Hal Leonard Bass Method - Complete Edition: Books 1, 2 And 3 Bound Together In One Easy-To-Use Volume! Bk/Online Audio

I would say that this is the BEST book and version of the books that you can get for learning bass clef. Ed F is an excellent teacher, writer and bassist. Look him up online. I cannot be 100% sure that he actually wrote every exercise here but they seem to have his style and focus on useful techniques. This book is meant to be used with a teacher if possible especially if you are a beginner (of any age). But if you are an experienced player that is looking to learn to read music as an independent study this book will be perfect. The fact that all 3 volumes of this method are in one book is really a great value. This can and should be used with other books that concentrate on other aspects of musicianship and Western music theory if you want to advance further, but you will need these basics. If used properly and regularly (with a teacher or without) you can learn to effectively read the bass clef and improve your reading and sight reading. What I find especially good about this book is that there is a focus on the structure of written rhythm. Electric bass playing is so tied in with rhythm that it is important to begin learning it well and challenging oneself from the beginning. Because of the repitition and challenges within the book you will be able to break the music measure up visually and 'see' the rhythm before you play it. This alone will raise the level of your sight reading ability to very high level. It is well worth the time to learn, study, and practice from this book. As an example, if you want to play "walking bass", after a relatively short time and some instruction about sharps/flats in the music key, you will be able to read most 4/4 walking bass lines from sheet music. That may be within 2 months with diligent practice and some guidance. This book is a "must have"!

Before I purchased this "collected volume," I was worried that I'd be getting the first edition. Surely, it couldn't POSSIBLY be the 2nd edition books + the CDs for that superb price! After all, if you buy them separately, the cost is nearly triple what this collected volume costs. Well, I am pleasantly surprised and happy to admit I was wrong! These ARE the new 2nd edition books in this collected volume, AND all 3 CDs are included. This is an astounding price point for such quality material. I took lessons years ago when I was in high school and every kid wanted to start a rock band (yay for the 80s?) Cue the rest of my life taking some twists and turns, moving across country with no room in the truck to take my bass... hopefully you can see where I'm going with this. After years of being away, I decided to get back into my bass playing, encouraged by fellow musicians I met at my day job. I knew I'd be out of practice and would need to get back up to where I used to be, so I decided to get a good method book to give myself a solid new foundation upon which to flourish (I also got myself a new bass, but that's a review for another time). This book is top notch, and a lot of the fundamentals in here I remember my music teacher telling me during my weekly private lessons at the local mom and pop music shop. Additionally, the sheet music examples include both the traditional inscription as well as tablature, which helps when trying to learn to read music. If you are a rank beginner, this book is right up your alley. You can start from square one, and by the time you're done, you'll have a good foundation upon which to build. If you're not exactly brand new to the instrument, the books are still helpful as they get more intricate and advanced as the volume numbers increase. At the very least, there's good reference material in here and for the price, you just can't beat it. I decided to start from the beginning even though I'd consider myself intermediate. After so long away, I wanted to break it down to bare basics and make sure I was disciplined enough to know the material in my sleep... something I wasn't exactly all that keen on as a teenager. ;) So far, I'm having a blast... I'd almost forgotten what joy I get from playing. I cannot recommend this book enough!

Without a doubt the best place to start for a beginner. As a kid I was classically trained on the trumpet, so I have a clear idea of how to learn an instrument, and what I want to learn. However, 25 years after putting down my trumpet I was surprised to realize I had forgotten nearly everything about musical theory. Aside from being new to the bass and string instruments in general, I also needed to relearn how to read sheet music, and how to play the music on a bass guitar. I browsed a few 'how-to' books, but had trouble finding one which truly started from the beginning. 'Hal Leonard Bass Method' starts by showing you how to hold the instrument, tune the bass, describes the basics of reading sheet music, how to place your left and right hands and fingers, then moves to very basic playing exercises which stress the fundamentals of understanding notes and timing. The information is clearly laid out, and moves with a logical progression so you are always building on what you learned. It is also comprehensive enough that once the basics are mastered, there will be plenty of more advanced instruction to keep you busy for years. I have a friend who insisted that I could just pick up the bass and play along to my favorite songs, that too much classical training can stymie a more natural feel for playing fun music. Well, I have yet to decide just where I will take my bass playing, but I know that I want to understand the mechanics of my instrument rather than just make cool sounds on it. Ripping scales may never happen, but if someone hands me some sheet music I want to be able to know what to do with it. If you have similar aspirations, this book is a great place to start.

