Following the common practice in open source projects, here is a collection of awesome musicality tools, resources, videos and shiny things. There’s an unashamed emphasis on resources for bass.
Skills Development
- Improvise for Real possibly the best way to internalise harmony and more
- Luke from Become A Bassist clear bass lessons on YouTube
- Musical U excellent musicality learning resources. Pick your own course from many modules or follow courses like ‘The Musician’s Ear’, ‘Foundations of a Musical Mind’ and ‘The Circle of Fifths’. Instrument specific packs include bass by Steve Lawson. Reasonable price given the quantity and quality of modules.
- Play Bass – for Beginners & Improvers Stuart Claytons latest book
- studybass.com a website chock full of solid bass lessons, tools and more. Mostly free.
- Talking Bass with Mark J Smith great music lessons on youtube
- Trinity Rock and Pop Bass the performance based graded exam syllabus
Mind Games
- Mark Morley-Fletcher’s “Play In The Zone” course that helps you ‘Banish Anxiety and Play Music with Freedom and Joy’. Mark did a related video with Musical U.
- Making Improv a Game, with Jeffrey Agrell break free of mental constraints that stop you having fun with music. See the ‘Links and Resources’ section for more.
- The inner Game of Music by Barry Green the original book on the fight against elusive opponents such as nervousness, self-doubt and fear of failure.
- This is Your Brain on Music: Understanding a Human Obsession by Daniel Levitin an explanation of how humans experience music and our perennial love affair with it.
- The Practicing Mind by T M Sterner Developing Focus and Discipline in Your Life and Master Any Skill or Challenge by Learning to Love the Process
Relax, Watch and Listen
- Musicality Now podcast - full of interviews about musicality and more by the Musical U team. More recent episodes include video as well as audio.
People
- Rick Beato great breakdowns of classic songs and more.
- Steve Lawson - Solo Bass Steve Mr awesome himself, pushing the boundaries of bass playing and musical sustainability. Oh, and a really nice guy too. Do yourself a favour and subscribe to his bandcamp.
- Bill Vencil - Chords of Orion YouTube channel with loads of gorgeous ambient guitar and well explained musicality tips and skills.
Kit List
For no particular reason here is some of the stuff I use.
- Peavey Millenium my first bass and great entry level value
- Ibanez SR650 my current bass
- PJB Double Four (BG-75) small practice amp with great quality and perfect for home use.
- ModDevice DuoX Truely awesome virtual pedal-board with infinite possibilities. Mostly open source too.
- Windows PC
- Transcribe! the original and best music transcription tool that rocks for learning music by ear from recordings. Desktop, not touch enabled.
- iReal Pro chord chart based backing track generator and player. Can run on Windows using the Bluestacks Android emulator
- YouTube a great source of music (but you knew that)
- Yamaha PSS 680 The review says it all about this early workstation but it just about does MIDI and my daughter has nabbed my Roland XP-50
