Recent content by Lanky Tunes

No rules; only norms.

The most recently discovered one.

I personally do not consider playing songs practice. I consider that rehearsal. Yeah, semantics, but there's semantic and then there's nothing. Practice to me is learning the fretboard and developing technical and rhythmic skills. I've been working on a book about this for about a year (young...

There are sooo many variable to what you can or should play. I prefer to think in terms of norms than rules. Technically you can play anything depending upon the effect you're looking for. The most common thing you'll do as a bassist is outline the harmony, unless you are doing a very riff...

It is to internalize the sound AND the LOCATION so that they are choices that you can PLAY when you choose to. The problem is that instead of learning a map of the fretboard people learn finger patterns. The big difference is what you do while practicing them, although how and what you practice...

Yeah. Calling them a chord is a bit misleading, but then again everything on the bass can be a bunch of different things, which can get confusing. That R & M3rd could be a R & b6 or a P4 & 6 or a b2 & b5, ect, ect, ect. I call them dyads, but thinking of them as pieces of chords works.

I have the book. Save your money. There are a couple of interesting ideas, but not anything particularly new. Improvising is really just a question of two things: imagining interesting ideas and finding them on you instrument. The first is really not most people's problem. Can you hum or...

I'll second this. It really offers way more than how to play walking lines though. It runs through pretty much all of the various ways of approaching a chord progression or melody. It also lays out a bunch of different amazing players playing of the same changes side by side so that you can...

I just got the notice today about the Mac App. I'd definitely be interested in this in Android or online as well.

My ideal band set up, IF there was a guitar, would be one who mostly stuck to the top four strings. ;)

it depends on the purpose of the slash chord. Often the slash notes are a walking bassline under or over the main chord. Generally, I say that the bass would play the slash notes of the under line and the guitar would play them when they are the highest note (inverted slash chord). In all...

The bassist note choice is actually what makes the chord an inversion or slash chord or anything else. If everyone is playing root in bass and you stat playing the third then you have made it a first inversion; a fifth and it's a second inversion, ect. The bass actually has so much control...

Those are the chord tones. It will work as long as the tones are right. Major: 1 3 5 7 Minor: 1 b3 5 b7 Dominant: 1 3 5 b7 Diminished: 1 b3 b5 6 Augmented: 1 3 6 b7 Sus 2: 1 2 5 Sus 4: 1 4 5 Any of those tones should work although the 7ths will be weaker sounding and, in a lot of cases, the 6...

A lot of this is because Jazz is a conversation between generations of players that most of us came in on the middle of. I like the idea of stuff like 'The Vanilla Book' to see where things started in order to even begin to see where the substitutes and such were added/changed. Jumping in at...

I think that 'Bass Guitar For Dummies' by Patrick Pfeiffer is probably the best introduction that I have come across thus far and that, if you can or are willing to learn to read music, 'Foundation Exercises for Bass' by Chuck Sher is a close second. They are both well rounded in that they cover...