Customer Reviews

Blues Bass - A Guide to the Essential Styles and Techniques: Hal Leonard Bass Method Stylistic Supplement (Book & CD)

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This bass blues book is excellent. Why? Because it has a great variety of styles-from Chicago to New Orleans to Texas blues! And the CD makes it even better. It also has more than several variations for most of the examples, great slow blues, and great blues classics. Also included are variations for endings and turnarounds. There are 43 examples on the CD, covering the good ol' blues up into more rock blues. There is a great version of "Stormy Monday" on this that I just play the heck out of! This is certainly a HIGHSIERRABASSPLAYER must buy! Thanks Ed!

Ed Friedland might not be the most famous bass player around but he is in my book the best bass education book writer. Blues Bass takes you step by step from simple blues lines to more complex songs. The tab is very helpful for somebody who has a hard time to read music and the play along CD really helps. As an adult in my mid 40's struggling to learn bass the help he conveys through is book has been invaluable. Yes I do have a bass teacher but working on his Ed Friedland's material with my teacher is really terrific. I have also used his "Bass Grooves" book and Blues Method 1, 2 and 3 books. All of them take you very progressively from simple things to more complex one. Many books push too many things at the same time at their audience. This author has a real talent for breaking things down into bites that are manageable. The song selection of Blues Bass is also fantastic and allows the student to learn songs that are fun to play. I should also say that it is quite extensive and it covers pretty much all the standards. This book should be part of any bass library, it's a great book for learning and it's a great reference book, who knows "Born under a bad sign" or "Stormy Monday" might be on your next play list!
Thank you Mr. Friedland for a fantastic book, you have really helped me learn the blues.

This book is a great introduction to Blues Bass, with both Bass clef and tab. The CD has the bass on the left track only, so when you want to "join in" you can cut the bass. The songs used represent a good cross-section of Blues, including Chicago, Texas and New Orleans styles.

This book is NOT an introduction to Electric Bass, and it is NOT a complete education in Blues Bass. It is what it says it is: "A Guide to the Essential Styles & Techniques" of Blues Bass.

My first bass was a modified Kay acoustic guitar with salvaged flat-wounds from a friend's Fender Bass. It was horrible, but a real bass guitar and amp cost $500 in 1962 (about $4000 in today's dollars). After 2 months and 4 lessons, I bought a used '51 Precision bass (built in '55) and joined a rock band. In '65 I put my music career on hold, got a day job and became respectable (wife, kids, dog, job).

A year ago, the Blues bug bit me, and I got a bass and amp. If you get bit by this bug, and you want to play Blues, put on a set of flat-wounds, rip that tweeter out of your speaker cabinet, and buy this book! You'll be well on your way!

Every book by Ed Friedland is great value for money. This one is no exception to the rule. Get this book if you want to play blues bass. I would recommend it for beginners.

This is an excellent bass book, a great study of the blues and how the bass functions within the genre. The author breaks the genre down clearly and provides exercises that have real world examples. It's great that he describes the example and points to a song that exemplifies the technique used. (I put together a nice blues playlist using the examples in this book.) The author moves us gradually through levels of complexity and finishes the lesson off nicely by providing a section of several blues standards that are most likely to be called out at a gig. The examples are provided on the CD and are great little jams in themselves, very entertaining. The bass track on the CD is provided on one side. Tabbed notation is included, which speeds things up for those of us with limited time reading music. To get a grip on blues bass, get this book.

I have been playing guitar and bass for around three years now. A couple of years ago, I bought a different instructional Blues bass book/ CD and found it to be uninspiring. The songs were kind of dry, and although there was good information, it seemed to be more aimed at educating a complete beginner, with a little more emphasis on theory.

Hal Leonards' Blues Bass leans more towards teaching you to perform, without a whole lot of theory. There are several full length Blues songs, such as Stevie Ray Vaughn's "Pride and Joy." But what I really loved was the many, many examples of different turnarounds, intros, endings, and bass patterns for you to creatively use. There are also examples of "stops", "kicks", and chromatic moves to use when transitioning from one key pattern to the next. This really enables you to tastefully change things up in a song so it won't get boring or monotonous, without overdoing it.

Playing the CD made me feel as though I was outside some juke joint that had a swinging Blues band inside, getting down! I have learned a few of the patterns and I am confident that when I am through with this book, I will at least be able to give an entertaining, basic Blues Bass performance. The author, Ed Friedland did an excellent job with this one, and even did a good job on the guitar parts, which he played himself. I knew he was a great bass player, but I did not know he was a trained Blues guitar player, too. Well, it showed, and was on great display.

If you want to learn the foundations of rock, pop, blues and jazz, you gotta learn blues bass. This instruction book is excellent in getting you started. I'm only half way through it and I'm having a blast. For the price, it's a steal of a deal. Keep thumpin'.

It took me 3 years, but because this book is so good I kept comming back!
Glad to stand up for Ed and say to you, BUY THIS BOOK! A near beginner can start here too. I'll keep using the grooves he taught me because they're some of my favorite Blues classics. I play the riffs from "Messin With the Kid" just about every day.
Thanks a bunch ED!

All I can say is that if you are getting started, et this book. Remembering that the Blues are the basis for many other styles I would almost say this book is Essential for your library.

Ed Friedland is a great teacher. I have several print books that he wrote. They came with CDs of the audio tracks referenced in the book. These tracks are a very important part of the book.

I was very disappointed to find that the CD tracks were not a part of the Kindle version. To buy this book like this is like buying a NYT-top selling hardback and discovering that you were given the abridged version as you walked out of the store. i have looked around the Kindle site and have not found any link to download this integral part of the book.

I also bought "R&B Bass Masters", and it is the same--no audio tracks, and these tracks are clearly referenced in both Kindle books with numbered CD icons. If these books were complete, I would probably give them 5 stars, but I feel that without these tracks, they maybe are not even worth the 3 stars that I gave.