table of contentsfirst-bass-and-beyond.com/stuff/2014/12/first-bass-and... · · 2015-03-13table...

2 | First Bass And Beyond | Issue 283 | 13 March 2015 | how-to-play-bass.com

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction: ...............................................................................

Transcription: Melissa.................................................................

Video Tutorial 1 - Fall At Your Feet Part 2...................................

Video Tutorial 2 - Love Somebody Today..................................

Walking Bass Corner 6................................................................

Deconstructing Tommy Shannon - Column 13........................

Ask Paul........................................................................................

3

5

16

25

29

42

50


INTRODUCTION

Welcome to Issue 283 of First Bass And Beyond.

What’s In This Week’s Issue:

The main transcription for today’s issue is a Berry Oakley transcription - this is a ballad tune called Melissa.

The first video tutorial for Issue 283 is the second part of the Crowded House tune Fall At Your Feet.

The second video tutorial for Issue 283 is a Bernard Edwards/Chic Orga-nization groove - it’s the two main parts of a tune called Love Somebody Today from the Sister Sledge album of the same name.

In Walking Bass 6 we’re going to look at 32 bars of Ray Brown bass line from a tune called Work Song that appeared on a Milt Jackson/Oscar Pe-terson album called Very Tall.

In Deconstructing Tommy Shannon 13 we’re going to deconstruct the second part of Tommy’s bass line on a tune called Testify from the Texas Flood album.

In Ask Paul I’m looking at a question I’ve been asked several times re-cently that relates particularly to blues-rock and blues bass lines - and the question is: Why do bass players sometimes play the b3 on a domi-nant 7 (major) chord?


How To Contact Me

If you’ve got any questions you can email me directly. My email address is:

[email protected]

Or you can post on my Facebook Page, which you’ll find here:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/How-To-Play-Bass-Dot-Com/118787498204407

Have a great week.

Paul




TRANSCRIPTION to MELISSA by THE ALLMAN BROTHERS, bass by BERRY OAKLEY

I was listening to the Eat A Peach album this week and thinking about transcribing Berry’s bass parts to either some of Mountain Jam, or the main parts that he plays of Les Brers In A Minor.

If you know those pieces of music you know that they are long and involved - whilst listening to the album it occurred to me that I’ve

never transcribed Melissa and that actually there was some nice things going on! So as a way of procrastinating on making a decision on which of the other two tracks to work on, I transcribed this!

This is a country-esque ballad that was originally written by Greg All-man in 1967 - but he sold the copyright to pay off a debt that he owed. In 1972 the producer of the Allman Brothers reacquired the rights so that they could record the song in tribute to Duane Allman - then recently passed - on their third album Eat A Peach.

Although it’s a relatively simple bass line (and song) it’s still worth check-ing out what Berry does on the line and how he varies it up as the song goes from start to finish.

Here’s how the line lays out:

Letter A - Intro - 0.00Letter B - Verse - 0.12Letter C - Pre-Chorus - 0.30Letter D - Chorus - 0.47Letter E - Verse - 0.59Letter F - Pre-Chorus- 1.16Letter G - Chorus - 1.33Letter H - Bridge - 1.45


Letter I - Verse - 2.08Letter J - Pre-Chorus - 2.25Letter K - Chorus - 2.42Letter L - Outro - 3.06

Feel free to vary my tabbed suggestions to suit your own combination of fingering system, bass size and hand size.


VIDEO TUTORIAL 1 - FALL AT YOUR FEET by CROWDED HOUSE PART 2

We’re going to cover the re-maining three parts of Fall At your Feet in this tutorial.

Last week we covered the Intro, the first and second verses and the first chorus.

Here are the remaining sec-tions of the tune, with the let-ters that denote where these sections start on the score:

Letter E: Chorus 2Letter F: BridgeLetter G: Outro Chorus Here’s the notation and tab:


How To Program The Sections In Band In A Box

If you want to program and isolate the sections in Band In A Box (and play with the tempos)here’s how to do it:

1. Set key to Eb2. Aim for performance tempo to be around 100-105 BPM3. Choose a style for practice. I chose the Medium Dire Straits Rock Style with the ‘B’ style.4. Mute the bass!

I’ve programmed the three sections together....so we’ve got Chorus 2 fol-lowed by the bridge followed by the outro chorus. Each section is sepa-rated by a ‘B style’ part marker:


For those of you who want some relatively simple sight reading practice, I’ve appended the complete transcription in notation only here for you:


VIDEO TUTORIAL 2 - LOVE SOMEBODY TODAY by SISTER SLEDGE - bass by BERNARD EDWARDS

I don’t know if you’re aware but next Friday (the 20th) marks the release of a new Chic al-bum - the first album of new material for 20 years or so.

I’ve been following Nile Rogers on Facebook and a lot of the material on this new album ap-pears to be outtakes and songs that weren’t used and were recorded back in the day with Tony Thompson (drums) and

Bernard on bass! The first single - which will be called I’ll Be There - is based on a never used outtake for a song called Love Somebody Today which came from the second album that the Chic Organization pro-duced for Sister Sledge.

Now this album bombed back in the day...disco had had its heyday and had attracted haters by the millions and would never really be popular again until very recently. I was going to transcribe the new track - I’ll Be There - but went back to the original first and thought I’d cover that with a main transcription.

Once I started transcribing though I found that it was too repetitive to be worth publishing as a main transcription, so I’ve moved it here instead.

This is a typical Bernard Edwards style line combining syncopation and precise note lengths. There are only really two sections to learn - the chorus (intro) and the verse.

Here’s the 16 bars of intro - 8 bars of instruments before the vocals come in:


The other section we need to pick up is the verse. That looks like this:


The only variation is a sax solo where the verse groove gets changed up slightly - that’s YOUR homework to work that out! Or you could play the verse groove as above.

How To Program The Sections In Band In A Box

If you want to program and isolate the main sections in Band In A Box (and play with the tempos)here’s how to do it:

1. Set key to Am2. Aim for performance tempo to be around 115 BPM3. Choose a style for practice. I used the Soul 70s Piano Synth Layer style.4. I then muted the bass!


Here’s what 16 bars of chorus looks like - which you can use for the intro and the double choruses:

And here’s what the 16 bar verse looks like:

In the next couple of weeks I’ll be looking at the new Chic single ‘I’ll Be there’ which is based on the same chord progression and we’ll see how similar or different it is!

Walking Bass Corner 6

30 First Bass And Beyond | Issue 283 | 13 March 2015 | how-to-play-bass.com

WALKING BASS CORNER 6

In the last couple of Walking Bass Corners we went through taking one idea from a chorus of Israel Crosby’s bass line on the standard But Not For Me and looked at how we could take that to our practice area. And I highly recommend going over those last two columns several times...be-cause the concept of discovering a new device or idea and then working through it systematically and thoroughly and taking it to the nth degree as we did in the last two columns is one of the secrets to really building your vocabulary of ideas for walking bass lines.

The beauty of this approach is that not only will one idea practiced to the nth degree give you dozens of ways that you can use that particu-lar idea...but it’s almost certain that EVERY time you practice an idea in this manner you’ll discover variations of the idea, or combinations with other ideas, that will sound fresh and exciting to you. If they sound fresh and exciting to you, then there’s a good chance they will sound fresh and exciting to your band mates and audience members at your gigs too!

So we’re carrying on with our short transcriptions and analysis of 32 bar sections of walking bass lines. Today’s 32 bar example comes from the late, great Ray Brown and is from a tune called Work Song that you’ll find recorded on an album called “Very Tall’ credited to Oscar Peterson and Milt Jackson. This is a great mainstream jazz album by the way that fea-tures Ray Brown at the top of his game. I’ll be transcribing more from this album later this year....stand out tracks (apart from Work Song) in-clude John Brown’s Body, Reunion Blues and Green Dolphin Street.

So here’s the 32 bars that we’re going to look at today....


Before we move on and analyze this 32 bars of Work Song....a quick word about the tune itself. It’s a 16 bar minor blues - so I’ve included two cho-ruses so we’ve got 32 bars to analyze.

The song was written by Nat Adderley - trumpet and corner playing brother of saxophonist Cannonball Adderley - and was originally record-ed by Nat, and then also by the Cannonball Adderley quintet. Sam Jones was the bassist of record on both of those tracks....and Sam Jones is an-other awesome bass player worth checking out.

Let’s move on and analyze the 32 bars of transcription - so you know the transcription starts at 2 minutes and 12 seconds into the song:


So let’s look a little closer and see if we can find some things to life and take to our practice areas. What’s interesting about studying this tune is that there are a lot of bars of Gm, so the applications of ideas gleaned from this transcription ranges from modal tunes (e.g. So What) to other minor blues to tunes where there are two bars of the same minor chord.

1. Scalar Sequence In Thirds

In bars 9 and 10 we’ve got a scalar sequence for the first 6 beats:

This is a really cool idea that will work anywhere you have the same mi-nor chord for 2 bars - plus it works in different octaves too. Here it is transposed up an octave:


The other interesting thing about this example is the last two notes of the second bar - the F# and the A. You can look at this as an indirect resolution - the F# is the lower chromatic approach note and the A is the upper scalar note. You probably wouldn’t want to try something so dissonant sounding where the chords are changing frequently - but be-cause there are lots of bars of Gm7 you can use that indirect resolution to add some tension to the harmony.

