Bass Player: Jeff Berlin A great little rocker from the 1986 ‘Pump It” album, ‘All The Greats’ is a strange mix of rock ‘n’ roll and Jazz. The groove is a kind of rock/funk hybrid but the harmony is much more sophisticated than you woudl expect from either of these genres. The tune is dedicated…

Bass Player: Steve Dawson Bilbo made his first forays into the music business with NWOBHM (New Wave Of British Heavy Metal) band ‘No Quarter’ (see Bits and Bobs page). At this point in ‘metal’ bass history, the staple groove was straight eighths root not playing. Drummer and guitarists loved it; bass player hated it. Saxon’s…

Bass Player: Israel ‘Cachao’ Lopez Valdes Israel López Valdés (September 14, 1918 – March 22, 2008), better known as Cachao was a Cuban double bassist and composer. Cachao is widely known as the co-creator of the mambo and a master of the descarga (improvised jam sessions).[2] Throughout his career he also performed and recorded in a variety of music styles…

Bass Player: Jaco Pastorius At the height if his career, there was no-one to touch Jaco and his self proclomation that he was ‘the greatest bass player in the World’ was tough to argue with. Whilst the technical capaity of the instrument has moved on since those days, there is no doubt that John Francis…

Bass Player: Steve Swallow Saxophone Player: Lee Konitz This is NOT Steve Swallow’s bass part to the trio performance of the Jobim tune ‘Luiza’ that he did with Lee Konitz and Paul Motian. |It is the alto saxophone part transcribed onto bass clef. A genuinely beautiful rendition of the lesser known Jobim tune from the trio…

Trumpet Player: Wynton Marsalis It has long been understood that it was important to learn solos by people who played other instruments to the bass. This was an early transcription Bilbo found written out on staff paper in pencil in a lever arch file from way back. What we have here is a Wynton Marsalis…

Bass Player: Jeff Berlin Another in our series of Jeff Berlin transcriptions. Bilbo was a huge JB fan when I started getting into the more advanced fusion bass players like Jaco, Percy Jones etc. He tried to learn what I could off the Bruford records available at the time but this predates the existence of…

Bass Player: Hans Glawischnig This transcription is the bass/alto and piano part of the tune ‘Barretto’s Way’ from the CD ‘Panorama’ by bass player Hans Glawischnig. The tune opens with an arco solo from the HG and then, at 0.45 point, he plays a 5:4 four ostinato over which the stunning melody evolves. The transcription is…

Bass Player: Jeff Berlin  Try this sucker. Sample and Hold from the Feels Good To Me album. This took so much slowing down to find the notes (25%). It is basically unplayable by mere mortals. The problem I have with a lot of these tunes is that, learnign to play the bass parts is fundamentally…

Bass Player: Jeff Berlin The tune ‘The Abingdon Chasp’ sounds like a dedication to some relic in a Tolkien novel or another horcrux onto which Voldermort can attatch another piece of himnself. In fact, it is a play in the tern Abingdon Chaps’, the collective for Holdsworth’s drinking buddies. The tune is one of the…