Chord Tone Concepts (Volume One: Triads)
An Excavation of the Humble Triad - £19.99 (P&P included to UK)
"Music, oddly enough is a discipline that many musicians avoid learning. Today, it is all about performance lessons, technique lessons, groove lessons and rock lessons. Music academics seem barely regarded, which explains why so many developing players have difficulty playing.
Phil Mann is someone that I greatly admire. He was once a young unknown bass player who came to Florida from England to study with me purely because he wanted to learn how to play better. This was his entire motivation. Studying music changed his life.
This collection of chord tone patterns opens up to you factual and predictable ways to ascend and descend your bass neck. It is a book of purpose. It is a manual representing basic factual and functional tonalities, in fact, some of the purest tonalities you can find.
This book is a bass player's opportunity to read and learn musical perfection in the form of a root, 3rd and 5th. These tonalities may often be known in the minds of bassists everywhere, but here is your opportunity to know them on your bass. Practice well, practice slowly, and practice without a metronome. But you knew that I was going to say this anyway!'.
Jeff Berlin
Founder - Jeff Berlin Music Group
(Frank Zappa, Bill Bruford, Allen Holdsworth, Scott Henderson, Frank Gambale)
Chord Tone Concepts (Volume Two: Major Tonality)
Opening the Doors of Permutation Perception - £19.99 (P&P included to UK)
The book you’re holding in your hands has the power to completely rewire and demystify the way in which you view harmony upon the bass fingerboard. Period. The question now is, are you going to spend the time needed to let this book do its work on YOU?!
Phil gives students what they want... results! No mumbo-jumbo, just straight to the core of what a student needs to know and work on to get their understanding and visualisation of the fingerboard to the next level - but in a way that's step-by-step, easy to understand, and most importantly, can be applied in a musical way to any genre of music. In short, Phil is a natural born teacher.
If a bass player doesn't know their chord tones and how to apply them - we could look at this as being similar to a guitarist or keyboard player who can't play or apply chords. In short - it's not good! So now you know how important it is to know your chord tones and be fluent at applying them over the entire fingerboard - what do you do now? Well, that's where Phil and these books come in! If you study the materials presented in this book, your bass playing, understanding and visualisation of the fretboard and overall musicianship will be greatly improved, if not completely changed forever. This is a BIG deal!
Scott Devine
Founder - scottsbasslessons.com
Chord Tone Concepts (Volume Three: Minor Tonality)
A Renaissance in Melodic Interpretation - currently unpublished
This is a powerful opening into world of deeper musicianship for anyone who dares open the pages of this book. Many aspiring composers and improvisors try to create music from a scale tone foundation, a method that is functional, at best. The problem is the lack of support for the essence of the music and the resulting improvisation tends to break down and loose continuity. Obviously, form is important, as it provides us with the harmonic rhythm that sets the mood of the composition, as well harmony – without which we have lost our musical way and fail to sound compositional.
Consider this – scales are the alphabet and chords structures are the words. If we exclusively wrote the alphabet in place of words, our audience would quickly dissolve. The same applies to music. The importance of scales cannot be taken for granted. It is a simple fact that we need them to create harmony, however, that is the only extent for which they are used by the great improvisors.
The only way around this issue is to make a comprehensive chord tone study. There are no short cuts or magic bullets, it's pure hard work to prevail. So ask yourself if you have lived up to your potential as a musician? If you feel you could improve, take Phil’s book as your compass for getting where you want to be.
Matthew Bokulic
Vice President - The Players School of Music, Florida
Purchase Information:
The entire Chord Tone Concepts range is exclusively available through With Bass In Mind. You will not be able to purchase these texts through any other distributors. As you've probably guessed, I'm not a bookstore (I'm just a bassist, I'm afraid) - but the texts are still pretty straightforward to get your hands on! Just drop me an email - then, once we're in contact and I've received your postal address, I'll ask you to make a simple PayPal transaction and we're done - you're books will be on their way!