2. Two Note Sequences

One of the ideas that Ray Brown uses in a lot of his bass lines - and you’ll find all over the Very Tall album - is to use a linear/scalar descending se-quence of notes but play two quarter notes for each note.

But in this 32 bar section there’s a couple of bars where he does this but in an ascending fashion. Like this, starting at Bar 17:

This of course can also be played at different octaves:


Also note the simple rhythmic device at the end of the third bar and start of the fourth bar here. Ray lands on the octave a ‘swung 8th note’ before the downbeat, and uses the open string on the ‘swung and’ of beat 1 of the following bar before landing on the b7.

This two note idea could also be adapted for major or dominant chords. There’s a great one bar stock pattern prior to this example on a D7 chord of R-ch-2-3 and for dominant or major chords this would be the pattern I’d be tempted to explore. So something like this:

Experimenting with two note repeated patterns is a great way to ‘slow up’ how quickly you ascend or descend on modal sections where one chord is being repeated for several bars....it’s very easy to fall into the trap of going up and down the scale in these sections.


3. Playing Through Chords A Semi-Tone Apart

In Bars 7 and 8 of Work Song we’ve got a bar of Eb7 and then a bar of D7. Sometimes playing through two chords that are a semi-tone apart can be an interesting challenge.

The second time through in this transcription we get an interesting way to do this:

What Ray does is play up the Eb9 chord using a simple stock pattern - in this case using a R-2-3-5 pattern. And then because the chords are a semi-tone apart, that means that the 5ths are a semi-tone apart so Ray then descends the second chord using a similar stock pattern, in this case a 5-4-3-R pattern. The root also then functions as the dominant approach note at the end of this 8 bar section for the G at the start of the next bar.

Again, you can practice using this approach for harmonic situations like this with different ideas, you don’t have to play up to the 5th. You could play up to the 3rd. Or even the b7th.

4. Playing Down The Scale Where Chords Last 2 Bars Or More

In bar 25 of the choruses that we’ve looked at we’ve got this descending pattern on the Gm chord:


Now this descending pattern is fairly straightforward - but by using the chromatic note on Beat 4 of the first bar here it allows the chord tones of the 5th and the b3 to land naturally on the strong beats of the follow-ing bar. Plus in this example the Gm chord lasts for more than 2 bars so in the second bar you can play 5-4-b3-2 and then land on the root and either keep descending, or use this is a point in your bass line to do what Ray does on the recording, and that’s to turn around the direction of your line.

If you were using this pattern in say Autumn Leaves where there’s a Cm7 chord after the two bars of Gm7, then I’d be tempted to play 5-4-b3-R OR 5-4-b3-Ch to set up the C on the next downbeat. So either a domi-nant approach note or a lower chromatic approach note.

5. Anticipation + Broken triplet

In Bars 29 and 30 we’ve got this rhythmic pattern happening:

So what we’ve got happening here is Ray reaching the root note of the C7 chord a swung 8th note early, then playing a triplet on the downbeat but playing a rest on the first note of the triplet.


Have a careful listen to this one....it’s very subtle and very cool! The notes of the triplet aren’t really important in this instance because he lands on the lower root on Beat 2 of the C7 bar....so they are rhythmic and could be just about anything. This rhythmic device is well worth playing around with and practicing...it will work in any scenario and is unexpected. Remember that the three components of this device are:

1. Anticipating the chord with the root note (probably an octave above) on the ‘swung and’ note of the previous bar’s Beat 4; and

2. Playing a broken triplet on Beat 1 of the new chord - but playing a ‘rest’ on the first note of that triplet.

3. Landing on the low root note on Beat 2 of the second chord.

Just so you can really see this working, here’s an example going from Cm7 to F7:

You should probably practice this with the anticipated root held over into the first note of the triplet so that you can hear the subtle difference.

For more mainstream playing this latter version shown below might be preferable - as with lots of these ideas it’s down to the sense of taste and musicality that YOU develop from playing with other musicians and also listening to the jazz greats:


6. Sense Of Swing And Time

One exercise that I recommend that you do with some of these short transcriptions is to find the original recording and import it into soft-ware that allows you to set loop points.

Then learn to play 16 bars or 32 bars off by heart, and when you can do that play at performance tempo along with the looped recording and try and duplicate the swing and time feel that Ray exudes throughout this piece.

