Product Description

The English bassist Paul Westwood is one of the most in demand bass players of our time. His Bass Bible is the ultimate method book for every bass player. It contains a fascinating journey through the world of techniques, styles, grooves, and their evolution, using more than 1000 musical examples in all! This book is designed like a dictionary of musical phrases, which can be opened at the point that interests you. Learning a whole series of musical phrases, riffs, rhythms and patterns provides the basic language for performing within a group. Each section of the book captures the essence of a particular style, providing a springboard from which to start improvising. In notation and tablature for 4-string bass.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #120588 in Books
• Published on: 2000-12-20
• Released on: 2000-12-20
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

About the Author
Paul Westwood was born in 1953 and is one of the world's most famous bass players as well as being one of London's elite session musicians. His album credits include such artists as Elton John, Vangelis, John Miles, Stephen Bishop, Andy Williams, José Carreras, Hot Chocolate, Madonna, Jennifer Rush and The Royal Philharmonic and London Symphony Orchestras. He has toured with Charles Aznavour, John Dankenworth and Cleo Laine, and Cliff Richard and has worked with many jazz musicians including Steve Gadd, Wayne Shorter, Joe Beck and Jon Hiseman. Paul teaches at the Royal Academy of Music, London; King's College, London; and others.

Customer Reviews

If you could only have one bass book....
..This is the one to have. I have improved as a bassist more from this book than all my other bass books combined! The Bass Bible is a combined volume of Books One through Five, with two CD's included. Book One covers technique, theory, walking bass lines, scales and arpeggios, chord sequences, and improvisation. Book Two is where the fun really begins. Each musical style has its own section, e.g. blues, pop, soul, latin, boogie; about 30 styles in all, including sections on Jaco, Jamerson, Chuck Rainey, James Brown, Stanley Clarke, and Larry Graham. Westwood begins with a discussion of each style's history and characteristics. He then presents several riffs for you to learn which are typical of the particular style. They are written in both musical notation and tab, and are usually two to four measures long. For example, the Soul section has 28 different soul grooves to learn. Many of the riffs are presented on the CD's, so you can hear exactly how they should sound. Books Two through Five contain a total of 929 musical passages, some only riffs of a few measures length, and some taking a full page.
My method is to pick an interesting riff and pick out the notes. If I can't quite get the feel, I listen to the CD. I then start at a slow metronome setting. Once I have the hang of it, I play the riff over and over, or go through a 12-bar chord progression, e.g. G-C-D, as the book suggests. When I can play it with precision, I step up the metronome tempo and do it again, working toward a smooth, relaxed groove at a decent tempo. Eventually, I'm amazed that I'm playing something that ten minutes before I didn't think was possible.
The idea is that you learn these grooves like phrases of speech, which can serve as a foundation for you to construct the musical sentences and paragraphs that your bass playing requires for the style of music you play. At the same time, your technique and precision improve, and eventually your listeners will hear and appreciate the difference!
Yes this book is a little more expensive than some of the others, but for what you get, it is a good deal. Thank you Paul Westwood, and bring on Bass Bible Volume 2!!

An enyclopedia of styles
Westwood's book is really quite the handy resource to have. If you have a question as to a musical style and how to play it on the bass, this is what to use. Having the standard notation, tabs, and audio to learn from will be helpful for beginners through more advanced players.

One caveat I would bring to the potential buyer is that this is by no means a book on theory, it is a huge collection of examples. There is a small introduction describing techniques at the beginning of the book as well as a paragraph to a page or so introducing each various style, but even that is in more of a historical context. At the point that i bought this book, I really just wanted to find really cool stuff to play and I couldn't have cared less for any theory, and that indeed I received. Even after 4 years of having this book, I still find the riffs at the end of this book (progressive jazz) to be some of the most challenging and fun to play.

In conclusion, this is a fine reference to have as it attempts to cover the myriad of styles out there...and it does a decent job.

An excellent resource
A very useful book for the beginning to intermediate bass player. Covers a wide range of musical styles, material is presented in a thorough and logical fashion. Includes introduction to standard notation (some axample only in standard notation most are also in tab.)