Had a bit of an intense morning/afternoon looking through this and playing stuff but here is my rough breakdown.
Package 6 - Walking Bass Lines
First Impressions
Purchased this. Got sent the download immediately and upon opening the folder you are hit with quite a lot. This may be amended but I got PDF's of everything and a few microsoft word documents which were the copy for the title page and contents etc. It seems like they forgot to remove them from before going live. I'm sure that will be amended but it does look a tad sloppy in my opinion.
On top of that you basically get a PDF of every single page. That is to say, you get a front cover pdf, then an introduction page pdf, a separate pdf for each page of contents. First impressions were that aesthetically it didn't look great, but practically it's actually idea because in all likelihood who actually uses those pages and in my experience of using them for teaching I'm only ever printing off/sending individual pages for people so really I don't see that as a problem. You probably shouldn't either and if you do, then it's easy enough to put everything together as one document - which I have done for the previous packages for use on tablets etc.
What do you get?
The package is 132 pages of straight quarter notes. So if you are looking for skips, triplets etc this isn't in here so what is?
Section 1 is basically walking lines over various chord qualities. Lesson 1 - 4 for example is walking lines on Maj7 chords in all 12 keys. Each lesson is about 4 bars long of a line over that chord quality. There are a lot of chromatics in there as well so it is close to what you would realistically be playing, and good reading. Then 5 - 9 is Min7 etc He goes through Dominants, min7b5, diminished as well. Each lesson is the same line transposed through every key. So that would be 4 different lines on each chord quality and taken through every key, which is a lot mileage to get out of a each line.
Section 2 we move to playing chord changes. The first lesson in this package is moving from chords Ima7 to IVma7 8 bars in each key and a ii V leading you to the next key. You move through all the keys. Same idea as package 1 is repeated. 4 lessons of the same chord quality before moving onto the next chord quality. By the time you get to the diminished chords it becomes 2 bars of dim7 and 2 bars of major 7 so there is a bit of resolution going on. There is a lesson that is like 64 bars of a diminished chord, which is pretty fun but you are left to transpose that one through all the keys.
Section 3 finally starts threading it all together. This section is roughly split into two. The first we have two 64 bar etudes for each chord quality, so that's 10 Etudes. Rather than moving straight around the cycle we are closer to actual chord progressions which is a nice change of pace and you begin to see how you are able to connect say Cmajor to Ebmajor. The second half of this section are all Etudes based on standards. This is effectively the culmination of everything you have done previously through 9 of the most standard of standards.
Overall thoughts
There are things I like, and things I'm not so hot for. The things I like is the thoroughness of spending time with each chord quality, I find students often struggle to flesh out a line where it is 2 or more bars on a single chord so this really helps drill you into being able to play over 1 chord type for quite sometime. Unless you were fortunate (or unfortunate) enough to sit through an improv class and play ad nauseam over an F7 chord while every front line player blew their brains out over the changes you might not have that together as much. Also the general goodness of being able to really know where all the chord tones are at any given time are for a chord.
Like the previous packages I really like how systematic and thorough it all is, the examples are all very musical as well which is nice so it's a lot less dry than you'd think.
Again Jeff leaves you to do a lot of the work, which some people find annoying but for me that's where the true gold lies if you are willing to put the work into it. On the surface level you'll get better by just playing everything straight but by exploring and using your own creativity you'll get a wealth of material.
Jeff doesn't analyse what's going on either. So he isn't saying you should play a chord tone on beats 1 and 3 or whatever but if you have done the rest of the packages you'll know your chord tones cold by this point so you should be able to analyse the lines fairly easily. None of the lines are outrageous so it's going to melt your head trying to work out what's going on. You know what the chord quality is so you should be able to work out what's a chromatic etc and what chord tone it's leading to on what part of the bar. If you are really struggling any decent teacher will be able to break down what's going on.
Things you should consider are. By the end of this you should be able to play a walking line through the changes and state the changes ridiculously clear for the band so in that regard you will be doing the job and no one can say otherwise. You won't however be at the stage where you are able to respond to what the soloist is doing, play subs and things like that which any great walking player is doing at the time. This is a bit of a double edged sword for me as I find when you use a transcription of a walking line from recording you get for example how Ray Brown is approaching the changes beneath Oscars solo that particular night, which might change the next night or the next chorus depending on a lot of factors. This is great for seeing how the greats are playing the music but it's not so great when you are trying to get your head around how it all works. Where this is great is you basically focus in solely on stating and threading the changes together well enough that you can hold your own and take it to that level if you want to do it.
So once again I think Jeff does exactly what he says on the tin and in true Jeff education style he focuses on the more academic side of it and taking material through every key. He leaves no stone untouched in the thoroughness of how to do that. I've got absolutely no doubts I will be using this material as a teaching aid.
