There are only two ways to improve your bass playing:

1. Improve the technical/physical side of what you play - either improve plucking hand speeds or fretting hand facility or work on improved plucking hand or fretting hand system. This is a long term play.
2. Improve the mental side of what you play - this is working on 'what you play' and improving it by increasing your vocabulary or learning how to connect the vocabulary you know better and so on.  This is Bass IQ.  And growth from improving your Bass IQ works by compounding.  And leads to exponential growth.

In The Duck Dunn Callenge we'll be focusing on the latter by analyzing the foundational devices of the late,  great Duck Dunn.

As a side effect, what we're going to be learning and practicing will also improve the physical aspect of your playing.

I've analyzed (and transribed) dozens of Duck's performances looking for the commonly repeated ideas and devices that he uses.

And I turned this into a sequential learning system that bass players of even relatively moderate abilities can benefit from and improve with

Summarized this multi year process reduces down to 4 lines:

1.  Identifying the core ideas Duck used in  playing.
2.  Put those ideas into a sequential learning system
3.  Add in the secret sauce - a technique I developed called “deliberat composition” helps students put Duck's ideas together to create interesting bass lines.
4.  All combined and packaged in a tightly focused period of hyper focused learning.

Duck Dunn wasn't a flashy bass player - in my opinion that's a good thing!  95% plus of a bass player's job is to play something that makes everyone else in the band look great and play it with great time.  Duck was a master at doing this and this is an opportunity for you to learn the foundational devices he used in creating his lines and how he put those foundational devices together.

By the end of the Challenge you’ll have leapfrogged your contemporaries in terms of the devices and ideas that you  know - your Bass IQ! -  and, much more importantly, you'll know how to put those ideas together to create compelling bass lines.

Here's How The Challenge Works...

Focusing on something for a concentrated period - approx 30 days - is a proven way to acquire new skills, take existing skills to a new level...basically to get shit done.

When you enroll there are 7 pre-training days already in your Account plus Day 1 of the Challenge.  (As well as some of the bonuses - see below).

The Challenge is split into four "weeks" of five days with a two day "week-end."  One of those weekend days is a rest/catch up day...and on the other some song bonuses will appear!

Every "week" day a new 'day' will go live in your Account and you'll get an email letting you know that the next day is now available.

Each new lesson either layers directly on top of a previous lesson or introduces a new device or concept for you to add to your toolbox of ideas.  Each lesson has suggested practice exercises to work on assimilating new devices and from Day 7 onwards we'll go through putting those devices and ideas into bass lines that work.

Daily Lesson Format

Each 'day' of the Challenge has a similar format:

• there is a PDF of the lesson to download that you can either print out or add to a device like an iPad so you can read when not connected to the internet
• the text is on the web page along with the music graphics AND the videos demonstrating each example

I took Day 1 from one of my challenges - and Day 1 of the Duck Dunn Challenge is waiting for you right now in the members area! - and resized it a little and took screen shots of it to give you an idea of how it looks like in the Challenge.  Obviously when YOU access it, it will be much more legible!

Depending on your current ability level each lesson takes about 30-45 minutes to read, watch the examples and anything from 30 to 120 minutes to put into practice.  (These are approximations - like just about everything the more you put in, the more you'll get out.)

Here are some of the things we're going to be working on to improve Bass IQ in the Duck Dunn Challenge:

You'll also be creating your own lines using all of the above ideas (and more) using a technique that I've pioneered and teach all my students that's called deliberate composition!  (If all you took from the Duck Dunn Challenge was deliberate composition you'd still be on track to make big improvements in your bass playing.)

I've run the live version of the 30 Day Challenges several times in the last year teaching several hundred students in the process. I've taken screenshots from the Accountability Group for you to check out below...here's the first screenshot:

Or how about this for the kind of effect the Challenge will have not only on your playing but also how you hear bass lines:

I wanted to make this challenge totally affordable but also be enough money so that those students who take the Challenge value what they've invested in and it gives them a kick to do the actual work.  (If they don't do the work...it's just information that's going unused and collecting virtual dust on the Interwebz).

Now each lesson in the Duck DunnChallenge covers a similar amount of ground as a lesson with a face to face teacher would.  Good teachers (and they are rare as hens teeth) charge around $75 to $100 per lesson.  Let's err on the low side and say you can find a good teacher for just $50.  There's 31 Lessons including the pretraining - and with a $50 per lesson teacher that requires an investment of $1500.

Plus the opportunity cost of travel time (if it's not on Skype).  And travel expenses.  And unless you record the lesson in some ways - which most teachers won't allow - then you have to be great at taking notes and recall (which takes up more time).

