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New Jeff Berlin Walking Bass book

India_Sierra

India_Sierra

Mar 7, 2009
2,577
4,751
United Kingdom
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#1
Evening all,

I thought it may be of interest to some members here to know that Jeff Berlin is releasing a new walking bass book on the 27th of November. I had seen him mention it recently and then this video popped up on YouTube:



I had thought to ask Jeff about it because I do not usually play walking basslines but I like to keep my eyes peeled for quality instructional material. Jeff advised me that this book is for intermediate-and-up readers and will consist of walking basslines in five main chord types in every key. The lessons will form a sequential programme for learning. I intend to buy a copy on release and hopefully will improve this area of my playing.

If you aren't a reader, or are interested in material that is designed to address a specific area of reading, you may look elsewhere on this forum for the thread about Jeff's five reading packages, one of which is designed for complete beginners to reading. I used that myself to start reading a couple of years ago.

It remains the case that with Covid being around, there haven't been so many opportunities to play out so I've been looking for material to work on at home. I hope this is of interest!
 
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#2
I’m interested in this book as well and will likely pick it up. I wish he’d put more effort into the marketing for it. Seems he simply posted the same 15-20 second video three times with a different cover. Not trying to be negative, I just found that to be disappointing.
 
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#3
We’ve now got another video...nice to hear more about the book. I definitely appreciate Jeff. The man has good heart and you can tell that he really enjoys teaching. I look forward to chatting a bit more with others here about it and Jeffs future videos in the coming days.

 
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#5
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#6
Interesting that Jeff differentiates the "self-taught, joyful" musical approach from the "academic, focused" musical approach.

I get what he's saying though, and genuinely appreciate that he made that comment...I just wish he'd chosen different words. Plenty of musicians take tremendous joy in pursuing academic approaches to music. Plenty of self-taught musicians are incredibly focused. They're not mutually exclusive. Maybe Jeff is just trying to remind us all of that.
 
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#7
As far as I understand his point is that the self-taught part consists of say transcribing Jamerson bass lines, learning songs and jamming along to records etc. Things that everyone does and often you don't need a teacher or a book or a lesson to actually do.

The academic side is how music works and just cold hard musical material such as learning all the arpeggios across the instrument etc. That stuff doesn't care about genre as it's applicable to just about everything we are likely to ever play as bass players. So that material is cold and focuses in on only the content. What you do with it once you've learned it inside out and back to front is entirely up to you, this is often the point that people over look or really don't dig into the extents in which they probably should to get control over what they are doing. This approach is somewhat best demonstrated at the start of most theory texts I think. It's fair to say if we are learning for example how triads are built then the information tends to first be just cold hard triads. Then when talking about progressions you will get them presented to you so chords I to V back to I are often just root position on the staff to show that movement. It's only after you've been given the information in it's purest form for you to really understand do we tend to see the examples of it occurring in musical contexts and how composers used his material. That last step in the process is seeing how it's done once you understand how the mechanics of it work.

That is my understanding of it and seems to fit in line with what he says and what I've spoken to him about.

I'm trying not to cross the line of talking about the man behind the theory because that is irrelevant to the content being presented.
 
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#8
India_Sierra said:
Evening all,

I thought it may be of interest to some members here to know that Jeff Berlin is releasing a new walking bass book on the 27th of November. I had seen him mention it recently and then this video popped up on YouTube:



I had thought to ask Jeff about it because I do not usually play walking basslines but I like to keep my eyes peeled for quality instructional material. Jeff advised me that this book is for intermediate-and-up readers and will consist of walking basslines in five main chord types in every key. The lessons will form a sequential programme for learning. I intend to buy a copy on release and hopefully will improve this area of my playing.

If you aren't a reader, or are interested in material that is designed to address a specific area of reading, you may look elsewhere on this forum for the thread about Jeff's five reading packages, one of which is designed for complete beginners to reading. I used that myself to start reading a couple of years ago.

It remains the case that with Covid being around, there haven't been so many opportunities to play out so I've been looking for material to work on at home. I hope this is of interest!
Click to expand...


Black Friday'd myself to this great opportunity, thank you.
 
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#10
Groovin1122 said:
I would love to hear your thoughts! I am working on my walking bass skills myself and am interested! Could some of these be played over a backing track you find in the right key?
Click to expand...

Everything here Jeff Berlin Bass Education Packages is accurate.

Glanced at lesson 1, and it's four bars of Maj7 walking lines repeated three times before moving on to the next key. It'd be pretty easy to use something like iReal Pro to set up a descending circle of fifths for backing tracks.

My own intention involves a metronome :eek: :laugh:
 
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#11
Groovin1122 said:
I would love to hear your thoughts! I am working on my walking bass skills myself and am interested! Could some of these be played over a backing track you find in the right key?
Click to expand...

As mentioned above if you have iRealPro then yeah they absolutely could! All the Etudes based on standards are easy enough. Most of the material in the book you should be able to loop from iReal and if you are really savvy with it you could easily programme them as well.
 
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#15
ugly_bassplayer said:
Remember.
Metronome on 2 and 4 to make it swing.

:whistle:
Click to expand...

The last triplet of beats 2 & 4 really get you going.

GwenOnBass said:
What it appears to me is the apparent simplicity of the material might be deceiving. There's always something for me to watch and pay attention to, e.g. right hand technique &c. My take is, if you think it's boring you're not doing it right :D
Click to expand...

This is my experiences, and almost all of my students I've used the previous Berlin stuff with. They have all commented on there being a lot more to what's on the page that meets the eyes. It might read simple but it gets you really thinking about the instrument and how best to realise a lot of the passages.
 
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#19
Groovin1122 said:
Think i should get through the other packages first? I'm almost done with package 1.
Click to expand...

Without having any idea of your background and knowledge I’d say yes. 6 is ultimately a culmination of everything that has preceded it but if you had no interest of walking lines then 3 - 5 is still going to give you the most thorough workout and command of everything to really get to grips with the neck and endless possibilities of using chord tones. Which, as a bass players, is our bread and butter.
 
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