Double Bass New jazz bass video tutorial series

[Chris Fitzgerald]

Thanks, Trey. Nothing much there that you didn't already have going, but hopefully it could be useful to students at some point.

Ralph - the discussion Reiska directed you to is a relevant one. If you are new to the DB as you say, it's probably just a matter of experience and putting in the time before it starts to feel natural. For me it's not so much a matter of which way the thumb is pointing, but rather one of it being more of a facilitator than a heavy lifter. Pivoting is fine in both half step directions, and in this case the thumb helps the hand stay in tune by being a reference point. The key, for me, is the practicing without the thumb, which forces the bigger mechanism to find a way to leverage the force/weight for good clean stops and to gauge the distance for shifts. Once the thumb is added back, with some practice it will have less of a role as a generator of force and can act more as a guide.

Of course, as the TB mantra goes, all of this information is best conveyed in person by another human being who can respond to your questions and technical issues in real time and directly demonstrate some good suggested next steps to take.

 

[Tom Lane]

Or just Skype Chris. You'll have to look long and hard for a better teacher.

 

[Chris Fitzgerald]

Have been getting requests for the text examples for several of the videos, most often the PDF file for "Walking Bass Line Theory Basics". I've been telling everyone that I was going to wait until my site rebuild was done, but since that seems to be taking forever, I'll go on and put the PDF file up here so those interested can download it. Hopefully the site won't take too much longer.

 

[musomark]

Many thanks. Very useful.

 

[Mr Ralph]

Chris,
Thanks,
I again watched your left hand video and have been working on positioning my bass so I can use the big muscles and the left hand without the thumb. It is a work in progress. I think my thumb problem is that I leave it behind when shifting. I have found lightening my grip( for lack of a better way of putting it) has helped a lot. I also picked up a tip from Gary Peacock which rang home with me for some reason. He had simple exercise for not putting more pressure on the string than necessary to produce a solid tone. That little tip along with your excellent left hand video has given me the mental picture I need. No more sore hand anyway. The last thing I did was put solo helicores tuned to regular tuning on my E and A, this lower tension allows me to concentrate on just using the proper technique instead of squeezing. I have Evah mittels on the G & D. I figure my technique is not good enough yet for me to notice the tonal difference in the strings. Thanks for all you do.

Ralph

 

[Chris Fitzgerald]

Ralph - Thanks for the nice review. "Lightening the grip" is a great step in the right direction IMO. As I've said many times, practicing without the thumb doesn't mean that it isn't useful, only that it's best used as a guide rather than a source of force most of the time, and even when it's used for stopping power it's a simple lever to apply force that comes from the arm moving around it. Sounds like you're on the right path with this.

Gary Peacock's tip is very wise, and also takes a lot of experience to calibrate correctly. I agree wholeheartedly with the master on this account, with the caveat that when in doubt it's better to use slightly too much force than slightly too little: too much into-the-string force won't choke the stop, but too little can keep it from ringing. Too much force (within reason, of course) just results in wasted energy and slows the left hand down a bit.

 

[alonzo]

Chris --
"Walking Bass Line Examples and Anaylsis" is great! Your videos are opening my eyes to possibilities that I had never imagined. Your explaination of the Approach/Target idea is the best that I've seen. All the books talk about it but your breakdown makes it totally clear.
Thanks for your effort to put this together. If you ever make a PDF available for this last lesson I'd love to have a copy. And, I'm looking forward to your book (you are working on a book, yes?)
-- alonzo

 

[Chris Fitzgerald]

Thanks Alonzo. The video format opens doors to explaining things that can't quite be reached by other formats. I'll attach a PDF of the file here in case anyone may find it useful. Am I working on a book? Sort of. At the moment I'm doing the series as a sort of experimental publishing/educational outreach endeavor as part of my university teaching position. I was able to convince the administration that it would be a worthwhile experiment by pointing out that it is possible to reach a lot more people this way than by simply publishing a book. I'm sure the project may morph into a book/several books/some sort of conglomeration of information that I can't quite see yet at some point. For now, I'm just going to follow where it leads me and keep listening to the ideas from the folks who are giving feedback. Thanks for tuning in!

