Bottom Line....Time Is Your Most Important Resource

As you get older...time gets more and more precious.  Every unit of time you spend...you can't get back. So you need to invest those units of time wisely.

If you landed on this page because you want to learn to play Tommy Shannon's line on Pride And Joy...this page isn't for you. You can buy a decent transcription for $6...Sheet Music Direct have it...so if this is you, don't invest any more time reading this page.

But.

If you want to 2X or 3X your understanding and playing of basslines - without being able to play even 1 BPM faster - then reading the rest of this page will be a valuable use of your precious time.

The best teaching structure for musicians is over 250 years old and hidden in plain sight. But rock and pop musicians don't take advantage of tried and trusted learning principles because they are associated with classical music.

That's a shame.

Because there's a truck load to learn - from the perspective of learning - from the teaching structures of classical music.

Here's something you may not know: elite level classical performers (all instruments) take a specific piece of music and study it in exhaustive detail for 3 to 6 months.

That's right:

• One piece.
• 3 to 6 months of study.

And although one of the musical improvement elements you can take from this kind of detailed study is technical - i.e. playing faster or with more precision or both - the major improvements are made in the mental game. Things like:

• Understanding how a piece is composed.
• Identifying thematic connections between different sections.
• Working out how the listener's ear is led through the chord changes of the piece.

And so on.

You can do the same thing with bass lines. Pick a great bass line...analyse it in great detail...take all the information you find (that you like) to your practice space...and incorporate that into your bass playing.

Just doing the analysis on its own will make you a better bass player because it will improve your Bass IQ.

You might be wondering: what kind of bass lines should I study and how long for? Three months studying the same piece sounds super intense?

My answers: (i) Study masterpiece level bass lines. Note the plural. And a month is plenty for most bass lines. Especially if you're focusing on the 'Bass IQ' side rather than the technical side; And (ii) Study one a month or one every month for the next year.

Your bass playing will improve exponentially if you do this.

I've got two main goals with the Masterpiece Bass Lines series.

Goal #1: To make your study of these bass lines easier by drawing out all the hidden nuance in each line. You'll still have to put the practice in, there's no software I can upload to your brain (Matrix style) so you can master everything a Masterpiece Bass Line contains. But I can reduce the learning curve for you by not only picking lines strategically...but doing all the initial analysis.

Goal #2: Teaching you what you should be looking for when studying a Masterpiece line so that if the kind of lines you want to learn aren't covered in my series...you can do this for yourself.

Here are the parameters I used to select Tommy Shannon's Bass Line on Pride And Joy for the first in this Masterpiece Bass Lines series:

1. The line is technically accessible for most bass players. If you can play swing 8th notes plus the odd triplet at 125 to 130 BPM...you can play this line.

2. The line uses (and reuses) multiple devices.

3. If you wanted to learn BLUES ROCK from scratch...Tommy's line on Pride And Joy provides a great template to start from. Authentic vocabulary. Put together in a way that creates harmonic drive.  Where the harmonic drive isn't as strong as it could be....I note that in the appropriate lesson AND suggest fixes!

4. Tommy uses modifying devices and modifying triplets to create further variation.

5. How Tommy tackles playing under a solo in a bass/drums/guitar line up is instructive. And can be modelled.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Tommy's ideas will also work for straight 8th note blues rock and rock too...so you're not restricted to using his ideas on blues rock!

ALSO NOTE: My teaching is based on my concept of 'devices' so if you're not familiar with that, this is not the best place for you to start learning it!

I've been teaching bass online since 2009. In the last four years I've been turning my years of unique teaching into books on Amazon - here's a screenshot of just 15 of the 28 books in my library (at time of writing #29 is due for release soon):

The easiest way to check out if I know what I'm talking about is to head to Amazon.com and check out my most popular book LEARNING FROM JAMES JAMERSON VOLUME 1 and read the reviews. Here are a couple of screenshots of reviews I really like:

Of course there are the odd 1* and 2** reviews too! But if you read the main 1* review that Amazon shows you, and then read the sample of the book, you'll quickly come to same conclusion that I did: that Amazon user "CURRENT RESIDENT" doesn't understand simple English.

Anyway....the point is that I've sold over 20,000 books....and you can find my Author Profile on Amazon and read reviews at random on different books to get a feel for what bass students like you think about working with my teaching material.

MASTERPIECE BASSLINES #1  is housed in its own space on the 8020bass.com website and uses a unique combination of video, music graphics, PDFs and Band In A Box Styles and Files to support your study of this bass line:

If you want  to do this yourself...here's a step by step plan to do that:

• Transcribe the bass line (maybe 2 to 3 hours?) or - preferably - get hold of a copy of the transcription. Cost: $6
• Analyse the transcription to understand everything that's going on. All the devices and modifying devices and rhythmic variations. Assuming you have the 'vocabulary' neceesary to do this. Cost: 1 to 2 Hours Of YOUR Time
• Look through your analysis to identify the different ideas Tommy uses, where he uses them, how he varies them up with rhythmic variations and modifying devices. Cost: 1 to 2 Hours Of YOUR Time
• Create exercises for all the ideas you want to learn so you can practice them. Cost 1 to 4 Hours Of YOUR Time
• Identify specific approaches to specific sections for re-use in other songs (e.g. Bar 12 devices, dealing with the harmonic issues of playing under a guitar solo in a drums/bass/trio instrumentation line up): Cost 1 to 4 Hours Of YOUR Time
• Creating a 'Pride & Joy' Two Chord Matrix to distil the essential learning so you can use it for any similar progression in ANY KEY! Cost 1: to 2 Hours Of YOUR Time
• Program a simplified Band In A Box Style so you can create push button bass lines to use as starting points for new lines. Cost 1 to 4 Hours Of YOUR Time

The best case scenario: you've invested 6 Hours of your time and $6. Your personal leisure time should be valued at double your hourly wage as a minimum (IMO). So you can do the math on that.

Or...that material is already created and ready for you to start learning from for a one time Investment of just...

As well as everything listed above, there are also five bonus items:

1. 80-20 Song Sheet plus videos of selected sections (performance tempo/slowed down tempo) for Tommy's bass line on the swing version of Empty Arms. This was released after Stevie Ray's death but recorded during the TEXAS FLOOD sessions - it's a great illustration of using Tommy's devices in keys that can't use his favourite modifying device on Pride And Joy. (Value $20)
2. Origin Exercises. For the most common devices that Tommy uses, there are Origin Exercises that you can print out and practice to add those devices to your repertoire. (Value $20)
3. Case Study Lesson showing composition of a line from scratch using Tommy's Two Chord Matrix. (Value $20)
4. Case Study Lesson showing using the Band In A Box style to create a bass line and then layer on some of Tommy's more advanced ideas. (Value $20)
5. The Pride And Joy  'OGG' files from the Guitar Hero version of Pride And Joy. You can load these into Audacity (which is free) and create your own authentic practice track to play along with (by muting the bass).

If you've got any questions, don't hesitate to contact me.

I've got some video examples to share with you. The first is a 7 minute demo of using the Band In A Box style I created from Tommy Shannon's TWO CHORD MATRIX based on his line on Pride And Joy:

And this example is a C7 blues that I created from scratch (and detailed, with three iterations, in the 30 minute case study lesson) from Tommy's Two Chord Matrix: