Bass Grooves: Develop Your Groove and Play Like the Pros in Any Style

This post is about: Bass Grooves: Develop your Groove and Play Like the Pros in Any Style by Ed Friedland

Who is, as bass player, your closer relative? You guess it: the drummer. He is your mate, your fellow, so the best thing is to get to know them well. Ok I’m joking, but the purpose of this book seems to me about that: knowing the mechanism that make up a style. Instead of giving you a hundred of bass lines, one after another, this book is about how bass and drum lines relate together. Ed Friedland does that by inviting you to program your drum-machine (and he mean a drum-machine not a metronome) according to the different style presented. By doing so you will get insight on both side of
a style: the rhythm and the melody.

After going through the process of getting a drum-machine and programming it (if you do not own one but are comfortable with music sequencer program like cubase or logic go that way, but be advised that the process will be less immediate) you will be introduced to the concept of playing in groove and the relations between drum and bass parts.
Following a great selection of styles all well explained and with reference to real published song. Like in other titles written by Ed Friedland he goes deep with giving you insight of a style not leaving you alone to figure why you should play something in that way. Sure he does not go very deep into one style or another so if you are interested in, let say Blues, you will need another book explaining the theoretical subject inside that style, remember this is about the relation between bass and drum, the groove.
A chapter called: The Pros Talk Groove, interviewing pro bass player like
Phil Chen

• Harvey Brooks
• Hutch Hutchinson
• Victor Bailey
• Gary Grainger
• Jack Casady

about:

How do you describe groove?
How do you cultivate groove?
Is there an activity or exercise you do to get in the groove?
Is there a particular line or style that sums up where your groove comes from?
Are there any special techniques you use to enhance the groove?

And final consideration about “Groove Metaphysic” ends this book.

One thing that maybe can be questionable is the fact that the accompanying Cd is not recorded in split-mix mode so you can not turn off the bass part and follow along with the example, but as said this is not intended to be a “one-hour-follow-along-all-the style-in-the-world” kind of book, it is meant to be studied.

Title: Bass Grooves: Develop Your Groove and Play Like the Pros in Any Style
Author: Ed Friedland
Publisher: Backbeat Books
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0879307773
ISBN-13: 978-0879307776