The Stanley Clarke Collection [ペーパーバック]

Okay... Stanley Clarke is unquestionably one of the greatest bassists in history, and it's tough to figure out a lot of his lines due to their insane speed, his distinctive Alembic tone, and so forth. So this collection is certainly a great idea. The song selection is pretty good (would've liked to have seen the title track from Romantic Warrior, maybe Medieval Overture, and a few other RTF tracks instead of some of the more obscure solo stuff, but Vulcan Worlds, the Magician, and School Days alone would be worth the price of admission in my book), and the inclusion of tab along with standard staff notation is a great idea.

But the transcriptions are wildly inconsistent in quality. Vulcan Worlds is the only song I'm really familiar with, having recently transcribed most of the parts myself (I got this book primarily to check myself against an "authoritative" source and to eliminate the tedium of writing out the bass solo myself), so I can only really talk about its accuracy. All is basically well until the D minor/C minor pentatonic riff that Clarke plays in unison with Corea's fifth-tuned synthesizer (at like 0:45 I think). This is not a hard part to figure out but the transcription features some very humorous chromatic nonsense that barely resembles the correct part. The solo bass 3-dyad figure (Eb+G, Gb+Bb, F+G are the right notes) is also completely fabricated. And the funky sixteenth-note lines in and around the solos are way off. And so forth.

Other places in this song, probably other songs, seem to be accurate transcriptions of difficult-to-transcribe parts, so it's possible that some other songs I'm less familiar with would redeem this collection. As far as I can tell it's pretty useless though. A valiant attempt at a worthy goal I guess.

I wish they had this book when I was trying to learn these songs years ago! Tab definately helps even if you can read notes...( your own fingering isnt always the easiest way to play the parts but sometimes the opposite is true though). I give it four stars cause there were some other songs I would have liked to have included and also there are no tips on how to play the songs ...but this the best book for Stanley's transcriptions I have seen. I recommend it highly.

Excellent resource for understanding what exactly he's playing. You can't not get better at playing bass by practicing these Stanley Clarke songs.