Dan Hawkins Releases New Online Funk Bass Course

New Online Funk Bass Course…

Tim Fletcher takes a look at a new online funk bass course from Dan Hawkins.

Dan has been hard at work on a new Funk Bass Course!

Last year we featured Dan Hawkins’ work as an online session bassist and teacher, and he had just released a new book ‘100 Funk Grooves For Electric Bass’. Since I interviewed him, he’s been very busy, rapidly developing his teaching website (onlinebasscourses.com) to include a wide range of individual courses relating to fretboard fundamentals, bass technique essentials, easy bass lines, improving your groove, music theory, musician mindset, and reading music. Each course is full of great advice, video demonstrations, and text examples.

Recently, Dan has released a new online Funk Bass course. It’s an in-depth course, with fifty-two lessons spread over six chapters.

• Introduction and Funk Bass Workbook
• Fingerstyle Grooves
• Articulations
• Chucking and plectrum use
• Slap
• Bonus Lessons

The lessons are based around forty specially composed grooves, and each lesson features a video demo from Dan, related text content that can be downloaded as a work-book, and a drum loop for each lesson.

Having tried out some of the lessons, I was impressed at how well the different elements combined to give a very immersive and in-depth learning experience. Dan is a very able player and teacher, and explains the content very clearly. The video content is very high-quality, and the drum loops allow you to practice the bass-lines as much as you wish to – you get to control the tempo and repetitions.

I also very much liked the inclusion of fingerstyle funk as a major element in the lessons rather than focusing primarily on slap – this shows a deeper knowledge of the history of the genre than can be seen in other funk lessons. Other great aspects of the course are an in-depth study of Bernard Edwards’ ‘chucking’ technique, and the inclusion of lessons on the use of a plectrum (Bobby Vega is about as funky as you get, and he uses a pick!).

Overall, this is a very user-friendly Funk Bass course, with some interesting and valuable lessons, and the highly effective integration of audio, video, and notation helps to deliver some really useful content.

Fore more information, visit online at onlinebasscourses.com