Victor Wooten Bass Workshop: The Language of Music and How to Speak It, Paperback

(Instructional/Bass/DVD). Victor Lemonte Wooten emerged as a once-in-a-lifetime, game-changing bassist in the early '90s, via his highly innovative playing with Bela Flek & the Flektones. Launching his solo career a few years later, with A Show of Hands, it soon became apparent that Wooten was also a major musical force, thanks to an organic and highly original approach to music and music education. In this book/online video package, Victor Wooten Bass Workshop: The Language of Music and How to Speak It, Victor reveals his musical soul. In Part 1, he outlines his ten essential elements of music including such important and under-emphasized areas as emotion and feel, dynamics, tone, phrasing, space, and listening. This section focuses on Victor's concepts and approaches and are more theoretical in nature. In Part 2, Victor addresses the reader with personal lessons, using text, notation, tablature, and video footage to cover such key topics as warming up and hand-strengthening, tone, harmonics, thumb technique, tapping, looping, and soloing. This section is a more "how to" approach with hands-on demonstrations. Throughout, Victor underscores this vital material with a "groove first" ethic, as well an accent on being musical and creative three mandatory ingredients to becoming a highly-sought-after professional bassist. All of which makes Victor Wooten Bass Workshop a must-have tool for bass players at all levels.