Bass Lessons - Page 36

This bass transcription was suggested to me by No Treble founder Corey Brown, serving to remind me of Miki Santamaria’s fantastic solo arrangements of pop songs for bass guitar.

Here’s a lesson I’d consider more beginner/intermediate-level, but it is a great refresher for all of us. Many times, we have to play a line which requires some quick shifting along the fretboard. Here’s a simple exercise for fast position shifts. Follow along with the video.

Time to add another lick lesson to the series. This time around, our focus is on this funky fingerstyle bass groove, which is in the key of Dm or D7, using mostly the D minor Dorian scale with chromatic connecting notes. This lick also relies heavily on open strings, for fast note doubling (D on open string to D on...

There’s been no shortage of great pieces to choose from for my monthly transcription recently: Cody Wright’s groove with drummer Chaisarary Schenk was a serious contender, as was Simon Fitzpatrick’s cracking solo bass rendition of “Rosanna”. I intend to cover both pieces in future transcription columns, but this month I couldn’t resist scoring out L?rincz Viktor’s “Rock and Roll Bass...

Like many bassists of my generation, I grew up loving the grooves on Michael Jackson’s records. The track we all wanted to be able to play was “Speed Demon” from “Bad,” a hyperactive little number with a bass part that was just too ridiculous to be real. Federico Malaman – one of the bass world’s most inventive players – is one of the few who cracked it, making it perfect for this month’s transcription.

This month’s transcription is “Cowboy from Prague,” a short piece by Polish slap bass wizard Wojtek Pilichowski, recorded at the Aguilar Artist Loft earlier in 2014. Wojtek has made a name for himself in recent years with his hard-hitting and energetic slap technique. True to form, he packs a lot of ideas into this short piece. Wojtek takes influences from...

Victor Wooten’s version of “Overjoyed” is a superb arrangement of Stevie Wonder’s classic song and the subject of this month’s transcription. Good luck with this piece. It’s a tough one to play well but you’ll be pleased with yourself once you have it down.

Last time, we got down and dirty with a overdrive-charged rock bass groove. This time around, we’re going to get a bit more funky with a modern Gospel-style lick, complete with all the slurs and slides. This groove is based on B minor Aolian, which is a great key and mode for this setting, especially on a 5-string bass, which...

If you’re looking to rock it out on bass, using an overdrive pedal can really help achieve that edge you need. In this lick lesson, I’m pretty much playing the same bass line repeatedly, but with different note lengths in the different sections: short note duration for verses, and long not duration for the chorus. This lick is in the...

“Continuum” is one of the most well known songs for bass players, and I’d argue it is one of the greatest tunes on Jaco Pastorius’s self-titled debut album. After listening to this performance of Michael League three times in a row, I decided to transcribe his version.

As bassists, it is important that we know our chords and arpeggios. Coupled with that is the importance of knowing the entire fretboard. In this exercise, we’ll play only three notes – the C Major triad. To make it fun, I’ve set it up as a reggae-style groove. As you’ll see in the video below, I cover the entire fretboard...

“Cee-Tee-Eye” is from Marcus Miller’s 2012 album Renaissance, recorded to feature the new band Marcus assembled for the Tutu Revisited tour, which was a celebration of the Miles Davis album from the mid-80’s Miller contributed heavily to. The title for “Cee-Tee-Eye” is a nod to the various albums released on the CTI Records label, which were influential not only to...