When I started to play bass I could not read in bass clef, I had studied guitar one year and, as the local band needed a bass player, I switched on lower note. Reading bass line was a painful process; I had to figure out every note counting down to find it. Tablature was rare and transposing software was far away to come (it was 1984). So after a while I purchased this book, attracted by
the word “simplified”.
The book starts, after a very brief introduction about Reading Fundamentals, with Rhythms teaching you the different value of whole, quarter, eights, sixteenths note and corresponding rests, dot, tie, and triplet by always staying on the same note (D on fifth fret of A string). So you can easily go through the exercise.
Going on he combines rhythms with pitches and things starts to increase in difficult but with commitment you will eventually know how to sight read notes on the first five fret without accidentals.
Where the word “simplified” starts to lose his meaning is when accidentals and key signature are introduced. In my opinion this subjects are added without giving the time to build up the skill needed, especially if you are self-studying it. Simply presenting a Bass Fingerboard Chart to explain all the notes available without the help of progressive exercise fail the purpose of teaching how to sight read.
I have found this an interesting book for the first part of it, having a too high step after. Start with this one but search for additional practice elsewhere.
Title: Simplified Sight-Reading for Bass
Author: Josquin des Pres
Publisher: Hal Leonard Corporation
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0793565189
ISBN-13: 978-0793565184
No comments:
Post a Comment