Customer Reviews

Mel Bay Walking Jazz Lines for Bass

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

There are a number of good method books for the jazz bassist these days- I must own at least a dozen! But Hungerford's book is one of the best. Unlike some authors, Hungerford doesn't start you off playing root-root-root or root-fifth-root-fifth. He assumes you want to learn to play real bass lines, and that's exactly what he gives you. From the beginning he has the reader building lines with roots, 3rds, 5th, 6ths and 7ths; from there, he moves quickly into I-IVs, rhythm changes and II-V-Is in various keys. There's also an accompanying CD to provide rhythmic and harmonic accomaniment to the excercises.

The second half of the book takes the reader through a number of standard tunes, some with bass lines written out and some provided for the reader to write their own lines using the guidelines given. There's a lot of information packed into less than 100 pages here, and a diligent player will find all they need for a solid progam of jazz education.

I'm learning bass, focusing on walking jazz lines and I'm finding this book very helpful. The book assumes some basic skills and a little basic theory. Hungerford's approach is mechanical (in a good sense) rather than theoretical. It illustrates how walking lines are built. The principles are easy to grasp. There are lots of examples and room to experiment.

Best of all, the book includes the cord changes as well as a transcribed bass line for 20 recognized jazz standards (good ones too). On the CD, the bass is in one channel the other instruments in the other, so you can follow the examples or tune out the bass and play along. Hungerford indulges in some pretty nice fretwork that shows how much fun good walking lines can be. He also shows you how he does it.

After some months of practice with this book I've edited my comments. I've used and/or seen many other books on this subject and the approach used Walking Jazz Lines for Bass is sound. The author is clear enough that this book should not be your only source of learing and playing this music. Using this book alone would be far too narrow. There are other good books and practice CDs. Get some of them. But this one is simple, clear and easy. it will get you off to a very good start. (and the transcriptions fo those standards are great).

I've bought more than my share of bass books, and most of them don't even
begin to give you the kind of "knowledge" that comes with this volume.

Hungerford sets up his book in amanner that takes you thru "patterns" of
major and minor scales, progressing from simple 1-3-5-3 chords to chords +
scales + accidental notes.

But it gets even better, as he "gives" you the standard walking patterns
that cover the usual ii-V-I progression. And he does this with notes (sorry
kids, TAB is worthless if you want to be a serious player) and
notated finger positions below the staff. Thus, instead of being simply
give a note progression, you can "get it" with the most useful fingering
and shifts as well.

It would be beneficial if you had a teacher when working thru this book,
but you could so it on your own if you understand minimal music theory.

This is really a first rate book if you want to learn to play jazz bass!

Let me qualify this by saying I am not a bass player, nor do I aspire to be. I do however have a need to record credible basslines for my guitar soloing. In that regard, this book fits like a glove. There is no unnecessary theory or confusing sidetracks to the goal of playing credible jazz basslines. The book is easy to read,(spiral bound so it opens completely), with large notes. Each jazz standard offers a different lesson which is an ingeniously effective device. This book would have gotten 5 stars from me if it weren't for the small number of typos I found. Most of these are obvious,(page 23, 1st note under a B flat major 7th chord is obviously not going to be a B natural) but perhaps I'm being too hard on the book. It's been said that any fool can make a complex subject complex but it takes a genious to make the complex simple. This is probably the only book on bass guitar I will ever need for my purposes and so I thank you Jay for that !

Very well organized for someone starting with rudimentary knowledge of the bass as well as someone already with playing ability, to learn how to read bass lines from sheet music as well as making their own bass lines from a chord chart. The written words of the author also are very helpful in understanding the role of the bass player and how to work with other musicians.

I've been using Hungerford's book for nearly 6 years now and still reference it frequently. Quite frankly, the blank pages are not at all a waste of space. Jazz standards often do not write out bass lines; only the chord changes are given. Plus, Hungerford prepares the student so they can insert their own lines and put their interpretation into the piece. Walking lines do not necessarily stay the same and if you wrote it out on paper, it would. Hungerford ideally prepares the student to go out and read the changes over a pianist's shoulder. No matter what level of play, this book abets the bassist to no end.

I have recently come back to having bass as my main instrument after 5 years of performing as a singer/songwriter/guitarist. I used to be quite good in genres other than jazz, but really wanted to get to where I could do session work and start playing in a jazz setting.

I have spent a few hundred dollars on different bass books and play a-longs in the last 3 months, and while all of them are helpful in one way or another, this one is by far the best.

I already know some of the theory and can read music (more comfortable with treble clef), but this book can definitely take you from knowing nothing to playing as a pro. It is definitely more geared towards electric (fretted) players, but it can easily be transferred to upright (I can't imagine anyone not taking lessons for upright and having a teacher that could help "translate" the necessary ideas).

Here's some specifics:

1- The book does a really good job of giving you a little theory and then teaching you a new song so that you can apply it in context. You need both.

2- It is spiral bound. It totally escapes me why all music books are not this way. The pages won't stay open on most books without me having to use some clip or weight to hold them in place. I'd gladly pay a couple of bucks more for books that are spiral bound.

2- It gives the interval numbers for the bass lines as well as the notes being played, which enables you to play the parts even if you don't know how to read the music. For me learning to get comfortable with reading bass clef, this is awesome. I can play 1000% times better than I can read, so I just learn the parts from the intervals (which is really how all bass players think about what they are playing anyway) and then go back and practice reading what I am playing. This also makes all of the lines instantly transferable to any key.

