### Alex Webster: Extreme metal bass (book)

#### 02/03/12 || BamaHammer

I know there are a lot of you out there who frequent Global Domination are musicians, so I figured I would show some love and try to give you guys something that was exclusively just for you. As a fellow metal musician, I fully understand that we are always trying to improve our skills in order to become better able to express our own musical ideas, and I feel like this book is an excellent tool for helping bassists get better.

Alex Webster is a musician who really needs no introduction, but he’s going to get a little one here anyway since he’s a musician and a person whom I greatly admire and respect. Most of us metal brethren know him as the longtime and original bassist for Cannibal Corpse. He’s also a member of the insanely technical and progressive extreme metal three-piece Blotted Science, another band I would gladly recommend, and he has performed session work with Erik Rutan’s Hate Eternal. When you hear the guy speak, he exudes an aura of musical intelligence that is hard to match in the world of metal or any genre of music. Clearly, this a man who knows how to play a bass guitar.

When I discovered last year that Webster was releasing a bass technique book, as a musician, it definitely peaked my interest. Now that I’ve had a chance to purchase my own copy and work with it for a while, I can honestly say that any bassist who plays metal of any style or form would serve themselves well to check out this book. Inside is a wealth of useful information that is sure to make any metal bassist better at playing his or her instrument as well as a better musician in general.

The book comes with a CD featuring play-along tracks and MIDI drum files to keep you on track and make sure you’re playing the exercises correctly, if you choose to use it. The exercises themselves are immensely useful. Being a guitar player by trade and a bassist by hobby, I’ve noticed an obvious improvement in my playing just by attempting to master the scales and hand techniques. My bass-playing sounds noticeably tighter and smoother since starting to go through this book. One of the best parts about this book is how Webster acknowledges and teaches techniques from all different types of metal bass-playing, not just the technical death metal for which he’s known. He provides excellent examples from thrash, power, and death metal and even sludge. Webster does, however, focus solely on playing finger-style bass, but he states in the introduction that the exercises can be done beneficially with a pick as well. This wasn’t an issue with me since I play finger-style anyway, but it is worth noting.

Alex Webster is obviously one of the world’s premier bassists, but with “Extreme metal bass,” he becomes one of the world’s premier bass teachers. This book was written with a clear purpose. As a reader, I feel as though Webster truly wants to provide bassists with a quality product that will help them improve their abilities and reach new levels in their craft. As a guy who enjoys playing bass as a hobby, I can honestly say that this book is excellent and worth every penny I paid for it. If you play metal bass and want to get better, get this book. If you work your way through it, there is no way that you won’t get results.

- Information
- Released: 2011
- Publisher: Hal Leonard
- Website: Alex Webster Twitter

- Chapter list
- 01. Important scales, intervals, and chords for extreme metal
- 02. Right-hand techniques
- 03. Left-hand techniques
- 04. Tapping
- 05. Rhythm exercises
- 06. Triplet grooves
- 07. Sixteenth-note grooves
- 08. Writing bass lines for speed-picked guitar parts
- 09. Doom and sludge
- 10. Song examples