Package 6 - Walking Bass Lines
First Impressions
Purchased this. Got sent the download immediately and upon opening the folder you are hit with quite a lot. This may be amended but I got PDF's of everything and a few microsoft word documents which were the copy for the title page and contents etc. It seems like they forgot to remove them from before going live. I'm sure that will be amended but it does look a tad sloppy in my opinion.
On top of that you basically get a PDF of every single page. That is to say, you get a front cover pdf, then an introduction page pdf, a separate pdf for each page of contents. First impressions were that aesthetically it didn't look great, but practically it's actually idea because in all likelihood who actually uses those pages and in my experience of using them for teaching I'm only ever printing off/sending individual pages for people so really I don't see that as a problem. You probably shouldn't either and if you do, then it's easy enough to put everything together as one document - which I have done for the previous packages for use on tablets etc.
What do you get?
The package is 132 pages of straight quarter notes. So if you are looking for skips, triplets etc this isn't in here so what is?
Section 1 is basically walking lines over various chord qualities. Lesson 1 - 4 for example is walking lines on Maj7 chords in all 12 keys. Each lesson is about 4 bars long of a line over that chord quality. There are a lot of chromatics in there as well so it is close to what you would realistically be playing, and good reading. Then 5 - 9 is Min7 etc He goes through Dominants, min7b5, diminished as well. Each lesson is the same line transposed through every key. So that would be 4 different lines on each chord quality and taken through every key, which is a lot mileage to get out of a each line.
Section 2 we move to playing chord changes. The first lesson in this package is moving from chords Ima7 to IVma7 8 bars in each key and a ii V leading you to the next key. You move through all the keys. Same idea as package 1 is repeated. 4 lessons of the same chord quality before moving onto the next chord quality. By the time you get to the diminished chords it becomes 2 bars of dim7 and 2 bars of major 7 so there is a bit of resolution going on. There is a lesson that is like 64 bars of a diminished chord, which is pretty fun but you are left to transpose that one through all the keys.
Section 3 finally starts threading it all together. This section is roughly split into two. The first we have two 64 bar etudes for each chord quality, so that's 10 Etudes. Rather than moving straight around the cycle we are closer to actual chord progressions which is a nice change of pace and you begin to see how you are able to connect say Cmajor to Ebmajor. The second half of this section are all Etudes based on standards. This is effectively the culmination of everything you have done previously through 9 of the most standard of standards.
Overall thoughts
There are things I like, and things I'm not so hot for. The things I like is the thoroughness of spending time with each chord quality, I find students often struggle to flesh out a line where it is 2 or more bars on a single chord so this really helps drill you into being able to play over 1 chord type for quite sometime. Unless you were fortunate (or unfortunate) enough to sit through an improv class and play ad nauseam over an F7 chord while every front line player blew their brains out over the changes you might not have that together as much. Also the general goodness of being able to really know where all the chord tones are at any given time are for a chord.
Like the previous packages I really like how systematic and thorough it all is, the examples are all very musical as well which is nice so it's a lot less dry than you'd think.
Again Jeff leaves you to do a lot of the work, which some people find annoying but for me that's where the true gold lies if you are willing to put the work into it. On the surface level you'll get better by just playing everything straight but by exploring and using your own creativity you'll get a wealth of material.
Jeff doesn't analyse what's going on either. So he isn't saying you should play a chord tone on beats 1 and 3 or whatever but if you have done the rest of the packages you'll know your chord tones cold by this point so you should be able to analyse the lines fairly easily. None of the lines are outrageous so it's going to melt your head trying to work out what's going on. You know what the chord quality is so you should be able to work out what's a chromatic etc and what chord tone it's leading to on what part of the bar. If you are really struggling any decent teacher will be able to break down what's going on.
Things you should consider are. By the end of this you should be able to play a walking line through the changes and state the changes ridiculously clear for the band so in that regard you will be doing the job and no one can say otherwise. You won't however be at the stage where you are able to respond to what the soloist is doing, play subs and things like that which any great walking player is doing at the time. This is a bit of a double edged sword for me as I find when you use a transcription of a walking line from recording you get for example how Ray Brown is approaching the changes beneath Oscars solo that particular night, which might change the next night or the next chorus depending on a lot of factors. This is great for seeing how the greats are playing the music but it's not so great when you are trying to get your head around how it all works. Where this is great is you basically focus in solely on stating and threading the changes together well enough that you can hold your own and take it to that level if you want to do it.
So once again I think Jeff does exactly what he says on the tin and in true Jeff education style he focuses on the more academic side of it and taking material through every key. He leaves no stone untouched in the thoroughness of how to do that. I've got absolutely no doubts I will be using this material as a teaching aid.
