Bass Player: Robin Phillips Another track from the 2020 CD ‘Sia’ from UK Prog legends, Solstice, this track is called ‘Seven Dreams’. The transcription presents the challenge of reading in 7:4 and of thinking in a different way to the normal 4:4 and 3:4 that defines most popular music. There are some 3:4 bars in…

Bass Player: Jeff Berlin Another track from the much celebrated 1987 Kazumi Watanabe Trio recording ‘The Spice Of Life’. The band featured Watanabe alongside bassist Jeff Berlin and drummer Bill Bruford. What made these recordings so special was the fact that, at this point in his career, Bruford was using a cleverly designed Simmons drum…

Bass Player: Robin Phillips UK Prog Rock band Solstice have been producing music for nearly four decades and have recently released a new album called ‘Sia’. The attached transcription is of the opening tune on the album, ‘Shout’ and, like a lot of Prog, enjoys some interesting time changes. Sections of 7:8 occur intermittently and…

Bass Player: Will Lee Will Lee has, for decades, been one of the most prolific session players in the centre of the New York music scene, playing several sessions a day and appearing with the house band on major network TV shows like the David Letterman Show. His list of recording credits numbers in the…

Bass Player: Chris Squire Those of us of a certain age remember hearing the news that, following the departure of Jon Anderson and Rick Wakeman from Yes, Chris Squire, Steve Howe and Alan White had teamed up with Trevor Horn and Geoff Downes from The Buggles. THE BUGGLES??!!! |There was outrage. There were fears that…

Bass Player: Mark Egan The fusion band ‘Elements’ was put together by bassist Mark Egan and drummer Mark Gottlieb who had both cut their teeth with the earliest version of the Pat metheny Group. The band made 9 albums between 1982 and 1996 and this transcription features Egan’s solo from the tune ‘Walk In’ which…

Bass Player: Jeff Berlin This video of Jeff Berlin performing the piece ‘Two Thoughts’ with Argentinan composer/pianist Mariano Agustino appeared n-line on 11th September, 2020, well into the 2020 global Covid-19 pandemic, when people were trying to find other ways of making music together other than normal gigging and recording. The two parts of the…

Bass Player: Paul Chambers During his 13 year career between 1955 and 1968, Paul Chambers was one of the leading double bass players in jazz, performing with a wide variety of artists and a range of the music’s sub-genres and recording over 300 LPs for labels such as Blue Note, Riverside, Mercury and Columbia Records.…

Bass Player: Steve Swallow When you speak to Jazz musicians about electric bass players, the name that comes up as a favourite time and time again is not someone who is high on the list of bass player’s bass players; Jaco Pastorius, Stanley Clarke, John Patitucci, Gary Willis etc etc. The name you hear the…

Bass Player: Tony Reeves Another tune from the 1973 Greenslade LP, ‘Sunkissed You’re Not’. There are verse sections in 5:4 and some really interesting uses of extra beats and shortened bars to create tension and release. Then there is the faster, funky section which presents challenges in terms of the pace of reading. It is…