I don’t know anything about Ari and her teaching methods is her stuff suitable for beginners? Or should I wait to be a B2B graduate ?
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It’s up to you and what your goals are. I read Ari’s first book at the same time I was taking B2B, and also was taking the TalkingBass Scales course.
She’s very heavy on theory and understanding intervals, rather than just learning how to bang out songs with tab. She’s heavy stuff, and may be too heavy for some people.
A couple things to keep in mind about my doing those three courses at once:
(1) I had put myself on an extreme fast track when I decided to learn bass, because of my age and my late start.
(2) I’m retired.
(3) I was “recliner bound” due to my recovering from the cancer treatment, therefore didn’t have much else to do.
I highly recommend her theory book though.
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Thanks @PamPurrs I think her theory book is available on Amazon I might take a look and pick it up
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I think Ari’s first book is an excellent companion to B2B.
I went through it after, only because I didn’t know about it.
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Good pick up BigAl, this is exactly why I just cant get into Ari’s Bass Theory book. It reminded me of a High School maths book and my way of learning is not suited.
I’m sure plenty of people would enjoy her teaching style, but the theory book feels to me like it is a real case of, throw everything at the wall and see what sticks. In my case nothing. I also bought the Pentatonic Playground on Trufire, this is a bit easier to follow as the Tab/ notes are on the screen, but still not as easy to follow as B2B or Josh and his way of teaching.
Learning to play bass while in your 40’s, is nothing if not humbling. It has actually helped me to relate to my teenagers and especially with their struggle to grasp some subjects at school. You realize that the ‘teacher’ really plays a huge part in what you actually take in, or don’t. The student ( in my case) shares some of the blame too, my tendency to Geek out and try to read every book and watch every YouTube video on the subject at the same time, don’t help. This is why I found the Jeff Berlin reading course a help. It concentrates on 1 thing, learning to read Bass Clef. That is enough for me, for now.
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Learning theory and how to read music is not for everyone, and I understand. That’s why so many experienced guitar and bass players are still playing by tab. To each his/her own.
Ari’s method is very deep, but she focuses on some of the most vital aspects of bass playing, such as intervals etc. She’s not everyone’s cup of tea, that’s for sure. I can say that I owe a great deal of my musical knowledge to her and Mark Smith (TalkingBass). I love Josh and his style, but B2B is elementary school stuff as opposed to the graduate school stuff that Ari and Mark teach.
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Guess I’m still in kindergarten then Pam :). Happy to be there for now and learning my ABC’s.
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Ya gotta start somewhere. Been there, done that!
Good wishes in the journey.
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Oh okay. I was going to be looking at buying the first book but this puts me off a little
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Theory isn’t fun, period.
It’s a lot of drilling into our aged, thick skulls and takes a lot of repetition and yes it does seem like a class in school, because it basically is that.
At this point in (most of) our lives, we are all looking for things we like to do and enjoy, if theory fits in there, cool, if not, thump on without it.
It will free you a lot in playing if you ever want to do something other than learning others’ songs.
But if you ain’t into it, don’t do it.
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That might just be my take mac, about the school book. I think its because there are quiz sections on each chapter. You can sign up for free on Ariane’s website and access the videos that go with the theory book. This might help to make your mind up.
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great description John_E! Loved 'drilling into our aged, thick skulls"! Sounds like me alright. You are so right though, take theory on if you can, if not keep going anyway and maybe come back in 12 months and it will make more sense as you have a few A-Ha moments along the way.
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… it is for me. But, then I also like math so there’s that.
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I think if you take the course with the book makes it a lot better to understand. There’s all kind of info and excises in the course that are actually all good. The books around 30.00Bucks the couse when I took it was about 250. Not sure what it’s now 300plus? But it all worth it in long run private teacher is about 50 buck an hour. There’s 20 chapters . Lots of information. Yeah it’s like a bass class if you would like to further your knowledge on the bass. It’s well worth the investment. It’s like people here say how far do you want to go on bass. There’s always going to be something new to learn on bass. Example reading music is a challenge in it self, well for it is. It just makes the language of music easier in the long run. Good luck to all. My 2 🪙 🪙 cents .
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Just as a follow-up, I checked out my book (got both today) and they didn’t have any “snow”. FWIW.
I don’t think that I can do a direct link, but…
Start here:
Then click on “Click here for videos that come with the book”
Register/Log-in
Watch the “Welcome” videos until you get to one titled something like “Read this if you have the indiegogo version” and that’s where there’s an explanation about the errors and a link to the pdf.
Hope this helps.
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Having been through the errata, this isn’t so bad. It’s not like 20 pages of stuff you have to hunt and correct throughout the book like most errata. An errata page shows the whole page of the book the errata is on. One whole errata page might just have an arrow pointing to one tiny note to change on the flawed page. The pages are numbered for the corresponding page they are replacing in the book. A couple look like the whole page is replaced, but you could just paste them over the page they are replacing or add it to the binding sequence or something. Most seem to be very minimal edits. So while this is represented as “20 pages of errata” it is really more like 20 total errata. This puts my mind at rest quite a bit. Not a big deal.
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That’s good advice . . . I think I’ll take it.
Cheers
Joe
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I’m not looking for arts and crafts projects at this point in my life
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That’s fair. 
I’ve asked if we can get full replacement pages (both sides) and then it’s a matter of punching holes in them and doing the binding, but that is some effort as well.
I love a bit of arts and crafts myself so don’t mind this too much, though I would have preferred the corrected version of course.
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