Ah, sus chords! Sus means suspended – what we are suspending here is the third of the chord, so a sus2 or sus4 chord is essentially a chord with “something else” instead of the third, which leads to it being less stable and not defined as major or minor. This “something else” can be the

It all started with marveling about the note H in the German musical alphabet and me being on the phone trying to spell something akin to Oachkatzlschwoaf (which means tale of a squirrel where I come from!). English is not my mother tongue. The way German is wired, we just don't spell like they do

What does “Rhythm Changes” mean? We refer to “Rhythm Changes” to a chord sequence made famous by George Gershwin’s tune “I Got Rhythm”. The A section of this tune features a two bar phrase with chords changing every other beat, like this: I chord, VI chord, II chord, V chord. In the key of C:

Let’s talk melodic minor for a second. It is a beautiful scale. What is it? It is the natural minor scale (AKA the sixth mode of the major scale, aeolian minor) with the raised sixth and seventh scale degrees. In classical theory it makes a difference whether you ascend or descend… ascending means sharpening the

The International Musical Alphabet… Are you from a country other than the US, where quavers make you quiver (rather than eighth notes), where Do means C, or sharp means “crosse“? Feeling like you need to relearn pretty much everything from scratch as you foray into the land of YouTube videos, international teachings and real books,

Play in a band and asked to contribute a great bass line to a song? Happy jamming and want to take it a step further? Writing a song from the bottom up? Being Able to Create a Great Bass Line From Scratch is a Useful, Rewarding and Learnable Skill! While some great bass lines are

A Tough Place to be It can strike without warning or creep up slowly over time- this feeling of being in a lull with our instrument pursuits: burnt out, joyless, completely without motivation to pick up the beloved bass. It makes no sense, because you know that you are a bassist at heart, you know

How difficult is it to convert from fretted to fretless bass playing? While I don’t recommend to convert fully – both fretless and fretted have their uses – read in my article below what I recommend to keep in mind. The transition is so much easier if you have a solid one-finger-per-fret regimen under your

Websites Gallore: arianecap.com I am very happy you are here, on my blog! My blog (arisbassblog.com) is dedicated to bass education, courses, learning, my blog. arianecap.com is my artist site and I have completely redesigned it with the help of my awesome web wiz Amber Kim. For new releases, artist news, bio, audio, video, pictures,

Solo Bass Playing? To some it is a sacrilege – using bass outside of the band context, using bass for anything but grooving in a band. I challenge that view – amazing solo bass music has been made. It is a very special sound – even though it is “just bass”, the variety of tones

In this article I answer a question on quora about errors. Errors are a difficult topic for me personally because I have a history of being extremely hard on myself if things are not “perfect”. So much so that my self judgment at times completely paralyzed me and sure took the fun out of performing

Learn in Your Sleep or: Put Your Bass Under Your Pillow for Maximum Practice Effect. Wait, what? In this article I talk about the magic window of learning we get right before we drift into dream land. Another opportunity to maximize your practice bang with just a small pre-sleep routine. It is really easy and

Learning Channels Ever played a piece over and over and it still failed to “stick”? No matter how often you repeat it, when you return back to it it feels as if you are starting from scratch? Don’t worry, there is nothing wrong with you. Likely you just never learned how to practice effectively. Focusing

It’s a no-brainer, you practice, then you take a break, right? True, but, even that process of taking breaks can be improved upon and hence make your practice session significantly more effective. How you take those breaks, the spirit in which you take breaks and at what intervals all plays into how much you will

I recently wrote on Feedback Loops, and I got a few questions on it. So I wanted to go a bit deeper on the topic, particularly, by giving you examples of “how not to” and rather “how to”. It helps to have examples  – whether it is to improve yourself or others! Make sure to

Adapting The Patterns for Four-, Five-, Six-string Basses – Surprisingly Easy and Not What you Might Think I have been getting a few emails lately with questions about The Pattern System. The Pattern System is a systematic approach of getting the fretboard down, learning to think ahead (great for the groove!) and being able to

The best method I know of for habit change is the PORA method. I learned the basics of it at the University of Music in Vienna, Austria, refined it over the years and created a step-by-step infographic. Get the scoop and a video I did for ISB here.        

New playing video play list: Bach Cello Suite #1 in its entirety I recently released the entire Bach Cello Suite #1, all seven movements, on youtube. Let me know how you like it, please give a comment and a thumbs up. Bach is an amazing teacher. Notice how the bass lines weave through the chords…

The Right Questions at the Right Time… When a student is interested in working with me, I send them an in depth questionnaire. Why do I ask you questions? Am I not the teacher, the one who is supposed to have the answers for you? Besides the fact that I genuinely want to know the

European Wall Owners - Rejoice! Shipping to Europe - Now Awesome! I am fully aware that even the lowest shipping costs I could obtain to ship to our European friends from California were still - ridiculously high. Of course I have no control over that, it's not like I am a big warehouse or Amazon,

Help Being Accountable? A question I just got in: I read that one of the reasons you created the 20 unit program was to help folks be accountable with practice/studies.  My question is, how does the program actually do that? Here is the reply I wrote on email: Hi Derek, Quick answer to your query: