Jazz Practice Exercises

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For beginning to intermediate bassists: Backing tracks to Bob Magnusson's book, "The Art of Walking Bass" (1999). Includes new tracks supporting his examples, sequences and modes that are not on his excellent CD.

[REVISED: 2014-11-22:

Bob Magnusson (34)
 
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Great job nimble switch:):y:
I can tell you put a lot of effort into this.

I just ordered the book from Amazon but I can't wait for it.
I'm going to start working these exercises asap
 
Thanks, Bobsax. If just one person finds these useful, then it's worthwhile. So thanks, again.

Bob's book starts out simply, but if you really do everything, it advances quickly. I met Bob once and thanked him for his book. He pointed out that he did the whole book in quarter notes only, which I think was a really good idea, looking back on it. If we get his book down and analyze the bass lines as we go along, we'll be ready to take off into different rhythms, etc., from there.
 
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nimbleswitch said:
Thanks, Bobsax. If just one person finds these useful, then it's worthwhile. So thanks, again.

Bob's book starts out simply, but if you really do everything, it advances quickly. I met Bob once and thanked him for his book. He pointed out that he did the whole book in quarter notes only, which I think was a really good idea, looking back on it. If we get his book down and analyze the bass lines as we go along, we'll be ready to take off into different rhythms, etc., from there.
Click to expand...

My only problem with the book is it seems to be for electric players despite the title.
The exercises are written out in tabs for bass guitar.
I wish I could find a book with upright tabs

no matter, I've been wanting to work on bass guitar so it's great for that.
 
Oh, man! Do yourself a huge favor and forget tabs. Teach yourself to read music, i.e. standard notation. This book IS for jazz double bass players with standard notation throughout. I've seen Bob many times, and i've never seen him play anything but double bass.

Jazz musicians use standarrd notation charts. I've never even heard of a jazz double bassist who used tabs for anything. How can you read note duration with tabs? Standard motation is not that hard to learn. Really, you can teach yoursellf to read music.and you'll always be glad you did.
 
nimbleswitch said:
Oh, man! Do yourself a huge favor and forget tabs. Teach yourself to read music, i.e. standard notation. This book IS for jazz double bass players with standard notation throughout. I've seen Bob many times, and i've never seen him play anything but double bass.

Jazz musicians use standarrd notation charts. I've never even heard of a jazz double bassist who used tabs for anything. How can you read note duration with tabs? Standard motation is not that hard to learn. Really, you can teach yoursellf to read music.and you'll always be glad you did.
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lol
I've been reading music since birth:O
I'm actually having a hard time with the tabs but I assume they are the suggested fingerings for the bass guitar and so I'm trudging through them going up the neck in closed position unlike you would do on the double bass.

I would love to see tabs for the DB though. I'm going through some Ron Carter transcriptions and you can see how he uses open strings and thumb pos for certain licks.
It would be very helpful if this book had tabs/fingerings.
For example some of the early exercises on open chord voicings are easy on bass guitar but pretty advanced for DB
 
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Bobsax said:
lol
I've been reading music since birth:O
I'm actually having a hard time with the tabs but I assume they are the suggested fingerings for the bass guitar and so I'm trudging through them going up the neck in closed position unlike you would do on the double bass.

I would love to see tabs for the DB though. I'm going through some Ron Carter transcriptions and you can see how he uses open strings and thumb pos for certain licks.
It would be very helpful if this book had tabs/fingerings.
For example some of the early exercises on open chord voicings are easy on bass guitar but pretty advanced for DB
Click to expand...

Oh, oh, sorry. I completely misunderstood where you were coming from there. Your concern is fingering, not reading. I think you just learn your instrument and find out what works for you. Across the strings, up the strings, whatever. I've never heard of tabs for double bass, though. There are names for various hand positions, but they vary with whose system you're using. Maybe others know of bass line transcriptions that include positions. I'm sorry, I don't, but I'd like to know of them, too.
 
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More for beginning to intermediate bassists:

Additional backing tracks for Todd Coolman's book "The Bottom Line (1990), not on the accompanying CD.

[REVISED: 2014-11-22:

Todd Coolman (7)
 
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And more for beginning to intermediate bassists.

These are backing tracks for the examples and exercises in Jim Stinnett's book, "Creating Walking Bass Lines" (1988), which did not come with a CD.

[REVISED: 2015-3-9]

Jim Stinnett (19)
 
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