Customer Reviews

Reggae Bass (Bass Builders)

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If you are just getting into Jamaican music or know somebody who is you have to purchase this book. It will teach you how to play ska, rocksteady, dub and reggae. It's great for either novices or experts. I wish I had this way back when I first started playing The Police. It comes with a CD and you can jam along or create your own bass lines after you have learned the basic idea. Seeing both the notation and the tab written out helps in learning how these bass lines are born and how they work with each style.

This book has been useful, the examples are tight little songs with well written bass parts. I am enjoying it alot.
Well-done!

This is an excellent primer for bassists wanting to learn about the various types of reggae, ska, dancehall music, etc. Ed Friedland lays it out very clearly with standard notation and tablature. Whether beginner, intermediate, or advanced player, all bassists can learn something from this great package which comes with a 47 track CD.

It gives good treatment to the whole evolution from early ska to Dub and Dancehall. Many of the important riddims are covered, though more full-song play-alongs on the CD would have been nice.

This book is just a lot of fun. The music on the accompanying CD is great to jam along with. The book is hours of happiness for just a few bucks. Anything by Ed Friedland is pure gold.

I like the history and variety of styles that this book shows. I am working on creating a bass line for a reggae song that our band wrote and this has helped me tremendously.

This piece is quite awesome, it has good back story about the Jamaican history of music and it got a CD with 30+ songs you can play to. I wish they were a little bit longer but I guess it would make it 2 or 3 CD's for each book. The recordings are very good and accurate to the originals too.
The notes and tablature are easy to understand for a beginner and the level of difficulty are different to very easy to hard to learn which is good if you want to go further in your development to play bass.

I just started going through this book an hour ago and guess what? I'm done! It's a really concise and focused introduction to reggae music and reggae bass lines. There's no fluff, just the goods. It gives a little background and history, then presents examples of bass styles for you to play along with. The bass is isolated to the left channel which you can turn down to make up your own bass lines. This also lets you hear how the other instruments are arranged. It's short and sweet, and priced accordingly.

With this book Ed Friedland covers the basics and origins of the reggae tunes and sound.
It is fun to do the exercises according ones ability and you get a good taste of the music. Some fingerings are quite hard and practise is required. The rythms can also be challenging but this leads to more in depth understanding of the material in the book. All in all I'm happy and satisfied buying the book.

I've been playing songs from this book most days all month and i'm real happy to know them. my only complaint is that with cheap headphones the bass notes can be hard to hear. i think it might be better if only bass was recorded on one ear but the rhythm track is there as well and the bass drum competes some etc. but i got the book as a way to ease into learning bass clef. and to get some danceable finger exercises. and there are plenty of songs- 47. i like over 10 so you know for the price that's easily worth it as thats a lot more dancing in my practice and after a month the notes are sinking in. few enough notes are used that you can suffer a few seconds with the tab and memorize it and not mess with notation too. anyway as a tool for me- a beginning bass player with lots of musical skill in the other clef- this has been a fun book set. and given me stuff to do for over a month. and modelled some concepts i will probably use for years.