It’s obvious now that the Internet has revolutionized music distribution. But what most people don’t realize is that it is also quietly revolutionizing music education. For good reason, short of meeting face-to-face with your instructor either one-on-one or in a classroom situation, the Internet is arguably a near perfect medium for delivering music education by virtue of its accessibility, interactivity, immediacy and ability to serve up video, sound and shared files on demand. By comparison, instructional books, records, videos and DVDs are positively 20th century!

As a result, bassists-in-progress, like me, now have the ability access to some of the best teachers, independent of geography and time schedules. It’s a trend that can only grow. According to Dave Kusek, the co-developer of MIDI standard, and vice president at BerkleeMusic.com, this year’s enrollment at Berklee’s online school exceeded the number of students on their physical campus by 25% and within a few years the online school will be delivering the same number of teaching hours as its traditional campus. “People are hungry for high quality music instruction and are turning to the Internet to provide,” explains Kusek who says that the music industry is leading other arts on the technology curve. “We fully expect that what’s happening with music education will eventually happen to publishing, film-making and acting.”

Here are some of the vanguard organizations of online music education and sites offering educational resources. Check’em out—Michael Menduno

Fee-Based Resources:

Berklee On The Brain

URL: www.Berkleemusic.com

WHAT:
BerkleeMusic.com is the premier online music school pioneered by Berklee College of Music. The site is the oldest (founded in September 2002) and largest online music school.

CONTENT:
BerkleeMusic offers numerous certificate programs like Song Writing, Production and Arranging, and nearly 60 online courses. A sampling; Producing With Pro Tools, Hip Hop Writing, Arranging, Music Theory, Ear Training, Improvisation, Classic Rock Guitar, and Music Publishing. The school will be adding a bass program sometime next year!

Classes, which are taught by Berklee faculty, are twelve weeks in length and known for their intensity, rigor and depth. Each course consists of 12 weekly lessons, each of which has 5-10 sections. Students are expected to complete one lesson each week. Instructors critique student homework assignments. Depending on the course, the homework might be in the form of music notation files or recorded mp3s. Students also have messaging and email access to instructors and classmates, and typically participate in a weekly class (IM) chat.

ADDITIONAL FEATURES:
BerkleeMusic uses text, audio, video, Flash, mp3s, and integrated IM to enhance interactivity and the users’ learning experience. Classes remain accessible to students for a year after completion. The site also boasts a very active online user community, searchable job/gig database, news feeds, access to BerkleeMusic student radio and online store.

CLAIM TO FAME
Personal interaction with Berklee faculty, expertly-crafted course content, many accredited certification programs. Add the Berklee brand to your resume!

CAVEATS:
Each class moves through a weekly lesson that requires a minimum of 6-8 hours a week. Don’t get behind!

COST:
Classes range from $595-$895 for non-credit/$695-$1195 for credit. Student loans are available.

Play That Funky Music Grasshopper

URL: www.musicdojo.com

WHAT:
Like the name MusicDojo is, well, an online music “dojo” founded in 2003 by bassist Adam Nitti and bassist/web entrepreneur Len Sitnick and has now grown to having over 20 instructors.

CONTENT:
The Dojo offers over 60 classes for bassists, guitarists and drummers (just added). Examples of class series; Jazz Improvisation, Walking Bass, The Art of the Groove, Slapping, Tapping, reading for Bassists, and Harmony and Theory. Each four-week class, which is taught by independent player/instructors, is comprised of 20 daily lessons, which share a common format: some classes are more text-based while others are more video-based. Each require a minimum of 30+ minutes a day of time to complete. Students are expected to keep current with daily lessons.
High profile instructors include David Dyson, Dave LaRue (tapping), Adam Nitti, Norm Stockton (art of the groove), and Anthony Wellington (slapping). Students have email access to instructors who critique student assignments and mp3s. Some classes also offer a weekly chat.

ADDITONAL FEATURES
The site uses text, audio, video and mp3 sharing and classes use a similar format. Completed classes are archived indefinitely. The site includes an active user community and numerous forums. Nitti plans to offer online chats with high profile bassists later this year open to the Internet public.

CLAIM TO FAME:
Focus on practical bass education. Individual instructor credentials. Well-thought out classes/formats and scheduling ex: you can take some classes in 4-week increments or two-weeks increments based on the users’ schedule, so that students don’t fall behind.

