Bass

Check out this awesome jazz bass duet between Marco Panascia (double bass) and Dario Deidda (electric bass). This was filmed in Rome back in 2010, thanks to No Treble for originally posting this! Find out more about their playing at www.marcopanascia.com.  Read More

Very excited to announce the release of more than two dozen new bass lessons from Nathan East! Besides a ton of new material that includes topics like Speed Drills, Arpeggios, Right Hand Posture, Show Preparation, Playing with Feel, Adding Flare, and much more - there's also a new section of performances with fellow ArtistWorks instructor Paul Gilbert! This was their first time ever playing together, and besides some amazing jamming there's some very insightful discussion and analysis. If you play bass (or guitar) Paul and Nathan's sessions are gold, filled with insight into how guitar and bass work together.  Not to mention nugget upon nugget of tasty riffs and ideas.  Check out the video above where they talk about different approaches for playing around on just one chord. 

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John Patitucci has been around the block a few times, so when it comes to playing diminished he's heard it all. Too often bass players end up playing the same thing.

Or more specifically, they'll play a series of notes which immediately stick out as being part of the diminished scale. To John, this is like telegraphing your move:

"That always used to drive me crazy. I'd hear someone play diminished and it's like 'here we go now we're playing diminished, oh isn't that great'… After a while there's no creativity, it's just spelling out a sound with no musical end game." 

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Greetings, we've added a whole bunch of new bass lessons that were recorded when Nathan was recently in the ArtistWorks studio. Here's what to look for, just click on the links below to jump on in:

In the Beginner area:

• Speed Drills: Exercise 1
• Speed Drills: Exercise 2 
• Arpeggio Speed Drills: Minor 7th Arpeggio
• Arpeggio Speed Drills: Major 7th Arpeggio
• Arpeggio Speed Drills: Dominant 7th Arpeggio
• Arpeggio Speed Drills:  2-5-1 Progression
• Arpeggio Speed Drills: Combining Patterns
• Right Hand Speed Drills: Techniques & Tones
• Right Hand Speed Drills: Single Finger
• Right Hand Speed Drills: Two Finger Walk
• Right Hand Speed Drills: Two Finger Sweep
• Scalar Melodic Patterns
• Right Hand Posture

In the Intermediate area:

• Show Preparation
• Playing with Feel
• How to Address a Song

In the Advanced area:

• Walking the 2-5-1
• Soloing the 2-5-1
• Adding Flare- Part 1: Performance
• Adding Flare- Part 2: Analysis
• Intro to the 5 String Bass
• America the Beautiful – Analysis
• Tears in Heaven – Analysis
• Tears in Heaven – Performance

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Here's something that doesn't get brought up enough in bass lessons: body energy. In this video from her online bass lessons, Missy Raines goes over the importance of using your body while playing double bass. This is more of a beginning bass lesson - body energy is something that you should be paying attention to once you get comfortable with holding the bass and learning the fingerboard. This is just a sample from Missy's online curriculum of bass lessons, so be sure to check out more at the link. 

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Nathan East gets patriotic in honor of America's birthday and plays his solo bass version of "America The Beautiful". Inspired by the legendary Jaco Pastorius who also does a famous solo bass rendition of this song.

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Daft Punk's new single "Get Lucky" is huge right now. Everywhere you look, people are talking about the electronic producers' collaboration with Nile Rogers (Chic) and Pharrell (the Neptunes) - it's even earned them a #1 hit in the UK, their first ever. But missing from the conversation is the fact that Nathan East is the man who layed down that funk fueled bass line. Maybe it's because he's so modest, or because he didn't appear in the now infamous video that first appeared on SNL. Either way, it's a big deal to be involved with this - so we reached out to Nathan with some questions about collaborating with the elusive robot-men known as Daft Punk. 

Daft Punk's new single "Get Lucky" is huge right now. Everywhere you look, people are talking about the electronic producers' collaboration with Nile Rogers (Chic) and Pharrell (the Neptunes) - it's even earned them a #1 hit in the UK, their first ever. But missing from the conversation is the fact that Nathan East is the man who layed down that funk fueled bass line. Maybe it's because he's so modest, or because he didn't appear in the now infamous video that first appeared on SNL. Either way, it's a big deal to be involved with this - so we reached out to Nathan with some questions about collaborating with the elusive robot-men known as Daft Punk.  Read More