Dean, and for over 7 years with Engelbert Humperdinck. I've also done numerous recording sessions of everything from Jazz and Jazz-Fusion to B J Thomas CDs.
Along the way I've taught at The National Guitar Workshops, Victor Wooten's Bass and Nature Camps (as a Clinician), The Belmont String Crossings Camp, The Jam at BGA, and have probably taught 1,000 bass students in my career as a teacher. Some of the best-known are Ric Fireabracci (Sir Tom Jones and Chick Corea), Dennis Edwards (Lady Antebellum), Anthony Joyner (Faith Hill), Bob Wray (Muscle Shoals sessions), James Gregory (Michael W. Smith), and for a couple of totally intimidating lessons Willie Weeks (now HOW do you teach Willie Weeks?!?). Along the way, I've been a student myself and have studied with Carol Kaye, Rufus Reid, Ron McClure, Bob Bowman, Ed Garcia, Dan Haerle, Don Coffman and have amassed a library of hundreds of bass books, CDs, DVDs, you name it. I've also released instructional videos for SuperChops4Bass, Master Study Series, and my current series Teach Me Bass Guitar [Invalid or Expired Link Removed]
One thing that I will share is that I definitely don't have all the answers, but I've been pursuing them on bass for over 40 years so I've acquired plenty of questions.
Thanks for your kind attention,
Roy Vogt www.royvogt.com

Infern0 said:

I have many questions to ask you what is the best way to contact you?

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Well, start by posting questions here. If you prefer, you can PM me, but it's good to share because someone may be reading who has the same question.
Welcome!

JimmyM said:

great idea for a thread, roy! i'm sure you have plenty of answers as well as questions. and i have a question to get things kicked off...

what is your process for sight reading a chart? how do you make best use of the time between getting it and playing it? is it advantageous to be able to read far ahead of where you're playing, or should you not stray too far ahead?

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When I get a chart, I'll look at the general things (key signature/time signature/any DS al Codas and Endings) and then I'll look at the general range of any written parts and try to find a place on the fingerboard where I don't have to move much (that's actually the real reason I gravitated towards 5 and 6 string basses years ago). Then I'll try to stay in one or two positions. I do try to at least have the next measure scoped out so there are no surprises.
Remember, a lot of sight reading is recognizing patterns. I've used a lot of different books (all of the Carol Kaye books, Standing in the Shadows of Motown, Dance Band Reading and Interpretation by Alan Raph, for example) and I've internalized some of their cliche lines by reading them over and over. Some bassists are concerned with memorizing what they're studying so they're not reading. Don't worry about that-that's like being concerned that you don't have to phonetically "sound out" words while you're reading like you did when you were young. In either case, lots of vocabulary that's read and internalized will help out.

Eminentbass said:

Hi Roy, great to see this thread. I'd like to add to the sight reading question above. I've got the chord studies book and I've got cello etudes that I read through but they're all pretty straight without much rhythmic/syncopation emphasis. Do you recommend getting fluent with this before moving on to more complex rhythms or is there stuff you can suggest to work on simultaneously? Do you think it's beneficial to read through standards melodies even those in treble clef? Thank you.

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That's the problem with Chord Studies and Classical Etudes-typically they're very rich in harmonic and melodic information at the expense of rhythmic information. You can work on both, but I'd start simply. The nice thing about Chord Studies is that it teaches you the fingerboard (Cello, Trombone, and Bach pieces do so to) without adding a second challenge.
If you'd like to work only on rhythm reading I would recommend Louis Bellson's Modern Reading Text in 4/4 for All Instruments. It only deals with Rhythms. Charles Colin also has some great Swing Reading Books at Link Removed. I've also had good luck with Carol Kaye's, Anthony Vitti's and Rich Appleman's books. An absolute sleeper is Alan Raph's Dance Band Reading and Interpretation in Bass Clef (Alfreds)-great book with many challenges! Standing in the Shadows of Motown works well too, but I'd work through all the 8th note lines and then go back to the 16th note lines at that point.
When I was first starting out, I became fluent in treble clef simply because there was so little material on Jazz and Improvisation available in Bass Clef. Thankfully, that's changed but I don't think it's harmful or a waste of time to be fluent in both clefs (and Tenor if you're playing legit Upright).
Hope this helps.

