Sight Reading Funk Rhythms For Electric Bass was written in 1994. This was the first book that I wrote. The material was really stuff that I had written over time for me to practice my sight reading. I was trying to write material that would present myself with all conceivable combinations of 16th note rhythms. The problem with just writing exercises is that you quickly memorize the rhythms. To avoid this, I wrote the examples in a song like form. By this I mean there are obvious verse and chorus like sections. Just the way real songs are. The other thing I did was to put in just enough variation that you cannot memorize any of the examples. You will be hard pressed to find four measures that are the same. The book is not just complicated for the sake of being hard. The bass lines all make sense. They sound like difficult R&B or Fusion style bass lines. After I wrote all this material for myself, I started to use it as practice material for my students at Berklee College of Music. I started getting a lot of positive feedback from my students. They all commented on how there really was not anything this challenging that they could buy. Many suggested that I should put out a book of difficult sight reading material in the Funk – Fusion style. I contacted a few of the publishing companies and they really were not interested in a book of this type. It was a big step for me to publish this material by myself. To make a long story short, I did, and the success of this book is what inspired me to do everything else. This book is still the best selling of my books. The book is used at Musicians Institute, University of Miami and North Texas to name a few schools. This book does not contain chord changes, because I find people tend to lean on the chord symbols for their hand positions instead of reading the key signatures. Remember that this book is for sight reading. The emphasis is on complex rhythms as compared with my Finger Funk Workbook, where the emphasis is on difficult fingerings. The two are completely different. Players just learning to play can also use this book. You can use the book in many ways. One way would be to put on a metronome and just clap out the rhythms. This will help you build the recognition and familiarity needed to develop good sight reading skills. I would also recommended that you take four or eight measures and get them down so you can play them well. You'll get a good workout buy just vamping on some of the phrases. This is a good book to have around if your looking for material to challenge yourself, no matter what ability you are. Keep in mind that you are only truly sight reading the first time you see something, after that your practicing it. This book is written with that in mind. I have been reading through it for years and still have not memorized any of the lines. I have packed a lot of material into this book. The look of it is no frills, but the content is like nothing else out there. This is the most difficult sight reading book available for electric bass. I have yet to come across anything harder in this style. If you're ready for a serious reading challenge, step up to the plate and check this book out. I have included a sample page for you to download.
