Recommended Listening and the Benefits

This is a short list of some great albums that are full of fantastic music and which I feel have been an influence on my bass playing:    

Stevie Wonder – Songs In The Key Of Life (bass - Nathan Watts)

Miles Davis –  Kind of Blue, The Complete Concert 1964, Seven Steps to Heaven (bass - Paul Chambers, Ron Carter)

Cannonball Adderley - Nancy Wilson/Cannonball Adderley (bass - Sam Jones)

Oscar Peterson Trio – Night Train (bass - Ray Brown)

Jaco Pastorious – Jaco Pastorious (bass - Jaco Pastorius)

Pat Metheny – Bright Size Life (bass - Jaco Pastorius)

Herbie Hancock – Thrust, Takin' Off (bass - Paul Jackson, Butch Warren)

D'Angelo - Voodoo (bass - Pino Palladino)

James Brown – Live at the Apollo (1963) 

I feel that listening has been a fundemental part of my developemant as a bass player and a musician. I have been able to gain so much from these records by playing along to the music and by trying to copy the fantastic bass players who play on them. It's almost like having a lesson from each of them! 

I would thoroughly recommend including this approach in your own developement because not only are you practicing great time and feel (rhythm), technique and harmony all at the same time but it is great fun and very satisying when it all comes together. 

There is an immeasurable amount of recorded music available so there are always new experiences to be had or knowledge to gain.