Commreman said:

Roy - Thank you for picking up the torch, and your participation in the Jeff Berlin threads. Jeff will surely be missed for a while (he will be back - we can all hope, can't we?), but your knowledge and insight also contributed mightily to what was the best series of threads ever to grace the pages of TalkBass.

Due to some rather unfortunate personal circumstances, I was not able to participate as much as I would have liked to other than providing over 100 copies of Jeff's article to whoever wanted it (that offer still stands - just shoot me a PM with your e mail address), but others covered a lot of the questions that I had anyway, so I learned through reading.

I can read music well, and have studied the modes, triads, intervals, and arpeggios to death. I am diving into the chord studies in a big way, and this has opened up new doors for me. My question to you is this - what are the best standards to use to apply the chord tone studies to to get started, and how would you go about it? This would be greatly appreciated!

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That's totally fine-those 100 copies of Jeff's article were really appreciated (I've used those with at least 10 students myself so you could extrapolate that you've helped up to 1000 players ).
I think the main thing to do with the Chord Tone studies is to just work them slowly through either the Cycle of Fourths with each chord quality or to pick a Standard Tune (start with something simple like Autumn Leaves) and work all of the possibilities slowly through the tune. It's not a performance exercise-it's just regarding the Harmony differently. I'd particularly avoid starting the patterns on the Root-if you're a good bassist you automatically do that-but instead favor 3rds, 5ths and 7ths especially if I want to impact my soloing. If you think about how all of this will impact studying a tune like
If you have the Chord Studies for Electric Bass book one thing I've found particularly useful is to record some sort of Chord Pad and play slowly through the exercise listening for the tension and resolutions of the approach tones. Most players can play plenty fast enough, our challenge is to know where to aim all of that facility!

bassy7 said:

Anyways, I was wondering if I should really be conciously recognizing the actual note names on the staff as I am sight reading in real time. I am inclined to think that I should make an effort to think about what each note actually is, at least while I am still in the beginners phase or working on a difficult passage. Then let up on that a lot after I get better at reading in "Real time". You mentioned that a lot of reading is just recognizing patterns. Which is sort of akin to reading written words without having consciously think about each letter in the word. So at my level, should I practice reading while conciously recognizing each note's name on the staff before or while I play it, or should I just skip that step and put my finger where the staff marks tell me to? Or should I use a combination of both?

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If you don't know the note names you should definitely stop and deal with that. If, for example, you have an extremely difficult passage you're working on (say, one of Jeff's solos ) you should probably play it slowly and out of time so you can find an efficient fingering. You'll find that as your experience with reading deepens you'll think about this very little if at all and go from seeing the notes on the page and hitting the notes on your fingerboard automatically, just like you read English automatically at this point.
Probably at this point a combination of both is what you're doing anyway with some material being heavier on finding the note names and some material being more pattern driven. I'd just continue to practice reading and trust that time spent will return the investment. Sometimes I have to remind myself to do and not analyze....

Commreman said:

I'll get the chart for Autumn Leaves and work through it, starting each chord on anything but the root. Would you recommend that I write out what I am going to do first?

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If you need to write it out at first that's fine. However, since we're generally not reading when soloing or improvising I feel it's necessary to get "off the paper" at some point and just play the exercises on your instrument. It helps if you have some sort of repetitive pattern (I'm using 3-5-R-7/5-7-R-3 with my students). If you need to start simpler 3-5-R-7 has a lot of harmonic "juice" so it's a good pattern to play.

robboy said:

+1
Roy, I too studied with "The Don" at UM and taught for a semester or two as a grad assistant. He used that book and it really helped me get my Big Band reading together. I teach Bass at FAU in South Florida and use the Alan Raph book. Great Etudes and pretty good introduction to swing interpretation. Thanks to you I see that it's back in print. For years I couldn't find it and had to make copies of each lesson for my students.

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Great to have you on here! Good to have some more U of M folks to "represent". I've got 5 years under my belt at UNT (then NTSU) as well but I'd sure welcome some teachers with Berklee, Indiana University, MI and BIT, The LA Music Academy and UNT under their belts to see the similarities and differences in approaches.