CAVEATS:
None.

COSTS:
Four-week classes are $49.95, two-week classes (half of a four-week class) are $29.95.

Video Lessons on Demand

URL: www.workshoplive.com

WHAT:
WorkshopLive is a new education site which launched in DEC 05 and focuses on performance education. The site is a subsidiary and offshoot of the National Guitar Workshop which hosts summer music workshops for teens and adults, and publishes music instruction books.

CONTENT:
WorkshopLive offers over 800 short video-oriented lessons consisting of 4-5 “scenes” or sections, and typically run for 10-12 minutes. Lessons are organized by instrument, style (ex: rock, blues, jazz) and level (beginning, intermediate advanced). Lesson examples: Melodic Playing (Alternate Picking and Eighth Notes, Rest review and Playing the Silence, The C Major Scale, The Chromatic Scale), or Arpeggios I (E7 Root-4 Arpeggio, D7 Root-5 Arpeggio, A7 Root-6 Arpeggio). Lessons are more like an online DVD in that there is no live interaction with instructors.

Instruments include: guitar (currently the largest # of lessons), drums, keyboard, and beginning-level bass (just added in April). They plan to add more rock bass bass offerings in early June and jazz and blues bass offerings later in the year. WorkshopLive uses instructors from its parent company, National Guitar Workshop. Currently lessons are from NGW’s 30 most popular instructors.

ADDITIONAL FEATURES:
WorkshopLive offers users a gig bag of tools including a video glossary of music terms, exercises, jam tracks, a tuner, metronome, chord finder, song of the day, news feed, articles and information, several topic-based community forums/bulletin boards, a gear section and store. One neat feature: the ability to change tempos on lesson playbacks (WAV files) without changing pitch,

CLAIM TO FAME
NGW instructors and course material and their experience working with young people.

CAVEATS:
The site is heavily marketing oriented. Users must hit a skip button every time you log in to skip past company marketing spiels. A click on gear sends you to what appears to be a paid advertisement. And there are plenty of mini-spiels woven tightly into the site along with a plethora of clickable vendor banner ads less you forget to shop.

I found the animated shockwave graphics too-in-your-face after a while and the video and shockwave pages tend to load very slowly. Argh! There is also little or no teacher interaction except through watching videos!

There is no teacher interaction—a key features in other online education sites.

COST:
WorkshopLive is based on a subscriber model: $29.95/mo, $59.95/quarter, $199.95/year for unlimited access to lessons. Students can add family members for $10/mo or $79.95/year.

We Be Jammin’

URL: www.eJamming.com

WHAT:
eJamming.com is an online facility that enables one or more players from around the world to jam in real-time over the Internet using midi-enabled instruments, ex: an electric bass with a midi-converter box. The jams are archived and can be played back or exported to a production program for mixing. The service is aimed at jammers, students, educators, producers and bands.

CONTENT:
A user wanting to set up a jam, logs onto the eJamming site and creates (or joins) a virtual ‘stage’. Once the stage is created, you can search eJammings user profiles and invite selected players to join your stage or post a bulletin for certain kind of players. WANTED: Funky bass players who dig Motown. The leader can audition players online before letting them onto the stage. Each player is assigned a channel on the stage leaders eJamming console which resides on their PC. The leader’s console controls the master mix and synchronizes the session while each player controls their mid-sound generator and the mix that they hear. Players jam and can hear all the participants in real-time.

Each players performance is recorded locally on their machine. At the end of the session the data is exchanged and assembled on the jam leaders machine. Though some of the live performance may not be heard due to a network slowdown or glitch, the archived session includes all performances. The file can then be exported to a production program for editing and overdubs and final production.

ADDITONAL FEATURES:
eJamming offers a variety of thoughtful features that makes it a potent interactive tool in a musicians arsenal. The system includes built-in text messaging that can be used to share lyrics or chord changes during a jam, a Voice-over-IP link (like Skype) that enables jammers to talk, a video-conferencing for players who have a webcam. eJamming enables jam leaders to audition participants and limit participants to those having the stage password. It also enables the leader to choose from multiple takes from each instrument and re-assemble a jam with all of his/her favorite takes. Users are able to control their sound generation, mix, determine how they wish to handle latency issues caused by network interference.

