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 Duck Dunn's line on Sweet Home Chicago...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 Duck Dunn's Bass Line(s) on Sweet Home Chicago for the fourth 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 is a masterclass in blues rock.

3. If you want to learn BLUES ROCK from scratch...Duck's lines on Sweet Home Chicago provides a great template to start from. Foundational vocabulary. That's then modified with subtle connection devices that create great harmonic drive.

4. Duck uses modifying devices and modifying triplets and glisses to create further variation. His use of gliss is great and if you only learned THIS....it would improve your playing.

5. This complements MASTERPIECE BASS LINE #1 - Tommy Shannon's line on PRIDE AND JOY - perfectly. If you mixed the best of Tommy with the best of Duck....you'll come up with a unique sound. Or take Tommy's device and layer Duck's triplets and his different connecting device/modifying device approach. There are so many ways to combine ideas from the these  two classes in the Masterpiece Class Collection.

So you get an idea of Duck's lines on Sweet Home Chicago...here's a section from that line (Chorus 4 ) - note how Duck combines foundational devices with upper register playing and ideas like connecting triplets and open string bounces to get around the fretboard - so it's a unique sound in 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 30 books in my library:

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'm closing in on sales of 25,000 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 #4  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 8-10 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: 2 to 4 Hours Of YOUR Time
• Look through your analysis to identify the different ideas Duck uses, where he uses them, how he varies them up with rhythmic variations and modifying devices. Cost: 2 to 3 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 'Sweet Home Chicago' 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...

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

1. Material that I've never codified before. The great news: if you've got foundational device vocabulary under your fingers....using these will be easy to add to your repertoire and will differentiate your sound from your contemporaries immediately.
2. Origin Exercises. For the most common devices that Duck 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 Duck's Two Chord Matrix. (Value $20)
4. Case Study Lessons showing using the Band In A Box style to create a bass line and then layer on some of Duck's more advanced ideas. (Value $20)
5. 80-20 Songsheet for Duck's performance on a Sam And Dave tune called "You Don't Know What You Mean To Me." This is a swing 8th note soul tune and there are other ideas you can lift from this to add to your blues playing! As well as checking out ideas that Duck uses in Sweet Home Chicago!

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