The Pattern System for the Bass Player: Sharpen Your Musical Mind through Fretboard Proficiency, Improvisation and Mental Practice

Arian is an excellent teacher, and her teaching skills, together with this book and the way it is organized and paced is an ideal and enjoyable way to hone your facility on the bass. Although I am a schooled pianist,. I started playing the bass when I was in high school but never really studied it seriously. Now that I am retired, I am revisiting the instrument in order to develop more dependable playing skills and am finding that I am making steady and noticeable progress.

The short version of this review is this: go buy it and work through it. It’s worth your time, but be aware, it will take time.The long version: you’ll find a lot of “learn bass guitar in some number of ridiculously easy lessons” books out there. This isn’t one of them.The lessons are easy to read and understand, but they’re systematic and you need to put in the work and not skip stuff. Not everything will look exciting. You will want to skip things, but everything in here is worth practicing and worth learning.More to the point, it’s all essential stuff to know. By the time you’re done (if you do the work), you’ll know where all the correct notes in whatever key you’re playing in are (whether it’s major or minor). You’ll have the ability to start shifting where you need to on the neck. You’ll also be familiar with pentatonic and blues scales and know them without thinking too much. In addition, you’ll know the relevant chord tones.This is exactly what you need to know to play bass. It’s not everything you need to know, but it’s a big first step that will lead you out of being a beginner bassist and put you into an intermediate level of skill.Speaking only for myself, it took me a year to get through (maybe a year and a half?), but I’m considerably better than when I started. I still revisit certain exercises and am building more on them.

This book is not promising a (impossible) shortcuts to free-flowing bass playing and improvisation - it promises a way, a path, which includes hard work and training, but in a systematic way which will help you get there. I have seen numerous promises for "play in 6 weeks", etc - this is not it! This book will lead you step by step into embedding the bass playing into your mind and consciousness, you muscles and inner strings. It progresses slowly and allows you to spend as much time as needed (and that you can afford training) in each step. It doesn't just tell you to "go practice" - it defines the pre-requisites you need to achieve before moving on, it gives you training recipes of exactly what to train on and until when, as well as extra tips to help you get around when you think you're stuck or to help you overcome issues that are common to many players. The book itself is very self-explanatory and can be used as a sole reference to go through the program (assuming you have the need knowledge to start this program). It has many attached videos but I have found that they are mostly unnecessary, except in cases I wasn't sure exactly on how fingers move (though this is mostly mentioned in the text itself). The online group lessons offered are very cool and helpful, but definitely not mandatory and can be fun and contributing to those who learn better when in a "class" and need to be forced into a schedule otherwise the don't train enough... I have still not completed the book, but I already feel the methodology sinking in, the familiarity with the fretboard increasing significantly and the way the pattern system starts to burn into the unconscious thinking. The book is very detailed and has a good balance between what is written down and what is left for the reader to write (yes - there are actually pages for the reader to write into during practice) and conceive (again, assuming he/she has the needed pre-requisites). The book spends a bit of time explaining rationales and not only saying "do that or that", which is also helpful for people who like to understand the "why". Overall, it's very apparent the book was very well thought through, very well structured and written without promises for "magic in 3 weeks" - it's very honest about what it would take to reach the water well but provides a detailed map of how to get there. I strongly recommend!

This is an advanced book for JAZZ bassists who are used to writing out and doing exercises "in every key" and using extremely complicated chords that are hard to read, let alone to play, because this book asks you to do both from beginning to end. Clearly, if I could get through such a book, I would benefit and advance enormously, but it would take me forever and probably cause orthopedic problems with my writing hand. No wonder medical/therapist types (including a hand surgeon) are among the book endorsers and resources.She is right to recommend the study of her theory book before this one.I give the book 5 stars because it appears excellent for its only realistic audience, i.e. advanced JAZZ musicians who wouldn't blink at being asked to do exercises and practice them "in every key" and repeatedly write out, by hand, page after page after page after page of fretboard diagrams in every key. It's not the book's fault that that is totally unrealistic for ME. If it's possible to go through the book on a lower track for mere mortals and still get something out of it, I have no idea how to do so and the book does not present that as an option.In short, great book for advanced JAZZ musicians who know and do things in "every key," who can interpret and play very complicated chords, and who are not concerned about developing tendinitis and carpal tunnel syndrome from all the handwritten fretboard diagrams to be filled out, but that's not and never will be me.