Reddit mentions of The Real Book: Bass Clef, Sixth Edition

Do you mean the real book?

You mean the Real Book? Pretty sure it's only chords and melodies though.

Edit: My mistake, they actually did make one for bass clef: http://www.amazon.com/The-Real-Book-Sixth-Edition/dp/0634060767

Start off by listening to a ton of jazz. Afterwards, learn your major, minor, dorian, and mixolydian scales/modes. Check youtube, there's a ton of good tutorials if you don't know them yet. Then buy a real book and start attempting to follow along with the changes. Start with just the root notes and later add the 3rds and 5ths. Here's a book that I think explains walking basslines pretty well, and another one if you're interested in soloing.



Here's a list of jazz songs most students learn early on:

Afro Blue

All Blues

All Of Me

All The Things You Are

A Night In Tunisia

Au Privave

Autumn Leaves

Beautiful Love

Black Orpheus

Blue Bossa

Blue In Green

Blue Monk

Blues For Alice

Body And Soul

Cherokee

Cotton Tail

Don’t Get Around Much Anymore

A Fine Romance

Footprints

Four

Freddie Freeloader

The Girl From Ipanema

How High The Moon

How Insensitive

Lady Bird

Maiden Voyage

Misty

Mr. P.C.

My Funny Valentine

Oleo

Ornithology

Recorda-me

Red Clay

Satin Doll

So What

Song For My Father

Sugar

Take Five

Take The “A” Train

There Will Never Be Another You

Tune Up

18 is young as fuck. You're fine. Get one of these: https://www.amazon.com/Real-Book-Bass-Clef-Sixth/dp/0634060767/ref=tmm_other_meta_binding_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

My suggestion is to focus on the backing track stuff first. Know the backing tracks forwards and backwards, pick a particular idea and stick with it to nail it down. If you want to improve your musicianship chops, write out the part you are going to play. Like on staff paper and everything.

I am not the best person to give advice on improv, because I have always sucked at it. If anyone has any tips for how you can learn to improv effectively in 5 weeks, I'll be quite interested in their advice as well. Though one thing I have learned about improv is that nothing is truly improvised. Building a library of licks and stringing them together on the spot isn't the same as pulling notes out of thin air. Even the most impressive improv musicians have a basic idea in their head before they start.

To practice sight reading, get a Real Book and run through it. Sight read the melody lines, and then build bass lines from scratch over the chords. Learn the style and tempo terminology. Understanding the directions at the top of the page is as big a part of sight reading as the notes themselves.

Aim to be completely prepared one week before the actual audition. Then spend that last week running through it all again. And again. And again. You want to let muscle memory kick in when the nerves start fighting you in the audition chair.

My favorite musical aphorism: "Amateurs practice until they get it right. Professionals practice until they can't get it wrong."

The real book is a book containing a collection of lead sheets with transcribed melody and chords in the right transposition and clef (it's available in C in bass and treble clef, Eb and Bb in treble clef and a vocal version is available too). Usually there is info of the specific version being transcribed, so you'll maybe be able to find it on youtube so the structure is exactly as written.

It's really good, and has the majority of the songs you'll want to play regularly as a relatively mainstream jazzer. The "legal" commercial version the wiki article talks about is available at Amazon for less than twenty dollars, if not your favourite music store. Probably the worthwhile investment for any serious jazzer.

Building Walking Bass Lines

Hal Leonard Bass Method

the real book / 2

I also agree with this! They have 4 volumes (Realbooks) for bass clef. I’ve done gigs with these with a guitar friend, lots of fun!

Here’s the first one with a lot of popular standards:
https://www.amazon.com/Real-Book-Bass-Clef-Sixth/dp/0634060767

I just got Mikes Downes' Jazz bassline book and it's amazing! It has tons of transcriptions and lots of very clearly laid out ideas to learn from. http://www.amazon.com/The-Jazz-Bass-Line-Book/dp/395481000X

Also I'd suggest listening to a lot of jazz and playing along with tunes you like. If you want a book of jazz standards I'd suggest something like The Bass Clef Real Book which has hundreds of lead sheets to lots of often played tunes.
http://www.amazon.com/Real-Book-Bass-Clef-Sixth/dp/0634060767/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1453667062&sr=1-1&keywords=bass+clef+real+book

It's kinda the default answer and it doesn't have a backing track, but The Real Book.

If you're trying to explore jazz and improve your music reading, there really isn't any other way. A lot of jazz bass books just have the bass line which could be as simple (and boring) as a transcribed walking bass; with the real book you get the melodies and the chords which is what jazz is all about. Plus if you meet some other jazz guys there's probably a handful of tunes you can play with them (and they might have their own real book too).

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0634060767/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1480192493&sr=8-1&pi=SY200_QL40&keywords=the+real+book+bass+clef&dpPl=1&dpID=41Lk--BCg3L&ref=plSrch

https://www.amazon.com/Charles-Mingus-More-Than-Books/dp/0793509009

This should give you a great start. Good luck!

I can say as a fellow bassist that my big first step into undstanding and using theorywas when I got Real Book and started doing walking bass lines between chords. Walking basslines are really one of the places where understanding chords is really important on bass because we are playing more than just the root or the fifth.

When it comes deeper understanding of harmony and chords, it kills me to say this, it's helpful to know how to play just a little guitar or even better some piano as you can start to connect the sound and movement or chords better by playing them. Bass, while being the supreme instrument, isn't a chordal instrument. We can play chords on bass but it's really not the same as how they sound on chordal instruments.

If you need help on how to get to started on walking bass lines I've heard good things about the Book Building Walking Bass Lines.

Hi, these are the textbooks at home. How much of help will they be?

Essential Jazz Elements: http://imgur.com/a/LtyW8

Standard of Excellence Jazz Ensemble Method: http://imgur.com/a/Q2rNh

The second textbook has songs in it to play (for sightreading?), will that do instead of the Real Book