Academically Thinking...
Before joining Scott's Bass Lessons, Philip was a quintessential part of London's 'Institute of Contemporary Music and Performance’ bass faculty. Not only a senior lecturer, his commissioned course writing enveloped a vast array of academia - ranging from Part Time and Diploma programmes, to Bachelors and Masters Degree materials.
The success and quality of his materials resulted in an international decoration from The Players School of Music, in Florida: awarding him a ‘Certificate of Academic Excellence’ in response to ‘on going dedication and devotion to music’. Scott Devine describes him as "a natural born teacher", Jeff Berlin heralds him as "one of three go-to tutors in Europe".
Academically Thinking...
Before joining Scott's Bass Lessons, Philip was a quintessential part of London's 'Institute of Contemporary Music and Performance’ bass faculty. Not only a senior lecturer, his commissioned course writing enveloped a vast array of academia - ranging from Part Time and Diploma programmes, to Bachelors and Masters Degree materials.
The success and quality of his materials resulted in an international decoration from The Players School of Music, in Florida: awarding him a ‘Certificate of Academic Excellence’ in response to ‘on going dedication and devotion to music’. Scott Devine describes him as "a natural born teacher", Jeff Berlin heralds him as "one of three go-to tutors in Europe".
Academically Thinking...
Before joining Scott's Bass Lessons, Philip was a quintessential part of London's 'Institute of Contemporary Music and Performance’ bass faculty. Not only a senior lecturer, his commissioned course writing enveloped a vast array of academia - ranging from Part Time and Diploma programmes, to Bachelors and Masters Degree materials.
The success and quality of his materials resulted in an international decoration from The Players School of Music, in Florida: awarding him a ‘Certificate of Academic Excellence’ in response to ‘on going dedication and devotion to music’. Scott Devine describes him as "a natural born teacher", Jeff Berlin heralds him as "one of three go-to tutors in Europe".
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"Phil Mann is alongside Steve Bailey,
Bruce Getz, John Patitucci and Victor Wooten
as one of my top five instructors on the planet”
Jeff Berlin
Purchase Information:
The entire Chord Tone Concepts range is exclusively available through With Bass In Mind. As you've probably guessed, I'm not a bookstore (I'm just a hard working bassist, I'm afraid) - but the texts are still be 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 - international shipping can take up to 21 days.
*To ensure there are no errors, please do not make any PayPal transfers before consulting me.
Chord Tone Concepts (Volume One)
An Excavation of the Humble Triad -
£35 (UK & European orders), £38.50 (Rest of the World) - P&P Included.
Philip Mann is someone who I greatly admire. He was once a young unknown bass player who came to Florida to study with me purely because he wanted to learn how to play better. This was his entire motivation, not prestige, or popularity, simply academic development. However, studying music changed his life.
Today, Philip works constantly with world-class musicians; touring and on Broadway shows, he also became a long-term columnist for both Bass Player and Bass Guitarist Magazines - qualified because of the musical skills that he got by working hard for something he loved.
This collection of chord tone studies 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)
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Chord Tone Concepts (Volume Two)
The Transcendence from Intent to Implementation -
£30 (UK & European orders), £35 (Rest of the World) - P&P Included.
As a trombone student in my teens, my go-to resource was Chord Studies for Trombone by Phil Wilson - a book that opened my eyes to harmony, voice leading, and the broader musical landscape beyond just playing notes.
When I transitioned to bass guitar, I found myself searching for a definitive equivalent that would translate these harmonic concepts onto the fretboard. At the time, that resource was non-existent - but Philip Mann’s comprehensive guide now fills that gap. This text presents a variety of musical vernaculars, all within a stable and structured mindset, ensuring that players of all backgrounds can approach these concepts with clarity and purpose.
Through meticulously crafted permutations, alternate fingering suggestions, and deep explorations of harmonic movement, Philip provides bassists with the tools to navigate the fretboard with confidence and musicality. One of the most valuable aspects of this book is its emphasis on taking every example through the cycle of fourths, a more natural and practical approach for bassists compared to the traditional cycle of (unresolving) fifths. The compendium of fingering combinations takes the mystery out of navigating the instrument, making harmonic transitions and walking bass lines feel effortless.
While some exercises may not be ones you'd play on the bandstand, they serve as essential gateways to understanding harmony - especially in the context of the jazz twelve-bar blues.
The concepts within these pages provide the foundation, but what you choose to do with them
is entirely up to you. Hopefully, the insight gained here will help equip you with the skills to develop your own unique path of expression.
Laurence Cottle
Chord Tone Concepts (Volume Three)
Opening the Doors of Permutation Perception
£30 (UK & European orders), £35 (Rest of the World) - P&P Included.
In short, Phil is a natural born teacher. I can say without a doubt that every single one of our students has a great love and affinity for Phil, his teaching style, and the concepts he teaches. Why? Simply because 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.
Within this book you're going to find Phil's clear and easy to use system of learning
the chord tones over the entire fingerboard in a step by step and easy to apply way.
Phil takes you right from the start, working through each arpeggio type and then
applying multiple permutations to each arpeggio so that you not only learn each chord type, you also learn each chord type from each of its inversions - this is a BIG deal!
If you study the materials presented in this book, you're bass playing, understanding and visualisation of the fretboard and overall musicianship will be greatly improved, if not completely changed forever.
Scott Devine
Founder: Scott's Bass Lessons
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Chord Tone Concepts (Volume Four)
A Renaissance in Melodic Interpretation
£30 (UK & European orders), £35 (Rest of the World) - P&P Included.
Triad Pairs was a concept that I have heard people (mainly horn players and guitarists) talk about for years, but I had been approaching it from a different harmonic/theoretical direction. This book could easily be curriculum at Berklee - and the syllabus would likely take two semesters to cover succinctly (at least in our ‘Bass Lab’ style). There is a LOT in here! ALL of it will make you better and increase your knowledge of your real-estate, the fingerboard. BUT, there is one passage that really stuck out for me…
“In plain English; as functioning bassists you’ll spend most of your musical lives playing either ostinato motifs, or generating voice leading walking basslines. When the appropriate occasion arises where a fill can be generated, it’s highly likely that the time frame in which you have to deliver any artistic expression will be minimal - so concentrating your efforts on a fail-safe system to assist the delivery of essential melodic information will be, to say the least, time well spent. Instead of procrastinating over which scales correlate with which chords, simply identify the pending chord type, then deliver the most appropriate arpeggio supplemented by nothing more than a complementary triad pair”.
Thanks, Phil, for inspiring me, teaching me, and reminding me that there are others who care as much about bass education, maybe even more, than I do.
Steve Bailey
Former Bass Chair - Berklee College of Music, Boston.
The Bassist's Companion
A Practical Guide to Laudatory Interpretation & Conveyance
£30 (UK & European orders), £35 (Rest of the World) - P&P Included.
Aside from his performance career, which has led to several equipment endorsements (Overwater Bass Guitars, Ashdown Engineering and Sushi FX), Philip has since written a tutorial column ‘Bass Player’ magazine, lectured at The Bass Institute (London) and The Players School of Music (Florida) and, more significantly, composed a series of tutorial books that have been published commercially. The ‘Chord Tone Concepts’ series has now gathered global recognition, with the first hailed online as ‘a multi-volume instructional resource designed to help bass players master fretboard navigation, voice leading, and functional harmony through a deep, systematic study of triads and arpeggios’. These publications build a steady learning pathway for any bassist desiring to develop their practical skills to enable a professional career, with each volume logically following on from its predecessor.
In my experience, these publications make for the ideal employable recording, or live performing, bassist and therefore receive my unquestionable full recommendation.
I wish Philip well with any future developments in his career, both as a performer and an academic.
Prof. Robert Burns PhD FLCM FHEA FRSM
Bassist | Composer | Academic
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