<< 1 >>
Rating: 
Summary: Great Beginner Book
Review: I got this for my 11 year old son. He has been playing acoustic and electric for about a year using the Hal Leonard Guitar Method Books 1-3 which he enjoyed. Now he wants to learn bass too, so naturally we looked at the Bass Method book. This book is great for a beginner. It starts out simple with lots of good exercises for each string and gradually gets more complicated. We use Hal Leonard for a basic foundation. He works with his teacher and they combine this book with whatever other music he wants to play such as "Learn to Play Bass with Metallica" or his favorite CD's. I looked at other bass books but felt that this was the best for beginners. Also, do yourself a favor and get a metronome if you want to play bass!
Rating:
Summary: Great Beginner Book
Review: I got this for my 11 year old son. He has been playing acoustic and electric for about a year using the Hal Leonard Guitar Method Books 1-3 which he enjoyed. Now he wants to learn bass too, so naturally we looked at the Bass Method book. This book is great for a beginner. It starts out simple with lots of good exercises for each string and gradually gets more complicated. We use Hal Leonard for a basic foundation. He works with his teacher and they combine this book with whatever other music he wants to play such as "Learn to Play Bass with Metallica" or his favorite CD's. I looked at other bass books but felt that this was the best for beginners. Also, do yourself a favor and get a metronome if you want to play bass!
Rating: 
Summary: good method for beginners who already have music background
Review: I looked through several books before I chose this one. I chose this book because it was similar to the book I was given when I started learning the flute many years ago. The book teaches with short song exercises and focuses on learning notes instead of TAB. several reviews below say the opposite but I think they are referring to an earlier edition because the current Hal leonard electric bass method does not introduce tabulature almost the end of part 1 of the 3 part set, forcing you to learn the notes. Even after the introduction of tabs the book only includes them for part of the songs. For me, I think this book was the best choice as a beginner's bass method but I would not recommend this book to someone who is not already familiar with musical theory or prefers to learn by TAB. This is because the book does not spend much time explaining notation and, as I mentioned, does not use tabs all the time. This book probably would work best in combination with private lessons for students not familiar with theory. This book really heaps on the accidentals within the first half of book one which is very frustrating to true beginners (and even some of us that aren't).
I also recommend you get a supplementary book with songs that you actually enjoy playing. The songs in this method are original creations of the author and it gets tedious playing a bunch of melodies you don't know or care for.
Rating:
Summary: Great beginner series with interesting lessons
Review: I recently signed up for weekly bass lessons at my local music store, and they sold me this 1st book out of this composite. I was about 1/2 way through book one when I saw this composite version with Accompanying CDs, and I decided to buy it here on Amazon. The lessons can't be extremely exciting when you're just learning an instrument, but they have done a good job of choosing lessons that actually have some pretty interesting tunes from various genres of music. They have also interspersed shorter 8 measure excercises with occasional longer numbers of 25 or so measures. This helps the lessons seem less like "drills" and more like you're actually making progress. When I received this version with the CDs, it made everything even better. To be able to play along with the full instrumentation to the songs in the book really helps, especially in forcing you to keep regular time, since you can't d r a a a a a g out a measure when the fingering gets tough. I'm a drummer, but one who can read music (yes, there are a few of us), so I can't vouch for whether there is enough material to teach the uninitiated how to read music notation for time value, but I have picked up a reasonable amount of knowledge of reading music for pitch.
Rating:
Summary: Great beginner series with interesting lessons
Review: I recently signed up for weekly bass lessons at my local music store, and they sold me this 1st book out of this composite. I was about 1/2 way through book one when I saw this composite version with Accompanying CDs, and I decided to buy it here on Amazon. The lessons can't be extremely exciting when you're just learning an instrument, but they have done a good job of choosing lessons that actually have some pretty interesting tunes from various genres of music. They have also interspersed shorter 8 measure excercises with occasional longer numbers of 25 or so measures. This helps the lessons seem less like "drills" and more like you're actually making progress. When I received this version with the CDs, it made everything even better. To be able to play along with the full instrumentation to the songs in the book really helps, especially in forcing you to keep regular time, since you can't d r a a a a a g out a measure when the fingering gets tough. I'm a drummer, but one who can read music (yes, there are a few of us), so I can't vouch for whether there is enough material to teach the uninitiated how to read music notation for time value, but I have picked up a reasonable amount of knowledge of reading music for pitch.
Rating:
Summary: Four thumbs up!
Review: This book is great for a beginner to the bass. I agree with another reviewer that it might rely on the tablature a little too much, but I think for a beginner the tablature is very helpful. Don't become addicted to it though, or you'll never learn anything. Otherwise the book is great, along with the accompanying CD. It's much more fun to learn the bass with a band to play along with. Buy it buy it buy it!
Rating:
Summary: Four thumbs up!
Review: This book is great for a beginner to the bass. I agree with another reviewer that it might rely on the tablature a little too much, but I think for a beginner the tablature is very helpful. Don't become addicted to it though, or you'll never learn anything. Otherwise the book is great, along with the accompanying CD. It's much more fun to learn the bass with a band to play along with. Buy it buy it buy it!
Rating:
Summary: Hi Bass Method Composite
Review: This book is pretty good for a beginner.Although it may rely on TAB a bit much and its difficulty vary song to song, I'd say it's worth buying. Plus it is another of Hal Leanord books so you know it's not of poor quality.And it is packed with alot of great information.
<< 1 >>
| 
