Bass Pattern

For all the celebrations to mark the tercentenary of Purcell’s death last year (1995), his keyboard music has remained very much in the shadow of his works for the theatre and Church; yet the simplicity and grace of these more intimate pieces make them immediately appealing. Several of them are, in fact, transcriptions of earlier vocal works, and therein lies the key to their interpretation. Of the two performers, Olivier Baumont is the more flamboyant, invariably choosing faster tempi than Sophie Yates, and playing with fluidity, panache and humour. But Yates’s guileless approach really captures the music’s ingenuousness, even if she occasionally sounds a little too strait-laced. Her harpsichord (a copy by Andrew Garlich of an instrument made in 1681 by Jean-Antoine Vaudry, now in London’s Victoria & Albert Museum) could hardly be better suited to the music, with its sweet, warm sound, beautifully reproduced by the Chandos engineers, who don’t make the all too frequent mistake of recording the instrument too close. Baumont’s harpsichord has a sharper tang, and he also uses a virginals for the Grounds and individual lessons. Both artists have much to offer, and the final choice will depend on whether you prefer your Purcell plain (Yates) or piquant (Baumont).

This 3 DVD box set contains 9 x 12 Bar Blues arrangements for solo guitar (they sound great and complete with just one player). They start very simple and move into quite difficult and each one covers a new skill or technique for you to learn and then experiment with. The aim being eventually for you to be able to improvise using mixtures of all the techniques and skills you learned by playing the set pieces. All of the sheet music now comes as pdf files on the dvd for you to print or view on your computer screen. This was originally offered as 3 individual DVD's but we have now combined them into one box. You can however buy individual DVD's as downloads.

The Susceptible Now is the new release from drummer and 2024 Pulitzer Prize-winner Tyshawn Sorey that covers a surprising set of some of his favorite music. Featuring his trio of Aaron Diehl on piano and Harish Raghavan on bass, the album follows on the heels of his masterful release Continuing, which was voted #4 release of 2023 by the Francis Davis Poll of over 150 jazz critics, and was hailed by The Guardian as "5-Stars: simmering with reinventions of old magic… One of the year's special sets."

A disc that includes just three-and-a-half minutes’ worth of the delectable Maria Cristina Kiehr sounds like tantalization taken a step too far. Yet, as so often with Alpha, a theme lies behind this apparently disparate collection, although you’d have to be a Buxtehude scholar to spot it from the list of contents. The clue is in the word “Ciaconna” in the disc’s title, “Ciaccona: il mondo che gira.” Got there yet? Well, the answer is that all these works include an ostinato, or repeated bass pattern.

This book will help any musician unlock the secrets of the Afro-Cuban rhythmic feel. By clearly demonstrating the underlying pattern called the Clave and the comping patterns called Tumbaos which are played over the Clave, this book will help every bass player learn these fundamental Latin rhythms. (Matching keyboard book (EL9706CD) also available.)