Search Results for: technique

Tim Fletcher’s ninth transcription of his “Unsung U.S. Bassists” offers an excellent analysis of Deon Estus’ bass line on “Club Tropicana” by Wham!

Tim Fletcher is back with his sixth entry of the “Unsung U.S. Bassists” series. Check out his transcription and analysis for Chris Ethridge’s bass line on “Hot Burrito #2” by The Flying Burrito Brothers.

Anthony Jackson is one of the most versatile bass players in the music scene and a real innovator in the 6-string bass (or contrabass guitar) that he developed in the seventies. He is known as a session musician working with artists like Diane Ross, Chaka Khan, Steely Dan, and Steve Khan, but he made a very important body of work...

In our last series of lessons, we had a look at a chorus of a Bob Mintzer blues over four episodes. Well, today we are putting just two bars of music under the microscope. This line is from a Cannonball Adderley solo on a tune called “Limehouse Blues.” Now the line itself isn’t super tricky, but in this pretty intensive...

Kate Bush came from a very musical family, and at eleven she taught herself to play the piano. Soon after this she began to write songs and at sixteen she recorded a demo of fifty compositions and sent them to prospective record companies, but this did not lead to any offers. However, a family friend had a connection with Pink...

I ran a survey a few weeks back asking bass players what they struggled with the most. With an overwhelming majority, the response had to do with practicing. Specifically, how to: Practice effectively so as to see improvement. Not be distracted. Know what to work on next or where to even start. Some people formulated it perfectly, asking for very...

The first thing we have to consider to play this arrangement is the accents. The trick is to emphasize the 2nd and 4th movement, just as a drummer would do with the snare drum. To do this use the “strum” technique (think Stanley Clarke in School Days), accenting the 2nd and 4th movement where I can try to keep it...

The three founding members of XTC, bassist Colin Moulding, drummer Terry Chambers and guitarist/vocalist Andy Partridge, initially got together in 1972, calling the band ‘The Helium Kidz’. They took some of their early influence from The New York Dolls and attached themselves to the developing ‘glam rock’ scene that was popular in the UK at the time. When guitarist/keyboardist Barry...

The unfortunate passing of Chris Cornell is a devastating loss for music. It is especially poignant for those of us that grew up listening to grunge music in the ’90s and 2000s. “Pretty Noose”, the first track from Soundgarden’s Down On The Upside, is a personal favorite of mine. On this track, Ben Shepherd performs a bass line that consists...

“New Jack Swing” is an era of R&B that mixed jazz, pop and electronic dance music sensibilities with hip-hop production techniques. The “sound”, pioneered by Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis (former keyboardist and bassist for the Time) and Teddy Riley consists largely of synthesized bass lines, swung hip-hop beats created by the TR-808 drum machine and the SP-1200 sampler with...

Here we have the second installment of the Creative Bass Lines, and this month, it’s “Bass Gruv”. For this we’re looking at a Headhunters-esque bass groove I wrote. This would fit the harmony of an E dominant 7th chord, or for a crunchier sound, try setting up a vamp with an E7?9, too. I wanted to introduce some of you...

“Amoreena” was Dee Murray’s first recording collaboration with Elton John, and from analyzing the transcription of his playing on this tune, it’s not hard to see why John and Murray had such a prolific career working together. Many different bassline approaches are employed to great affect in this song. The form of the bassline as a whole also demonstrates good...