Book Review - 101 Bass Tips by Gary Willis

101 Bass Tips by fusion bass player Gary Willis is subtitled: Stuff All The Pros Know And Use. And that pretty much sums the book up. It is a collection of tips for the bass player that Gary has collected in his playing career and is passing on. The tips are not really presented in an organized fashion, but that makes the book great for browsing at random when you have 5 minutes spare.

The tips range from musical tips such as using substitute scales when soloing, exercises for dynamics, diminished chord improvisation and ear improvisation to technique tips which include right hand dampening and exercises to develop right hand technique, left hand positioning and how to 'barre' with fingers when needed, and there are a lot of tips included on the maintenance of your bass, e.g. how to adjust your intonation, how to reuse strings, how to set your string balance. There's even a tip on how to make your own strap.

How Is 101 Bass Tips Presented?

Bass tips is a soft bound book of around 70 pages in length. There is also a CD that comes with the book which has some of the examples played on it, and also some of the examples left 'bass less' for YOU to play over it. As I said earlier the tips are not really organized in any fashion

How Could 101 Bass Tips Be Better?

Firstly as the author is Gary Willis it could have some sections devoted to how he generates some of his monstrous funk grooves with examples of these grooves AND transcriptions! This book doesn't have that sadly, but there's still a surprising amount of information to read and absorb in the 70 pages of the book. And of course, the learning will not really be solidified until you start actually applying it to the bass.

There are a lot of tips aimed at maintaining your bass. And although these are pretty good, personally I just take my bass to the local guitar shop. The tech there is a great guy and does a great job of maintaining my basses. So it might have been better to have cut some of these out.

The musical tips are the most interesting - and paint an interesting picture of Gary Willis as an enquiring spirit who searches for truth on the bass as he sees it, and devises exercises that help him apply that truth. More of those exercises would make for a fascinating book.

Summary

101 Bass Tips is a strange book in the Bass Player's Library. But firstly Gary Willis is one of our most unique voices, buying anything that generates royalties for him should be considered a duty by most bass players. And the book is so cheap that you'd only need to find one or two tips that really connect with you and expand your thinking to make the purchase good value for your money.

To find out more about Gary Willis's playing I suggest you check out his discography. There is a book of his transcribed solos available, called The gary Willis Collection. This is out of print at the time of writing so you may have to hunt around for a 2nd hand copy on eBay or in the Bass Forums. There is also a Tribal Tech guitar book out there which has quite a lot of Gary's original and distinctive groove lines in it.

If you want more bass related info, head over to my how to play bass website where you'll find video lessons, articles, reviews and much more. There's also a monthly ezine you can sign up for - in return for signing up you'll get a PDF file with 5 cool bass lines in - and each month's ezine features a bass line in music notation and bass tab. http://www.how-to-play-bass.com