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A really simple dinner jazz book

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Pbassred

Feb 21, 2004
755
7
65
Hatfield, Herts, UK
#1
Watching a Jazz jam night, I occurred to me that a lot of the "dinner Jazz" tunes are/can be quite simple to play. mostly whole & half notes following the chords. Simple economical stuff.

Does anyone remember the Janet and John kids books? The whole book would be at one standard. When you finished book 8 you were given book 9, and so on.

I need a simple - play through "baby book" to help me practice sight reading. I would like one which stays at that level rather than progressing to scary heights. Yes, I have the funk books and the Motown books and the How to play bass tutorials. The problem for me is that I've been playing for so long that I go into autopilot instead of reading.

Can anyone recommend a simple "Janet and John play dinner Jazz" book?
 
#3
I would say don't worry so much about sight reading jazz tunes. Most of the time when you see people playing they are reading a lead sheet. A lead sheet contains the melody in standard notation and has the chord names written above the measure. You should learn how to play an improvised walking bass line through the chord changes. A good book for this is the Ed Freidland (SP?) book "The Jazz Bass Book." It starts you out with the basic concepts and teaches you how to build bass lines. Another good book is "The Evolving Bassist" by Rufus Reid, it takes you through all the things you need to know in order to be a functional jazz bassist.
 
#8
Make up your on lists of tunes, off various fake books or lead sheets.
What is 'easy' to you really depends.

You can put One note Samba at the top of your list. It starts off easy enough. But as with all music, it is not the published note value, it is in the interpretation of the note.
 
#9
grovest said:
Maybe I'm missing something, but if you have a lead sheet, and want to play whole or half notes, you can just play the root of each chord change. I like the books published by Sher.
Click to expand...

Yes, I think that what Michael was saying is that in 99.9% of cases in Jazz you will not be given a written bassline and the idea is that you improvise your own line from a chord chart (sequence)... that's a big part of what makes it Jazz!!


Jazz is improvised music or it is nothing really...?


But anyway - there is really no such thing as books of written bass lines for Jazz - unless you are looking at method books giving you examples - like the Ed Friedland, Rufus Reid ones mentioned before.
 
#10
Bruce Lindfield said:
Yes, I think that what Michael was saying is that in 99.9% of cases in Jazz you will not be given a written bassline and the idea is that you improvise your own line from a chord chart (sequence)... that's a big part of what makes it Jazz!!


Jazz is improvised music or it is nothing really...?


But anyway - there is really no such thing as books of written bass lines for Jazz - unless you are looking at method books giving you examples - like the Ed Friedland, Rufus Reid ones mentioned before.
Click to expand...

Ah, I see that now. I often just reply after reading the first post. Hopefully the original question has been answered.
 
#11
Since standards make up a good portion of "dinner jazz", you might want to consider some Aebersold "play-a-longs". Several of the cd's have books available with the transcribed bass part, including a few from Ron Carter. In essence, it's a book of jazz bass lines.
 
#13
(Sighs......)
I almost wish that I hadn't used the "J" word. I wanted sight readng excercises that didn't advance too quickly. I DO undestand that the art of jazz is improvisation, but jazz wasn't the point on the excercise. Learning songs of ANY particular genre wasn't the point. Lookng at lead sheets isn't the point either.
The points are:-"SIMPLE". and "sight reading" .
I mentioned dinner Jazz standards because they sounded like a useful vehicle. I could have said "Beatle songs" but they aren't usually simple. Neither is Motown. Playable yes, but not easy to read.
 
#15
well, I'm going with Mel Bay's Modern Electric Bass Method Grade 1 for sight reading training. Not genre specific, and pretty much the bottom of the sight reading totem pole!

I am liking it better than Hal Leonard complete bass method. The first string (Mel Bay starts on the G string) covers 4 notes and there are seemingly endless exercises for these first 4 notes - IE by the time you move up to the 2nd string you WILL know G, A, B, C on the first string and which notes they are on the clef.

Also that bass clef tester on studybass.com is a great way to start sight reading the root notes.

HTH
 
#16
What everyone else said, and I wouldn't say jazz would be any easier than any other style to sight-read. It would be simpler rythmically, but would seem all over the place in pitch (until you have the theory to make sense of it).

But it you must have bass clef sheet music of jazz standards, you can get the Real Book 6th edition in bass clef. It's not going to be basslines, though, but rough estimations of the melody written in bass clef. It's also, for the most part, not going to be simple or stay to one level. It's all over the place.
 
#20
Here is a nice book that comes with a play along CD. It is all about improving your reading. It is for someone who CAN read, but wants to work at it more.

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I am using the 1st edition right now and I really like it.
 

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