Not to mention the bonus lessons and the critique library.

So let's say that's the equivalent of around another 10 lessons worth that would take your investment to $2000.

If you enroll on the Duck Dunn Challenge today though you won't pay $2000.

You won't pay half of that - $1000.

You won't even pay a tenth of that - $200.

Instead, the investment requires to enroll on this unique program where you can learn the foundational devices and ideas that Duck used and put them to use in your own playing is just...

If you're ready to invest in yourself and your bass playing by enrolling on theDuck Dunn Challenge  click the 'Join Now' button below and do your Paypal or Credit Card Thang!

The previous versions of the Duck Dunn Challenge were 'live' versions.

Which meant that the students submitted their compositions (daily from Day 8) to the Private Accountability Group where I would critique them.

And so they got direct feedback on things that they could improve.

But they could also see compositions by their fellow students AND my critiques of those compositions.  Which is a great learning opportunity.

However the private accountability group was hosted on Facebook. That puts some students off - because they have concerns about privacy and the like.  (Concerns that I share btw and I'll not be using Facebook much more.)

For the self study course I can't replicate that direct experience with direct critiques but what I have done is create a 'critique library' for the corresponding 'Days' in the Challenge where some of the Student's Compositions are copied over along with my critiques.

Some of the students submitted their compositions by printing out blank chord charts provided in the lesson PDFs and writing them in by hand.  Some of them composed into software.  And some even exported their composition as a midi file and turned it into an audio file.

Here's an example  from Day 24 of a different Challenge - this one is from a student who is primarily  a blues player and never played any soul or R&B:

To make this a low risk investment decision to you, there's not one but TWO guarantees that fully covers the cost of enrollment so all the risk is on me (see below).

So it's time for you to make a decision - and the way I see it you have three options:

Option #1 - do nothing and your bass playing will stay pretty much exactly as it is right now

Option #2 - create your own program to study Duck Dunn.  You can analyze all of the published transcription of Duck's work as a start (though the most accurate book is out of print and out of print copies cost over £100!).  Then you'll need to transcribe a bunch more of his performances and analyze those.  Once you've analyzed between 50 and 100 of Duck's perfromances you should start to have a good idea on which devices and ideas he used (and re-used) in his playing down the years.

Then all you'll need to do is work out a sequential learning system to internalize and assimilate those devices and ideas AND develop a system to teach yourself how to take those devices and ideas and turn them into good bass lines.

If you're willing to work hard transcribing and analyzing you may be able to pull it off. (If you need to budget time for this....500 hours would be a good starting point)

Option #3 - let my program do the heavy lifting for you.  It's already been used by over 200 students with highly positive results that YOU could have for yourself.

Of these three options, ask yourself this question: What's Going To Be Easiest For You?

In my experience there are two types of students....those who dream about playing to a higher level without taking the required action to make it happen.

And those who are ready to take action when the opportunity presents itself to them.

Which one are you: the dreamer (who in 30 days time will be in EXACTLY the same place you are now) or the action taker (who in 30 days will be finishing up the Duck Dunn  Challenge and be armed with a ton of ideas to put into your bass playing in the coming months)?

Although Duck Dunn is the bass player that we're learning from in this 30 Day Challenge..... the Challenge is (counter-intuitively)  NOT about trying to sound like Duck Dunn.

Duck Dunn is rightly considered a great and influenctial bass player who produced great bass lines like Hold On I'm Coming, Soul Man, Dock Of The Bay, Knock On Wood and a string of others.  What's interesting is that the devices and ideas you can find in Duck's R&B work is present in his later blues styling work (e.g. Sweet Home Chicago, She Caught The Katy).

We're going to learn these foundational devices so that they are part of your playing and we're going to learn how to put those devices together to create YOUR bass lines - whether that's for R&B.  Or Blues.  Or a different genre.  And we'll get to some advanced rhythms and materials in the last few days of the Challenge.

Paul Wolfe/how-to-play-bass.com

P.S. In case you're one of those people like me who likes to skip to the end...here's the deal:

When you join the Duck Dunn Challenge (for just $97 ) you're going to get access to a unique 30 Day Challenge that will improve your bass playing, improve your understanding of constructing bass lines and kick start the process of confidently creating your own interesting bass lines modelled on the playing of one of the most revered players in the Bass World!  Plus there's several hundred dollars of bonuses....so you've got multiples in terms of value for money BEFORE you even go to the first pre-training day in the Challenge!

More Testimonials And Comments

As I said in the body of this page, over 200 students have already been through this 30 Day Challenge and I've taken screenshots of emails and facebook comments about the Challenge that you can look through.

The following is a screenshot of email answers from Student Tim G:

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