A future version of the eJamming software enables players with audio instruments such as voice or a saxophone can play with the jam and though they cannot be heard live by fellow jammers, their performance will be included on the final archived session.

CLAIM TO FAME:
Using midi as the medium, and some very sophisticated technology, eJamming cleverly manages the latency problem inherent in sharing real-time audio information over the Net making it possible for players to collaborate in real-time.

CAVEATS:
Though ejamming manages latency, it doesn’t eliminate it. Depending on distance between players (ex: in the same city versus another continent) and network connections, players will likely have to cope with latency issues ex: latency higher than 25-60 milliseconds, by varying their attack, avoiding songs like AC/DC’s “Whole Lot of Rosie” played at breakneck tempos and through eJamming’s live sync settings, ex: you can chose to eliminate notes that arrive too late (though they are still saved to the hard drive for later playback).
and other audio instruments such as horm

Note also, bass players will need a midi-converter such as a Teratec’s Axon AX 100, Roland G-120 or Yahmaha G-50.

Cost:
eJamming is subscription based. The cost is $4.95 a day, $19.95 per month and $100 for six month, $180/year. Currently, users receive a free-month for signing up.

Free Resources

The web offers bass players a plethora of free sites with useful information. Here are a few you might like to check out. Please note that I have left out the many good vendor sponsored sites.

Activebass.com: http://www.activebass.com
A bass mega-site featuring forums, over 8000 lessons, articles, news, tabs, links to bass artists, a bass store and more.

Bass Lessons.com: http://www.basslessons.com
Basslesson.com is a site that offers links to resources sorted into several categories: bass classifieds, message boards, links to bass gear and bass lessons. The lessons section features a searchable national bass teacher database. There are also paid advertisements.

BassLinks .com: http://www.basslinks.com/
As the name says, Bass Links is another site with links to a variety of resources including; cass communities, magazines, organizations, players, vendors, tab sites, classified, vendors message boards and schools.

Big Bottom: http://www.24stgeorge.com/
Big Bottom is an online news magazine about bass players edited and published by bassist cum web designer Dale Cruse. Get the lowdown on what’s happening in bass world.

CyberfretBass.com: http://www.cyberfretbass.com/index.php
Cyberfretbass is an educational site chock full of useful material including lessons, scales, music theory, links to ear training resources, tablature and more. Some of the material is onsite, other material is a linked source. The site is supported in part by banner ads and vendor links.

Double Bass Links Page: http://www.gollihur.com/kkbass/basslink.html
Links to all things double bass created by Bob Gollihur and Gollihur Music. The site literally has hundreds of useful and some not so useful links pertaining to upright basses.

The DudePit: http://www.vintagebass.com/thedudepit/
The Dudepit hosted by Steve “Dude” Barr, Vintage Bass Trading, is a resource-rich, sometimes raucous, always active community of 2600 registered bassists run by bassists for bassists. Definitely one of the cooler hangs in bass world. The site, includes manufacturer forums, an active buy-sell gear exchange, much philosophy and a great place to talk and or have your questions answered.

eBassist.com: http://www.ebassist.com/
eBassist gathers posts and pictures from various bass/music newsgroups and boasts an active community of nearly 1000 members.

Good Ear: http://www.good-ear.com/
Good Ear offers free online ear training exercises. Listen up: you can never have too much ear training!

Harmony Central®: Bass Resources: http://www.harmony-central.com/Bass/
Think of Harmony Central as the Yahoo of bass resources. The site is a virtual treasure trove featuring; news, forums, instruction, tabs, a searchable product review database, classifieds and links to all things bass.

Rockabillybass.com: http://rockabillybass.com/
Rockabillybass.com, administered and maintained by Shawn Burrell, is a site dedicated to rockabilly bass players. Yahoo! The site features interviews, news, song-specific lessons, chord charts, pictures, and links. Crank up “Stray Cat Strut” point your browser to rockabillybass.com, and get ready for a real good time.

TalkBass.com: http://www.talkbass.com/
Talkbass is one of the bass mega-sites filled with resources for the avid bass player. The site includes a variety of forums, many sponsored by notable artists, gear reviews, news, feature articles, lessons, a tab archive, a gear price database, newsletter and more.

The Bottom Line: http://www.bass-list.com
One of the oldest and most read email newsletter for bassist. The TBL website archives past posts and offers newsletter subscribers additional resources.