This method does a good job of taking you through a complete range of bass playing skills, with a strong focus on notation reading. It progresses logically in open/first position, then does a nice job of transitioning to other neck positions. One thing to be aware of is that this book doesn't start out with one-finger-per-fret (OFPF) type fingering, but does introduce it about half-way through the book. So if you are teaching/learning with that system, you will have to either ignore the suggested fingerings or write over them. One little oddity is that at first it shows neck graphs as 4 line x 4 line blocks that are oriented vertically, then at some point it starts showing them horizontally, but it is easy for a beginner to misinterpret the 4 fret lines as 4 strings. Otherwise, the graphic content is good. The notation is excellent. Recently, I started using the play-along tracks with students and have been very impressed. Some tracks have a slower pass then a 2nd pass at tempo. The sound is really good. Full band plus bass is in the R channel, and Full band minus bass is in the L channel. I think this is a great option for a young bass student who either already reads, or needs strong reading skills for a high school band, and/or to prepare for college.

I started playing bass two months ago and I had already used their Guitar Method, so I decided to try this book. The book is very confortable to use, thanks to how it is bound (with rings), so that you don't need to force it so that it stays open at a certain page. Also, it starts slowly but quickly gains in momentum, teaching the newbie many things that will be useful for other instruments (such as note duration, different beat times and music notation). It also comes with many great examples, some in the accompanying CD, so that you can practice and have fun. I also have bought the books "Easy Pop Bass Lines" and they are also invaluable, as they present you with songs adapted to different levels, so that you can start playing some famous songs with the bass almost from the very beginning. At the moment, I am finishing Book 1 (the method has 3 books) so I don't know how far the method goes, but if the Guitar Method is an example, then it sure will be also very interesting for intermediate players. (and now in Spanish, my native tongue) Este libro es muy bueno para el principiante, ya que te lleva, de manera ordenada, desde los principios básicos de la música y del bajo hasta un nivel intermedio y te hace el aprendizaje divertido desde el principio. Aconsejo también comprar la serie de libros "Easy Pop Bass Lines" para completar el método. La encuadernación de este libro, con anillas, te permite también usarlo y tenerlo abierto sin necesidad de dañarlo... Una gran compra para el principiante, e incluso diría para el que ya sabe tocar algo de bajo.

Glad I found this book. At first glance it looks like it's a simple book to go through but if you are seriously studying the bass or any other instruments in their series line of books you'll find it pretty much covers it all but you as I have found have to pay attention to what all they are saying in each lesson and apply one lesson to the next. Make sure that you go over the fine print or you'll miss something that they are trying to get across. You only get out of it what you put into it. I can see why some of the other reviews say it's used as a text. It teaches music theory as well as the instrument. It does such a good job that I found a couple of mistakes and not sure if it was on purpose or not. It is well worth your time. It starts notes on the E string and not the G which for some reason makes complete sense. Another thing that I find useful is if you want to expand on a particular topic lesson for the most part they have other books to help you expand or at least know enough to research it on the internet. One thing I suggest is you get a metronome, it will make playing and CD's that are provided closer in sound with one another quicker and less painful.

After playing the flute in elementary, junior, and high school and then for a year in college, and then not coming back to playing music at all for 25 years, I started taking bass lessons about 3 years ago. The first 8 months or so were on the electric bass and then another ~6 months were on upright. At that point, between having the fundamentals down, having a fairly solid footing in music theory, and a budget squeeze, I elected to set out on my own. That was not quite 2 years ago. I ordered this book last week to help fill gaps, and after looking through it, it's exactly what I needed. I would point out 2 things, however: * At least early on in in the book, the pictures of fingers on the fret don't correctly show the leading fingers pressing down in conjunction with the fret finger. E.g., if you're playing an F on 3rd fret, your index and middle fingers should be down on the string as well as your ring and/or pinky finger (depending on whether you're using classic upright fingering). * And that first point leads to my second "warning", which regards fingering technique. Classic upright fingering calls for 4 fingers down across 3 frets, relegating the ring finger to the role of backup muscle. Modern electric bass fingering calls for one finger per fret, covering those same three frets with the index, middle, and ring fingers. This book is written using classic fingering, which is great because the skills transfer directly to the upright - but no mention of this is made anywhere that I've found (yet). That said, this seems to be a solid learning tool.

I bought this book because Mel Bay's Deluxe Jazz & Rock Bass Method was such a turn off for me. Mel Bay's exercises were intentionally not melodic, and the technique Mel Bay recommends (One Fret Per Finger) is painful for my hands -- I had to pivot in order to do it at all, and Mel Bay told me not to do that! This Hal Leonard book is miles better -- each of the exercises is fun! And in every way their technique suggestions directly address the problems I actually had. And I'm glad I got the 3-volume set...the first volume, I more or less got down in about a month (I have a lot of experience with non-guitar instruments), but the second volume is still giving me loads of challenge. I can tell it will be months before I am ready to even look at the third volume, and even after I've "mastered" (hah, right) all of the material, the exercises will be fun for a lifetime. And one other thing I loved is how easy it was to download all of the exercises as one big .ZIP file from the website. For me, I could use the MP3 players I already know and love, and that is a big deal to me. I was worried there would be some sort of DRM nightmare, and it was the exact opposite.