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    The Bass Guitarist's Guide to Reading Music - Beginner Level
    The Bass Guitarist's Guide to Reading Music - Beginner Level
    The Bass Guitarist's Guide to Reading Music - Beginner Level
    Ebook124 pages1 hour

    The Bass Guitarist's Guide to Reading Music - Beginner Level

    By Stuart Clayton

    4.5/5

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    About this ebook

    This book is the first in a series of three that will teach you everything you need to know in order to be able to successfully read music on the bass guitar. Starting with the absolute basics, this book introduces all of the fundamental elements of music notation one at a time, reinforcing all concepts with written and audio examples. Rhythms and pitches are introduced gradually, with all chapters containing ten exercises focusing on each new element. More complex aspects of notation such as time signatures, key signatures and navigation are also introduced to a basic level. The final part of the book contains ten 'real world' play-along tracks recorded with a full band. Audio files for all of the exercises are available to download from the FREE Stuff! section of the publisher's website.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherStuart Clayton
    Release dateJul 8, 2013
    ISBN9780957485990
    The Bass Guitarist's Guide to Reading Music - Beginner Level
    Author

    Stuart Clayton

    Stuart Clayton has been a professional musician and writer for over ten years. He has worked as a staff writer for Bass Guitar Magazine since its first issue, written seven bass instruction books for Sanctuary Publishing, including 100 Tips For Bass Guitar You Should Have Been Told, Crash Course: Bass, Bass Xtreme, Basic Bass Workout and Giants Of Bass and toured the world with Carl Palmer. He now runs his own company, Bassline Publishing, which publishes transcription books for legendary bassists such as Mark King, Stuart Hamm, Bernard Edwards and John Entwistle, as well as an acclaimed range of tuition books such as Ultimate Slap Bass and Solo Arrangements for Electric Bass. He is also Head of Bass at the British Institute of Modern Music (Bristol) and is an artist endorsee for Zon basses and Aguilar amplification.

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    4.5/5

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    • 5/5
      Its the perfect tool to learn how to sight read in a structural context. A lot of other books or material focus on rhythm or notes but this book actually breaks down how to sight read song structures and how to approach it from an arrangement point of view.

    Book preview

    The Bass Guitarist's Guide to Reading Music - Beginner Level - Stuart Clayton

    The Bass Guitarist’s Guide

    to Reading Music

    Beginner Level

    By Stuart Clayton

    Published by Bassline Publishing at Smashwords

    Copyright 2013 Stuart Clayton

    Smashwords Edition, License Notes

    This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

    Table of Contents

    Introduction

    Chapter 1 – The Basics

    Chapter 2 – Rhythm

    Chapter 3 – More Pitches

    Chapter 4 – More Rhythms

    Chapter 5 – Octaves

    Chapter 6 – Ties and Dotted Rhythms

    Chapter 7 – Navigation

    Chapter 8 – Time Signatures

    Chapter 9 – Thirds

    Chapter 10 – Accidentals

    Chapter 11 – Key Signatures

    Beginner Level Exercise Area

    About the Author

    Introduction

    Welcome to The Bass Guitarist’s Guide to Reading Music: Beginner Level, the first of three books that will teach you to read music on the bass guitar. Whether you are a newcomer to reading, or if you already have a little experience, you should find that this book is an invaluable resource for developing your reading skills.

    The ability to read music is one of the most important skills to master for an aspiring professional musician. Learning to read fluently will open up many areas of employment that would previously have been unavailable to you - session work, theatre shows, touring and function band work are all examples of paid, professional engagements which require reading musicians. Being able to read also means that you will be able to fill in for other bass players on short notice, as well as write and arrange parts for your own bands - both invaluable skills. Music is a highly competitive industry and in order to succeed in it you should look to find every advantage that you can over your competition. Being the best reader that you can be is an excellent way to do this!

    I have written this series of books because after teaching both privately and in music schools for several years I have noticed that there is a serious lack of material available for bass guitarists who want to learn to read. Many of the books that are available contain predominantly dull, scale-based exercises, with almost no explanation as to how you should go about learning to read them. Similarly, very few contain explanations of musical features such as navigation, key signatures, time signatures or dynamics. In this book you’ll find that all of these things are covered in detail and are supported by an extensive selection of exercises which will allow you to work on them in a musical way.

    Audio Files

    This book is also unique in that it includes audio files for all of the exercises, which are available to download free of charge from the Bassline Publishing website. Whilst I believe that it is important to work on sight reading exercises predominantly with just a metronome, many of my students have raised the valid point: ‘how do I know if I’m playing it right?!’ The audio files therefore exist as a valuable reference point for you to use to check the accuracy of what you are playing when studying without a teacher present.

    To download the audio files, go to www.basslinepublishing.com and log in - if you don’t have an account, you’ll need to create one. Once logged in, click on FREE Stuff on the main menu. You’ll find the audio in a zip file listed under the bonus content for this book.

    The majority of the audio consists of bass guitar recorded with only a metronome rather than a full backing track. This has been done to encourage you to learn to keep your place within the score without the safety net of an obvious drum pattern to help you. However, the ten ‘real world’ exercises at the end of the book are recorded with a full band backing track so that you can put what you have learnt to the test in a

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