 

[alonzo]

Thanks, Chris -- Now I can digest this material at my "snail's pace." And, I'll be watching to see how this evolves.
BTW: You can tell your Admins that your work has *already* reached and helped a lot of people.
-- alonzo

 

[peterpalmieri]

Chris, I think you are doing a great job. This combines a lot of aspects of a book, a video and a private lesson. Certainly a great prerequisite for your incoming students and awseome free stuff for us. Embracing the new digital age is great, figuring out how to make money is a different story.

 

[Chris Fitzgerald]

Thanks for the feedback, gentlemen. Fortunately at this time money isn't a part of the equation, so it's kind of win-win at the moment. I also enjoy learning how to use the technology and put material together in a more current format than in a book. When I discovered how to the do the split screen thing for examples in duo format while still showing a scrolling score, it was like a giant door of possibility opened up. Now if only I had more time to work on these...

 

[Chris Fitzgerald]

After a long process, the next video in the series is finally up:




Didn't mean for this to be a Christmas baby, but after a 20 hour upload process and a youtube bug at the end of it, things got a little delayed. Fortunately, there were several wise men on youtube who helped me salvage the upload, so here we are.

This video covers the changes to All The Things You Are, and a number of the concepts for one-chord-per-bar/one-chord-for-2-bars progressions that I think are a good start for bassists looking to have a good basic grasp of constructing good solid lines at these harmonic rhythms while still leaving plenty of room for subtle line variations as well as big picture control over line contour. As always, since it's a big picture contextual video, I wouldn't expect any sane or employed person to watch the whole thing at once. To save time, use the index time stamps beside each topic in the "More" text box below the video window to skip to that point in the video. Thanks to all of those who have been so supportive of the series, and Merry Christmas.

(Blurb and index from video)
Due to the length of this video (52 minutes), it has been indexed on screen by topic so that specific topics can be more easily found. Clicking on the time code beside each indexed topic will automatically start the video at that point. The sequence of events topics in the video is as follows:

0:00 Walking bass line playing example (traditional)
0:48 General topic list
1:36 Introduction
3:23 Line Types: Scalar/Linear and Chordal/Arpeggiated
4:41 Intervals between Chord roots (2nds, 3rds, and 4ths - scalar connections for each interval type)
10:45 Root Motion by 4th/5th
12:12 Scalar/Linear construction: root motion by ascending 4th
17:25 Scalar/Linear construction: root motion by descending 5th
21:10 Ascending/Descending balance and "Chunking"
25:57 Chordal/Arpeggiated construction: ascending and descending
28:37 Chordal/Arpeggiated construction: ascending lines by 4th
31:17 Chordal/Arpeggiated construction: descending lines by 5th
33:50 Chordal construction: ascending/descending balance
37:12 Mixing Scalar and Chordal lines and "Double Chunking"
43:04 One Chord for two bars and Alternate target Notes
47:40 Conclusion
50:29 Walking bass line playing example (advanced)

 

[Treyzer]

Chris, Happy Holidays. This is excellent. Funny how much stuff goes into these lines when analyzed..... Great job and Thanks...

 

[DMcNutt]

Is there one location from which I can download all the pdf files of these lessons? I wish to make a thorough study of what you have given us.

Delightfully well done. Energizes me to get working on it.

 

[Chris Fitzgerald]

Thanks for the positive feedback! The PDF files for the previous walking bass videos are up here for the moment in previous posts 203 and 208 of this thread, and will eventually be on my website redesign. I hadn't thought of doing a specific PDF file for this one, but if anyone wanted the walking line example from the beginning I could certainly upload it here. The two choruses at the end were improvised but may show up in a later video if there's interest or if it makes sense to do so.