Notice also in passing the use of the entire fingerboard in these 32 bars - from the open E string right up to the octave of D on the G string.

Summary

In Walking Bass Corner 6 we’ve looked at 32 bars from Ray Brown’s bass line on Work Song from the album Very Tall by Oscar Peterson and Milt Jackson.

Work Song is probably my favourite minor blues tune at the moment...so definitely worth learning! There are some cool versions around too where the bass plays part of the melody of the ‘head’ arrangement...so it may be worth learning the head too.

I’ve picked through the analyzed transcription and come up with several ideas that I really like the sound of that could be taken to my practice area - or yours! If you correlate this column with the previous two col-umns then you’ll know that there are umpteen ways that we can incor-porate these ideas into our playing


One important thing to remember - don’t forget that when you do this kind of exercise that you should focus on ideas that YOU like the sound of. Don’t spend hours and hours practicing an idea that I really like if you don’t!

Feedback And Questions?

As well as providing feedback on this column don’t hesitate to ask any questions you might have on the material we’ve covered today.

Deconstructing Tommy Shannon - Col 13


DECONSTRUCTING TOMMY SHANNON - COLUMN 13Introduction

So far in Deconstructing Tommy Shannon we’ve had a detailed look at several tunes - either partially or completely - from the Texas Flood al-bum.

And last week we started looking at a straight 8th note tune called Testify from Texas Flood. We got about half way through....and it was interest-ing going through each chorus in detail.

We’re going to finish off looking at Testify in Column 13. So let’s jump straight back in to where we left off.

Chorus 6


If you look carefully through the patterns - and ‘mentally’ superimpose the chord progression over the top - you’ll see that most of the patterns here are patterns that we’ve looked at before.

The two interesting patterns occur in Bars 11-12 and then Bars 13-14.In Bars 11 to 12 we’re playing on the A7 chord and Tommy creates a two bar pattern by walking up to the 5th and starts Bar 12 on the 5th before proceeding to the octave.

In Bars 13 and 14 he creates another two bar pattern over two chords by walking from the E7 chord to the B7 chord, and then walking from the B7 chord up to the E7 chord afterwards.

Notice in Bar 15 that he hits the octave of E on the downbeat and then drops down to the 3rd before walking back to the B. This is a pattern he uses a lot - but this time everything is played up an octave for variation.

Let’s move onto the next chorus.

Chorus 7

Chorus 7 is fairly conventional - we’ve seen already these kind of pat-terns being used in the tune. Sometimes being a bass player is about laying a great foundation for other people - and in this chorus whilst there is some variation, Tommy is still using patterns that you should be familiar with.


Let’s move onto the next chorus.

Chorus 8

The first thing of real interest in Chorus 8 is the two bar pattern that happens in Bars 3 and 4. Again, this is a relatively simple walk up target-ing the 5th on the downbeat and then progressing to the octave. It’s ear catching though because it goes relatively high on the fingerboard.


Chorus 9

Chorus 9 features a repeat of the two bar pattern we saw in Chorus 8 - only this time it’s positioned in Bars 5 and 6 instead of 3 and 4.

Notice also the descending two bars on the B7 chord in Bars 7 and 8 - down from the B to the F# and then drop down to the next lower B and repeat the pattern. This takes the ear downwards and covers quite a lot of ground on the fretboard - then when you expect to hit the open E Tommy jumps back up to grab E at the 7th fret of the A string. (Prac-tice that sequence by hitting the open E string and using that as a ‘pivot’ point and then going to the D. You may like the sound of that...I do!)


If you listen closely to the string of E notes in the first and third bars you should hear the subtle, almost swing 8th note feel that I was talking about in the previous column.

There’s just one more chorus to go.

Chorus 10

There’s nothing fancy in the last chorus - again, Tommy is playing for the song and making sure he’s laying a big platform for Stevie Ray to solo on top of.


I haven’t transcribed the precise ending....Tommy is just jamming on the E whilst Stevie Ray brings the song to its conclusion. In terms of what we’re trying to do with this series of columns what he plays here isn’t of great interest to us.


Summary

In today’s Deconstructing Tommy Shannon we’ve looked at the second half of the straight 8th note based tune Testify from the Texas Flood al-bum.

And our main conclusions are very similar to last week:

1. Again, the vocabulary from Pride And Joy gives a great overview of the kind of patterns Tommy likes to play and how he likes to connect chords.

2. When connecting chords Tommy likes to use a linear scalar and/orchromatic connector to drive the ear through a tune. Where multiple bars occur with the same chord he likes to use either a dominant ap-proach note or the lower chromatic approach note. The latter often comes after the b7th.

