Transcription: “No Woman, No Cry” Solo Bass Arrangement

Viaceslav SvedovThis great version of the Bob Marley classic “No Woman, No Cry” was arranged by popular YouTube bassist Viaceslav Svedov, a talented young musician known for his hard-hitting covers of popular bass-driven songs.

This arrangement is performed with the slap technique, and there a few notational elements that you should be aware of:

The track opens with a rapid rake across the strings. This is quick ‘flam’ effect into the first note (G) and is played by plucking the G-string, then raking quickly back across the strings with the same finger. This is a rhythmic flourish, and is by no means essential to the piece as a whole, although it’s certainly fun if you can get it in!

There are many double stops in this piece (for those unfamiliar with the term, a double stop is two notes played at once) and most are indicated to be played with the thumb and a pluck. In these instances, the notes are plucked together, the lower note with the thumb (be aware that ‘t’ in this instance does not indicate a slap), and the upper note with the first finger. This is similar to the ‘crab claws’ technique used by John Entwistle, and despite this long-winded explanation, is actually very simple. Be sure to watch the video of Viaceslav performing it to see the technique in action.

Some sections of this piece also feature continuous sixteenth notes played on one string – see bar 34 for an example. In these instances, Viaceslav alternates between his first and second fingers for the popped notes – I recommend you do the same.

I hope you enjoyed this month’s transcription! Be sure to let us know which pieces you’d like to see transcribed on No Treble, and let us know how you get on with this one (including sending us your audio or video links of your performance of this tune)!

Follow along with Viaceslav’s performance:

Stuart Clayton writes for and runs Bassline Publishing, a small company who specialize in bass guitar tuition and transcription books. Check out basslinepublishing.com for more.

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Leave a Reply to Tim Cancel reply

  1. so awesome. project for the day :-)

  2. I love it.
    Great Work!
    Awesome

  3. Nice, love this :)
    Maybe you guys could do transcriptions once a week or once a month?

  4. Awesome! You should do a version of Gustavo Dal Farra’s Run Slap Harmonic.

  5. all that I can say is AWESOME!
    bass rules!

  6. Yadi Tanriadi Guntara

    Awesome…

  7. I don’t know how I feel about this from the bassist as rhythm vs. melody role IMHO, but he’s got great tone and THANK YOU for the transcription

    We all learn from the arrangements of other musicians.

  8. Peter Beulke

    Always loved this mighty tune ,fantastic playing great arrangement ,now for me to try and get this together ,many thanks Cheers from downunder Pete Boom Boom B

  9. Sherloq

    Yuck. Obv some chops but maybe relax and ease off there pal. Ahead of the beat on a reggae tune? No thanks.