Eventually this project will have to morph into some sort of book, but for now it's nice to just explore laying some of the foundations that every bassist who plays anything related to jazz will need to cover at some point. And it's interesting to observe the kind of feedback that the series gets, both in terms of actual feedback, and in terms of what seems to be the most user-friendly way for the information to be presented. I thought that the two walking bass theory videos with a ton of music examples in multicam/splitscreen format would be a friendlier way to present some of that more OCDetailed material, and while it's been well accepted by a certain subset of subscribers, the majority seem to prefer just the simple lessons just sitting in the corner with a bass and talking about the subject. I would love to get some more feedback on this from people here who have seen them, since at the moment the series serves as a sort of educational outreach experiment in progress, and knowing what's most helpful to the audience would be a very useful bit of information.

And speaking of feedback, I have two other little spinoff series in mind that I'd love to get some feedback on that are taking shape in the corners of my brain:

- A series of Bach cello suite arrangements where the suites are arranged and edited for pizzicato playing in the lower register rather than at cello pitch, with specific articulation, phrasing, and fingering suggestions; the idea would be to use these pieces - which I consider to be some of the world's most beautiful music - as a springboard to learning technique that helps develop the melodic voice of the bassist. The suite movements are both gorgeous and challenging, and over the years they have probably helped me develop a melodic voice as a jazz player as much as anything else I've ever studied, certainly at least in terms of technique and intonation. The idea would be to present a video of one movement at a time consisting of a performance of the movement, a link to a PDF of the arrangement (the music is public domain, and the arrangements would be scored on Sibelius for the series), and then a discussion of the challenging technical elements and passages involved.

- A very occasional series of analyses of video performances (with the permission of the performer) that would be transcribed and (lightly) analyzed in discussion on screen alongside the transcription. Again, the PDF would be available. The point of these videos would be to try to help bridge the gap between theory and practice in actual jazz performance. I would love to start the series with examples from players who were early mentors of mine, like Rufus Reid, John Goldsby, and Lynn Seaton, if they would all agree to the concept. This series would be a sort of attempt to address Trey's observation above, that "Funny how much stuff goes into these lines when analyzed"; and conversely, hopefully give a little insight into just how little thinking was going on at the time of the performance as opposed to simply pre-hearing.

Any and all feedback/thoughts on these ideas welcome!

 

[Chris Fitzgerald]

New Bach series video is finally done.


As with the previous videos, it's a long one so it's indexed below the view window on the "see more" section. Topics are also listed below, and as always clicking on the time stamp beside each topic will forward the video to that spot:
0:00 Performance of Suite I Gigue
2:00 Bachrilege fugue theme and titles
3:08 Series introduction and intent of the series
9:21 Articulation as the means of expression
17:19 Brief discussion of dynamics in the suites
18:49 Differences between bowed and pizzicato articulations
19:58 Basic articulated legato technique
25:37 Rake technique (legato)
29:54 Hammer On technique (legato)
36:42 Pull Off technique (legato)
41:52 Staccato concept and technique
47:23 Conclusion and looking forward

I've also attached an early edition of the score here. I still have to finish the articulation key for it, but those things are discussed at length in the video. I'd be curious to hear feedback from the peanut gallery on this spinoff of the series. I'd like it to be as useful as possible to as many people as possible.

 

[Joshua]

Top drawer as always!

 

[Reiska]

Wonderful!!!

 

[Mr Ralph]

Thank you for this. I had just received the music for the cello suites when I saw your post. I listen to them quite frequently I have the Yo-Yo Ma performances on my I pad. That is my go to relaxation music along with his performances of Rachmaninoff's Vocalise and Massenet. I am excited to begin the journey of playing these on the bass. I love to listen to Gary karr as well as Edgar Meyer and others playing the Bach pieces.
Your Bass sounded great what strings are you currently using?
Thank you again for doing this project and educating the rest of us in the process.

 

[Chris Fitzgerald]

Thanks for the feedback. The bass is wearing 5-7 year old Dominants with a spiro stark E and the G string has a soundpost cold at the moment, producing a whiny E-F up near the octave. Other than that, I'm pretty happy with them.

The Yo Yo Ma version is great. I also like the recording of the suites by Adolfo Gutierrez Arenas. Not a well known player, but his recording is really nice.