Customer Reviews

Classic Funk and R&B Grooves for Bass

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

 

 

There's a lot to be improved with this release. This collection of grooves seems to have been thrown together in a hurry because they all sound very similar and some share identical passages. The examples are very easy to play and they don't progress in difficulty.
My biggest concern is the fact that the CD only contains demos of each loop and no play along feature. It is important for funk licks to be practiced with drums. It would have been trivial to pan (L/R) the bass from the drums in the stereo mix!
There are also many print errors, I would say that approx. 3 out of 10 grooves have conflicting tab and bass clef notation. (what's actually played on the CD is another story......)

There are likely to be better funk books out there........

This book has helped me in knowing how to play funk, there are great bass lines in style of players like Alphonso Johnson, Paul Jackson, Jaco Pastorius, James Jamerson and more. You just need a drum machine and you'll have a lot of fun!!

I have owned this book for several years and I still after all the different music I play find myself going back to this book for ideas.
This book is a good resourse for playing grooves and even learning the bass lines to some classic funk tunes just listen to what you are playing. The music written out for you is limitless dont restrict yourself to whats written do different things with it make the your playing fun and funky.

The first problem I had playing on the CD is that the tracks start with no advice (unlike most other bass methods, where every track is starting with the usual 4 drumstick strokes, giving also a hint about the timing of the track),leaving you no time once you press the "play" button on the cd player to grab the bass and start playing.
Audio quality is good and the notation flawless.
However, there's no suggestion about the HOW those bass lines were built (i.e. this player usually plays a fifth then a third on a mysolidian scale...) so you need to practice and learn the tricks by sheer repetition.
So I didn't find it too helpful to actually LEARN the Funk lines.
I also expected the lines to BELONG to REAL SONGS played by the performers, while they are simply written as "in the style of...".
Can't really say I didn't like to play those lines but I expected more.
So my review will be "just average". Be sure to know what you're looking for before buying it.