Next Level Bassist Teaching and Inspiration

During a period in my life where I was writing a lot of band arrangements,
I would find myself inspired and writing late into the night. It
seemed like the time for me to tackle these bass duets I had always felt
the need for. These 8 duets were composed over the course of a year.
Originally, I envisioned them as student/teacher duets because I really
enjoy playing with my students. The top parts of these pieces are very
challenging and soloistic. The bottom parts are primarily functional,
and they’re designed to teach you how to construct bass lines. All of
the music is written for the bass, so they’re fundamentally playable.
Some of the tunes are arrangements of standards, some tackle a
certain idea (like playing in 13/4 and 11/4 time), and common forms
like a 16 bar blues. The educational value of these duets is limitless!
Packaged with each of them is a series of recordings, including the
individual parts and the whole score at various tempi for practicing.
The recordings are generated digitally so you can strive for perfect
timing and intonation. There are also parts in Bb and Eb for
collaborating with other non-bassists.
By practicing with the other part, you develop your listening skills as
a musician. By playing the top part, you can also learn which elements
of the bass line are important to have under a soloist. You can then
construct bass lines using those elements, knowing you’re doing your
part to back up the solo. Practicing the bottom part is actually the
harder part - you need to play in tune with perfect time to support
the duet, and in each tune you’ll find playing in thirds and other
harmonies, as well as some great rhythmic challenges. Playing in
unison is another tool that can expose weaknesses in intonation.
Playing with instruments other than bass will often reveal adjustments
you need to make, for instance, playing in tune with a saxophone
or a piano.
A friend of mine came by recently, and we spent two hours working
on the duet “Bluzin F” and we were having the time of our lives! The
idea is to really learn the duets and then improvise over them too.
The chord symbols are there to give you another degree of freedom.
There’s a lot of “learning by doing” involved here, and the different
settings for the melody show different approaches to putting a bass
line under a tune. I strongly suggest any bass player should look into
these pieces.
The difficulty level of the top parts is such that you need to work
at them. I don’t think jazz players should have to rely on classical
repertoire like the Koussevitzky concerto to advance their playing. The
beauty of having jazz duets is that you can play them as they’re written,
you can improvise over them, you can change them without feeling
guilty or like you’re copping out. They’re available to be used as a tool,
and to generate ideas. Have fun with them and get what you can out
of them, because that’s what they’re about! I’m setting the bar to see if
you can jump over. ■
To check out this and other duets, click here.
8 SPRING 2014 NEXT LEVEL BASSIST