3- There are numerous different bass lines given to be played over each chord and in different situations. There are enough to keep me busy learning different lines for quite a while, but the way the book is set up I can just learn one or two types for each situation and be able to play every song in the book. They also give you an idea of the thinking and "rules" behind them so that you can create your own. Each so also lists the page where you find the appropriate list of lines to play under each section.

4- There are 20 standards and 2 simple blues progressions in the book and they are ones that all of the jazz players I know recommended me learning. They are great for being able to sit in at jazz jams, but even more importantly they give you common frameworks and chord progressions that you find in many, if not all jazz tunes. There is also a bunch of different variations on the blues and the Rhythm Changes progression. There are no play a-longs for these, but you wind up with another 10 or so songs if you count these.

5- All of the tracks have stereo separation so you can eliminate the bass and play along with just drums and piano. You can also just listen and hear what your aiming for. The recordings are just bass, drums, and piano which makes it easier to learn your place in the rhythm section without filtering out the horn section, singer, ect. For copyright reasons there are no melody lines written, but the piano fills in enough of it to make it sound genuine.

6- There is also a certain amount of subconscious ear training that happens playing these lines and learning these specific songs that is useful in all kinds of music. I wish now that I had started my learning here when I first started playing. It has already made me a much better playing in other genres.

7- The book gives props to Roy Carter, who is one of my favorite bassists, by giving a transcription of what he actually plays. This made me think that the author at least had good taste, when I was looking through it.

8 - There is a list of other songs worth learning and a list of bassists to check out. I have listened to jazz on the radio for years, but aside form the biggest names (rarely the bassist), I really didn't know where to start when buying cds. I would also suggest Jamey Aebersold's free Big Red Jazz Book's list of quality recordings worth getting. So many old albums have great playing, but are horrible sounding. He does great play a-longs, but his materials are really more geared towards lead instrument thinking and I really think there is too big of a learning gap to try and imitate the bassists he has on his play a-longs.

My only complaint with this book is that there is not a chapter on the Cycle (circle of 5ths/4ths) and Chordal progressions (the Nashville Numbering System).

There are so many things that memorizing the Cycle is good for that I think it is simply indispensable. I think that it is much better to work on Chordal scales, ii-V-I progressions, ect. than to spend any significant amount of time on running up and down regular scales as the last part of this book recommends.

Otherwise I would give it 5 stars.

This book is really great! I have been playing bass for a few years and I am trying to learn walking bass lines on my own. This book is really helping a lot. It starts off by giving the basic patterns which will help you get started and improvising walking bass lines really fast. Highly recommended.

I've been trying to move into Jazz BeBop from a Rock and Blues background and have tried other books. This is the first book I've found comprehensive enough to answer all my questions and get me there. It has section for beginers and enough material at the end to work refining your skills for a couple of years. Best book out there for Walking Jazz Bass.

The cover depicts a bass guitar, page four shows a BG fingerboard, and there is the barest mention of a fretless upright bass in the introduction. However, I use this book with my fretless upright and it's great for that, too. I must have 15 or 20 bass methods from Simandl to 21st Century and six or eight other books dedicated to walking bass lines alone. But nothing turned the light on for me regarding walking bass lines like this book by Jay Hungerford. His book is truly outstanding because of the real jazz bass walking patterns he teaches you--and he teaches you to make your own in all keys--and to use them on the fly.

The teacher/reviewer who complained that Hungerford uses slashed measures where he wants us to supply our own bass lines, instead of leaving blank measures for us to write them in, misses the point. We're supposed to be supplying our own bass lines on the fly, after having worked to learn the patterns he supplies and making up some of our own. If you want to write out all of your bass lines for some reason, you can always use separate staff paper and make your own notebook. In fact, since Hungerford wants you to play each of his exercises using each of the many sample patterns he gives, there is no way you could write in each of the patterns even if he had left the measures blank--especially since he then wants you to transpose all of them into all 12 sounding keys, too. If you want to write all that down, you'll need a notebook much thicker than his book.

If you practice and learn these patterns the way Hungerford says to practice and learn them, you'll get a tremendous jump start on playing improvised walking jazz bass lines. Hungerford's approach is the most logically-presented, most understandable, and most productive method for learning walking bass that I've found.

Hungerford also gives you the standard-notation bass lines for--and a CD of full-length, play-along samples of--20 great jazz standards and classics that are "similar to" (read "just like"): "Take the A Train," "So What," "Autumn Leaves," "All Blues," "Some Day My Prince Will Come," "Just the Way You Look Tonight," "Night and Day," "All of Me," "Satin Doll," How High the Moon"/"Ornithology," "Out of Nowhere," "Days of Wine and Roses," "All the Things You Are," "Donna Lee"/"Back Home in Indiana," "There Will Never Be Another You," "What is This Thing Called Love," "Stella by Starlight," "A Night in Tunisia," "Cherokee," and "Giant Steps." On the CD, he plays a chorus with the walking bass lines he has written out for you, then he improvises a chorus and suggests that you transcribe it yourself for ear training. (He's thought of everything, it seems.) You can listen to him play his jazz bass lines, then use the balance (pan) control to pull his bass out entirely and play along with all of these tunes yourself with just the piano and drums.