Customer Reviews

Mel Bay Famous Blues Bass Lines (QwikGuide)

5 star:		(1)
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3 star:		(1)
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When I get a bass student who wants to move to blues, and is tired of playing the root and the fifth, this little book is where we start. It's cheap, has a good cd with it, and the riffs are first classs. I believe that you could go to work with just what's in this book. Oh yeah, did I mention it doesn't cost much? If the student doesn't get it, he's not out much. Having said that, everyone so far has gotten it. (More than 20 students) I love these little books. It doesn't hurt that the author, Larry Mccabe, is one whose books I use all the time.

Like all learning materials for music, it will be as good as the effort you (or I) put into it.
I only recently received this book and CD, so have not spent much time with it yet. Here are my impressions of the "logisitics" that often either enhance or destroy the usability of educational materials.

Positives:
1) The font/notation size is large enough to be readable. It is larger for instance, than the font in most music books. I like that because it makes it easier to read, and because it leaves room for hand written notes. Nothing is worse when trying to learn a new part than trying to see the page and struggling! Thanks for making it larger.

2) It has 50 exercises/tracks. They are all 4 bars long, and they are all in the same key C and to be played over C7 chord. Some can also be played over a Cm. They can be transposed to any other key(and should be in practice sessions in order to be ready to play in any key).

3) The quality of the backing tracks is acceptable.
4) It does lay flat on a music stand.
5) The recorded tempo is fairly slow...that's good for learning. And, I suspect most players have a speed trainer they import these into to vary the tempo. I know I do.

Negatives:
1) The form factor of the book (i.e. the size and shape) is abnormal. It is small, at 5.5" wide x 8" high. (It's basically 8x11 pages turned to landscape orientation). That means it doesn't "fit" conveniently with all my other music books on a shelf, it will get lost between real books. However, it also means I can pull the staples, scan it, rotate it and reprint the exercises on normal size paper, and possibly have it spiral bound. We'll see about that. Still, should I have to?

2) The numbering of the tracks on the CD doesn't correspond to the numbering of exercises in the book, because track 1 is a tuning track. If you import the CD into iTunes or some other program, the exercise 1 comes in as track 2, exercise 2 comes in as track 3, etc. Annoying but livable.

3) It seems more like a pamphlet than a book. It is literally 8 sheets of normal size paper and a thin cardboard cover with 3 staples holding it all together. For $10 its "cheap" until you look at what you get from Hal Leonard for $15. Overall, its a little too cost reduced for my tastes. I'll keep it and use it but I think I will rapidly prefer Hal Leonard's Blues Bass book by Ed Friedland as it uses real blues songs for the exercises and to demonstrate the concepts.

4) There is no context to go with the 50 lines. Its just...50 lines. I guess if I want to learn 50 lines and just see if I ever can use them anywhere, its ok, but I'd rather learn songs and have the concepts illustrated within those songs. See #3 above.

Overall, I don't hate it, but I'm not sure it's value is going to be that great. I'd recommend Friedland's book instead for $5 more. If I find this pamphlet dramatically enhances my ability to play blues bass, I'll update my rating and review accordingly. Also when I consider the cost, I try to think of the value of my time because frankly, the difference between a $10 book and a $20 book is insignificant and irrelevant by comparison to the value of the time that will be spent interacting with the materials. So the instructional design of the product is very very important for music learning materials, in my opinion.