Bass Foundations: Principles of Jazz Bass Line Construction by Chuck Israels

All jazz bassists recognize the pivotal role that the Bill Evans Trio played in creating a new model for the bass’ function in jazz. In this book, Chuck Israels (one of Bill’s long-time bassists) has created a masterpiece of explaining what that revolution consists of. Among other crucial concepts, he shows how the bass can both lay down the pulse and have a dialogue with the other musicians at the same time.

Backing up this analysis are 63 pages of Chuck’s improvised bass lines from some of Bill’s greatest recordings — “Moon Beams,” “How My Heart Sings,” “Live at Town Hall,” etc. With Bill’s chord changes included, this affords you the opportunity to play-along with Bill’s recordings, just like you were a member of his trio. Serious fun!

• Part I — Chuck’s insightful wisdom on the importance of rhythmic interaction with the soloist, the value of keeping the melody of the song in mind as you play, insights on playing in 2, rules for note choices in creating walking bass lines, and much more.
• Part II — Note-for-note transcriptions of Chuck’s bass playing on 18 songs he recorded with Bill Evans from “Moonbeams,” “How My Heart Sings,” “Trio ’65” and other classic recordings. (Generally just improvised choruses are included since the heads are particular to Bill’s recordings. Chuck’s improvised choruses are more useful as general role models.)
• Part III — Transcriptions of Chuck’s bass playing with his own groups. Again, chord changes are written out so you can play along with these great jazz compositions.

YouTube URLs are provided for each song, making it easy to listen, watch the bass lines go by, and then play along with the recordings.

Book available at shermusic.com