Truefire Kurt Morgan's Progressive Bass Playbook

Improvising Basslines And Fills To Support Soloists
When supporting a soloist, bass players have the very challenging responsibility of staying locked into the rhythm section, while also improvising basslines and fills to give the soloist ample creative freedom to take their solo wherever they wish.

In Kurt Morgan’s Progressive Bass Playbook, you’ll learn key techniques and a wide palette of rhythmic, harmonic and melodic devices for supporting a soloist and adapting to wherever the music takes you.

We can’t imagine anyone better suited than Kurt to pass on these essential skills to you. Kurt has played with a “who’s who” list of top artists ranging from jazz legend Clark Terry to Hilary Duff to Tom Morello. Over the past 10 years, he’s also played bass for Dweezil Zappa, performing the music of his legendary father, Frank Zappa whose music contains intricately composed instrumental sections, along with extended improvised solos.

“It’s important to know your role as a bass player - and to understand how that role changes in different musical settings,” says Kurt. “The idea of my Playbook is to give you a collection of ideas for improvising parts in a big range of musical situations.”

When other musicians are soloing, we have to improvise our bass-lines and fills to support the soloist, while staying locked in with the rhythm section to maintain the groove.

I’ve designed this curriculum to cover a variety of musical situations, styles, tempos and harmonies. We’ll work on driving the downbeats on a blues, swinging a slow 3/4 waltz, attitude and attack on a rock vamp, finding the foundation on a progressive funk in 7/4, a rock-funk-fusion groove in 11/8, and we’ll examine how we blur the lines between solo and support in a power trio setting.”

You’ll have all of TrueFire’s advanced learning tools at your finger tips to personalize your workspace and learn at your own pace. All of the tab and notation is synced to the video lessons. You can loop or slow down any section, and you’ll have all of the backing tracks to work with on your own.

Grab your bass, and let’s dig in with Kurt Morgan!