Genre Studies

[Jhengsman]

Is there a particular song or album that you've always loved, but is a little outside your typical comfort zone? If so, that's a good place to start!

Or, jam with some musicians outside your usual genre. Are you a rocker? Try going to an acoustic open mic. Or do you typically play reggae? Try sitting in at a blues jam. Etc.

I would take a two pronged approach. In addition to your particular known song, even if it is in another genre that is outside your comfort zone but still speaks to you. Or studying the music of the publicly known masters of a genre there is a second prong.

I would take a song that I am already familiar with and listen to how genre specific cover bands handle it. It might not be a purist stab at the genre or the greatest of the genre that deep dive from other post describe, since it is a probably a local band adding their video to YouTube that is serving as my style guide. But it does allow you to start to relate the feel of the genre to something you already know well and then you can take that feel to a more pure take on other genres.

 

[mambo4]

Rebeca Mauleon's "Salsa Guidebook" ...
Carlos del Puerto's "The True Cuban Bassist" is great, too.

I'll vouch for those too.
Rebeca's book is especially great for learning the context , the other rhythm section parts. (piano, conga, timbales etc) parts. I believe you have to understand those to really play the bass part - it was certainly the step I had to take to really "get" the bass tumbao (in fact the bass line and the conga part are both called the "tumbao" think on that! )

 

[bfields]

was referring to books more like the bass Grimoire, although I tried making my own scale sheets through Excel to suited to a 5-string but I have to go back and fix them in order to use them.

I'm not a fan of books that are just catalogs of scale/arpeggio/whatever patterns.

I figure I already know everything I need to to work out where the notes of, say, C# harmonic minor fall on a 5-string bass. Sure, it's kind of tedious working it all out at first. But I don't want to cheat myself out of that effort. It's one of the most important steps to getting it memorized and automatic.

Making your own scale sheets in Excel--hey, not the way most people would do it, but you do you, I think that's great. You're finding a way to work out those patterns and make them your own, which is exactly the right idea.

The catalogs might suggest a scale or a fingering you wouldn't have thought of, so they're not necessarily useless. But working out the basic patterns--it's like learning arithmetic, you want to set aside the calculator and get some practice working that stuff out in your head.

 

[mambo4]

Couldn't agree more with the above.
grab a pencil and some graph paper and make your own bass grimiore.
way better value