Beyond Bass Camp starts this Saturday, and is sold out. There’s even a waiting list.

The popularity of the idea means I’ll probably run a few one-offs, and/or 2 day weekend classes over the summer. Please feel free to post in the comments which of those you’d be most interested in, and which days of the week would work best.

For those of you that are booked in, see you on the boat on Saturday!

On the blog post announcing Beyond Bass Camp, Kevin posted a very pertinent question relating to syllabus/curriculum. So here’s an outline of the kind of approach I’ll be taking.

As with everything I teach, much of the content will remain fluid and be based on the needs and personalities of the musicians who attend… Having taught privately now for 20 years, and lead masterclasses of this type for about 6 years, I’ve found that the best format is to have an outline of the ‘approach’ and allow the detail of the content to form itself in response to those needs.

That said, each day long class will be split into 3 two hour sessions. (more…)

OK, you’ll see that there’s a new page up here, the B*B*C FAQ – and in it you’ll find the details about dates, times and cost for the 1st iteration of the Beyond Bass Camp.

For the first 3 weeks – up until May 19th – booking will only be open to people wanting to book for all 5 classes that are already in the diary – that’s £300 for the 5. After that it’ll be open to anyone else that wants to book in. If 5 people go for the all 5 classes option, then I’ll just add in some more dates in between for the one-offs. (more…)

The question in the title is one that is so often ignored and yet is fundamental to the process of learning music (and a lot of other things!)

Because so much that happens in music education is based on a model established for teaching classical repertoire, the emphasis is hugely on “Is It Right?” – the notes on the page are the right notes, any other notes are wrong notes, and there are pre-established measures of what are the ‘right‘ ways to play a piece, what are the ‘right‘ techniques to use… The fact that at some point they were were established as ‘right‘ because of someone’s idea of ‘good‘ has been lost somewhere down the years – the subjective aesthetic assessment of a piece of music by the person playing it is no longer a factor in deciding whether the performance is worthwhile, meaningful, pleasing or anything else… (more…)

The idea for BBC came out of the masterclasses I teach in Northern California every January. For years I’ve been doing a day long workshop on bass, varying the focus slightly each time to cover different aspects of what we do as bassists and musicians, but all with the aim of helping musicians unlock their own musical voice, whether that be playing bass in a blues band, or writing their own solo compositions. (more…)