PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Woodshedding - Learning to Play! "Flight Simulator" for Bass

[This was delivered to my inbox from a web-based bass instructor who I have not done any business with. I self-taught myself 80% of what he's talking about. Indeed, I purchased BiaB for this very purpose. The other 20% I'll probably explore as time permits. Thought somebody here would be interested in this. Bracketed text is mine.]

Back in the 30s the US Postal Service had a massive problem - the death rate among their pilots due to crashses when landing was through the roof. A guy called Edwin Link had invented a machine that he swore could be used to train pilots...but no-one believed him and he had to cart this machine on a flatbed truck to fairs and circuses around the US to make ends meet.

He was invited to a meeting with the US Postal top brass...which they tried to cancel because the airport he was due to meet them at was fog bound. He said he was coming...and to their amazement executed a perfect landing in the fog (which was considered nearly impossible at the time.)

The advent of World War 2 shortly afterwards and the necessity to train thousands of pilots quickly (and safely) accelerated the use of flight simultors as required training aids.

You might be wondering why I'm talking about flight simulators? The reason is I want to talk about a tool I use nearly every day - and when anyone asks me to describe it I use a metaphor and say that it's like a flight simulator for bass.


The tool I'm talking about is called Band In A Box (made by PG Music).

If you're serious about practicing on the bass this tool is nearly as important as your bass guitar! (And I'm not joking)

Off the top of my head here's some practice activities you can use it for:

1. Generating chordal environments with realistic sounding backing where you can change tempo or key at the touch of a button.

2. Working on your time - part 1. You can set up styles very quickly in Band In A Box (BIAB) to play on just the 2 and 4 of the bar. Or just the 2 of the bar. Or just the 4. Or just the 2, every other bar. And so on. (My favourite variation of this is practicing grooves ranging from funk to walking bass with guitar skank on beats 2 and 4 and nothing else! A harmonic metronome!)

3. Working on your time - part 2. You can set up an 8 or 16 bar repeating chord pattern in band in a box - and then set it so that the last 2 beats are silent. So you have to play over those and come back in on the downbeat. And then make the last 4 beats silent. Or the last 6 beats silent. or 8 beats. And so on. (G

4. Learning tricky riffs and melodies. You can program a tricky riff into Band In A Box (or import a midi file with the riff on it) and then use a feature called the Woodshed Feature. You set a start tempo, tell Band In A Box how many beats per minute to increase on each repetition and then set your pattern looping. This allows you to play the tricky piece at say 60 bpm, and then 61 bpm, and then 62 bpm and then 63 bpm (or any incemental increase you desire). It's a great way to internalize and nail those tricky riffs that you need to for your band.

5. Practicing creating bass lines on the fly. Band In A Box has a feature where you can choose own paraments, press a button and Band In A Box will generate a set of chord changes with a melody and immediately count you in. If you've muted the bass...then you have to create the bass line.

6. Sight Reading Etudes. One of the biggest problems for practicing sight reading is the relative dearth of song like etudes. Problem solved. You can create a style (which is quite simple with a bit of midi experience - or co-opt your keyboard player to help) and then apply that style to a set of chords or common chord progressions in specific keys that you need to work on, click generate and then print out the resulting etude. As a bonus you can then mute the bass and sight read the etude in real time.

And there's much much more.

The thing is....learning to use Band In A Box SPECIFICALLY for bass players isn't that obvious and requires a little bit of tweaking and playing around. [I disagree, it was obvious to me, but it did and does require playing around.]

More about this plus practicing tomorrow.

Cheers

This is a solid review that Sales will want to see.

When I was learning to play jazz in the late 1950s, the best we had was Music-Minus-One LP records. I would have progressed so much better if BIAB were available then.

Dr. Peter Gannon plays bass, in case you didn’t know. And I understand BIAB was created to learn jazz tunes from fakebooks.

I agree, solid indeed. Feedback like this may influence where they decide to take the company.

Didn't know who Dr. Gannon is but went to the website and learned this.
Founded in 1988 by program creator Dr. Peter Gannon, PG Music has grown to have an international standing.

Next time you see him, tell him thanks for the creation and to keep thumping and holding down the bottom end

PS> You seem to be amoungst the real music pros here, do you have examples of your work?

Of the many things, BIAB can do, it truly excels as an instructional tool. Go grab a demo and find some bass, guitar, piano, or other instrument part and break it down to wherever small piece you need to learn. Super useful.

Mute your instrument part and play along with ten zillion styles. There is nothing like it, before or since. A huge amount of music theory can be absorbed from the program saying nothing about all the highly musically educated nice people hanging around the forum.

The minus one thing Matt referred to only gives you a hand full of songs to play to and zero ability to change anything, not even the tempo. Yep, we could have certainly used BIAB back in those days.

To me, BIAB is a box full of ideas. It is well worth the cost if you never use it to compose a song. The other thing for me is that PG Music has always been a very good company to do business with. They have answered all my silly questions and fixed anything that was messed up, and got stuff to me very quickly when I ordered it.

As part-time snappy dressers, the sales crew has been fun to deal with...lol A joke people, A joke!...lol

Billy

I do not know Dr. Gannon although we have spoken.

I’m on many CDs as a soloist and arranger but only one under my name. PG Music lets me mention it because I composed all the songs using BIAB. The CD is called Brazilian Wish and you can find it under my name on Apple, Spotify, Pandora etc.

Well Jimny Cricket and Jumpin bull frogs ! . . . Music Royalty !! Well done.

I just created a Matt Finley station on Pandora and the first song that came up was Brazilian Wish, a bit complex for me to fully understand but I just may need more listens. Interestingly enough, the 2nd song that came up was one by Craig Chaquico and Russ Freeman, I love everything on their From the Redwoods to the Rockies album. And the 3rd song was by Acoustic Alchemy, also one of my favorite artists. These guys are on my Smooth Jazz station. Then Song For My Father (which I never heard before but like a lot) played by David Benoit; excellent piano. Then 5th was you again, When She’s Gone. Now this is music !

Isn’t it interesting how you can view genres and styles on a spectrum and how your compositions happen to be just a shade of gray (next to) a genre that is one of my favorites and how this is opening up new listening experiences for me.

Well done Matt, I’m blown away.

Thank you for the kind words.

The title track, Brazilian Wish, may be one of the more complex harmonically. When She's Gone, though, is the one people would be humming after my concerts. If you want some rollicking samba fun, try So Close.

I perform songs by Russ Freeman (listen to It's the Thought That Counts) and David Benoit (Some Other Sunset, Swingin' Waikiki), so that isn't surprising that Pandora would see similarities. Also, I had a dozen world-class performers on my CD, with their own reputations, so Pandora creates links using that, too. The song, Song for My Father, was a jazz standard when I was growing up; it's by Horace Silver and is outstanding.

I can definitely hear a musical connection between It’s The Thought That Counts by Benoit/Freeman and the tracks on the From Redwoods to Rockies.

Some Other Sunset: What can I say other than world class piano.

Swingin' Waikiki (Java Jazz Festival 2007): On his Steinway . . . what a set of fingers!

Here are just a few that speak to me; without using a single (intelligible to me) vocal

In The City - Brian Culbertson
Irresistible Bliss – Chris Botti
Always Forever – Peter White
Between Tears - Johannes Linstead
Stories Of The Painted Desert – The Rippingtons (I think Russ Freeman might be in this band)
Cruisin’ – Mark Antonine
Cry No More – Ryan Farish
Salt Water Sound – Zero 7
Chime – Paul Hardcastle

And too many others to mention.