Steve Billman - Everyting you need to know about becoming a professional muscian

If you are an aspiring pro musician this is the episode to listen to. Steve is the zen master and provides nuggets of wisdom to level up your game.

 

As a bassist, Steve Billman has been playing for over 40 years. Working with some of the finest musicians in the world, he has played with such greats as Frank Gambale, Tak Matsumoto, Mike Stern, Billy Cobham, Daniel Ho, Chester Thompson and Brian Bromberg.

Steve has been involved with education for over 30 years. For 23 of those 30 years he has been connected with Los Angeles College of Music (formerly Los Angeles Music Academy), where he has been teaching in the Bass department as well as many of the All School Classes; teaching such subjects as Harmony and Theory, Ear training, Jazz Bass, Jazz History (which he wrote the online curriculum), Rhythm Studies, Ensemble Classes, Music Notation, Beginning Piano and Sight Singing for vocalists. He has also taught private lessons for most of his career, not only to bass players, but also drum and guitar students.

Not only has he written the online Jazz History course for LACM, he has also written 6 quarters of Jazz curriculum for the bass department and 2 quarters of a bass “Rhythm Studies” class. This class deals with everything rhythmic, including odd meters, building the inner clock and exploring polyrhythm and metric modulation.

Steve is passionate about his students. He has developed a teaching style that is all his own. He gives students the essential tools they need not only to be great musicians, but more importantly, he gives them the skills to be good people and to be successful in life. He encourages them to reach for their dreams and to be the best they can be. He gets them to establish a centered and focused work ethic that will serve them the rest of their days, helping them to discover who they are and helping them find their own musical voice, which is one of the reasons why he is so perfect for this podcast.

 

Jason and Dave can be reached at

www.davejohnstone.com

www.guitarninjas.co