"Nashville is where every flavor of American music - from R&B, rock, and blues to soul, bluegrass, and gospel co-exists alongside the city's best-known exports, pop and country. It makes sense, then, that this comprehensive yet down-home instructional DVD box set comes from Music City resident Roy Vogt, an experienced touring and session player with a Master's degree in electric bass performance from the University of Miami. Clearly, Vogt, an adjunct professor at Nashville's Belmont University for three decades, loves playing, loves teaching, and is very good at both.

 

Over the course of 20 lessons spread over 10 DVDs, his 20-hour Teach Me Bass Guitar delivers enough wisdom to turn a disciplined novice into a gigging pro. Things start slowly with an introduction to the instrument, but by the time you arrive at disc five, you're working on dominant 7th chords, learning about the relationship between bass and drums, and getting syncopated; disc eight takes you through major and minor pentatonic scales, inversions, three-and-four note sequences, and sliding scales. The "guided" sheet music, with both notation and tab, just might be the least threatening, most interactive way to improve your reading.

 

Thanks to the real-time fretboard animation, the "in-the-style-of" music tracks, and the colorful, 162-page .pdf book on disc five, students can expect to finish the course with a solid command of techniques, grooves, bass history, and reading. Vogt, hostess Ashley Lollis, and a silly icon nicknamed Ralph convey all this information with a twang and a twinkle. Best of all, Vogt and a group of tasteful Nashville session musicians play through each of the more than 100 song versions at two speeds, fast and slow - and then Vogt leaves the "room" so students can sit in the hot seat to get a taste of the real world."