3. You can use a limited number of patterns and still get variations in your line by switching up octave placement of the patterns and with subtle rhythmic variations.

4. Again, notice the consistent use of a pattern that marks the end of each chorus.

Questions

As we go through this column if you have any questions please don’t hesitate to shout up - you can either email me directly or post a com-ment on the appropriate magazine issue page on the FB&B website.

Ask Paul!


ASK PAUL!

I get lots of questions via email. And if they are from FB&B subscribers I try to answer all of them! However it occurred to me that for each par-ticular question there are probably several of you out there in FB&B land who would be interested in the answer.

So if you have a question for me, here’s where you need to post it:

http://first-bass-and-beyond.com/other-pages/ask-paul-2/

In the last 7 to 10 days I’ve had three separate questions from FB&B subscribers all effectively asking the same question: why is a bass player using a minor (or flat) 3rd on a major chord?

This has probably been triggered by material featured in the Deconstructing Tommy Shannon column, because Tommy Shannon sometimes does this.

So in this Ask Paul we’re going to look at how as bass players we can use the minor 3rd on a major (or dominant) chord.

Introducing The Blues Scale

The short answer to this question is that often the b3 appears in blues based bass lines because it’s drawn from a specific scale called the blues scale.

Here’s what the blues scale looks like in the key of C:


If you examine what the scale degrees of this scale are - see the Theory lessons on Major Scale Degrees as a cross reference - we get this table:

C RootEb b3F 4F#Gb #4/b5G 5Bb b7C Octave

You’ll note that I’ve written both enharmonic variations of the note half way through the scale - either F#€ or Gb. And in the scale degree part of the column I’ve referenced it as the #4 or the b5. Musicians use both terms - often in the same sentence! - and what you tend to call this note depends on how you are approaching it musically. If you are ascending it’s more likely that you’ll call it F# or the #4, and if you are descending it’s more likely that you’ll call it Gb or the b5.

Now the sound of the blues scale is a sound that you should already be familiar with. The main riff in Sunshine Of Your Love by Cream is built around a descending blues scale in D:


So How Does The Blues Scale Fit Into Playing The Blues On Bass

The blues scale comes into play via soloists. The blues scale is a common scale for guitarists and other solo instruments to use when soloing over the blues.

The scale gets its tension from predominantly two notes - the use of the flat third, and the #4/b5.

The #4/b5 is easy to deal with - it’s an unstable note against the dominant 7th chord, and it resolves nicely either upwards to the 5th or downwards to the 4th. It’s almost always used - speaking specifically from a bass line point of view - as part of a linear sequence going up from 4 to 5, or (less often) going down from 5 to 4.

That brings us to the b3.

From a soloing point of view using the b3 on a dominant creates tension and creates a sound often described as a ‘blue’ sound (or ‘sad’ sound). The same principle holds for bass lines though...and there are bass players who use the blues scales as the starting point for their bass lines.

Again the contrast of the flat 3 played against the dominant chord creates tension and that ‘blue’ effect. You’ll also find this scale used outside the blues too - I’ve seen Rocco Prestia use the blues scale in his fingerstyle funk lines. Bass players who often use the flat 3 in their blues lines include Jack Bruce, Roscoe Beck, Berry Oakley and Carl Radle.

Another Way The b3 Is Used In Bass Lines

Another way that the b3 can be used in bass lines - and this is really effective and something we’ve seen several times in the deconstructing Tommy Shannon column - is to slur from the b3 to the major 3.

We saw this pattern in a couple of bars of Pride and Joy. But it was used throughout Love Struck Baby - here’s a typical chorus:


This kind of idea probably came originally to the bass from doubling guitar lines - as I said above guitarists use the blues scale as a source of material for soloing, and it’s common for them to bend from the b3 to the major 3 and vice-versa.

You can find this idea and use of the b3 to major 3 in plenty of other tunes as well.

Other Instances With The b3 In Blues Lines

Tommy Shannon often uses a pattern like this one on the B7 chord from Testify:


We saw a similar pattern in Pride And Joy too - transitioning from the ‘stops’ in the Stop Verses back into the main groove.

Here although the b3 is being used, it’s being used as part of an upwards linear run from root note (B7) to root note (E7). Any tension caused by the use of the b3 will be resolved by moving to the major third on the following beat.

What the ear SHOULD hear is just an inexorable upwards movement from the root of B7 to the root of E7. Depending on where you are in the tune that upwards pattern can be made more intense with different rhythms - in Pride And Joy that pattern was very much used in conjunction with triplet rhythms.

If you want to try something slightly different in your blues lines that steps away from using the minor 3rd in this situation, try replacing this R-2-b3-3 line with a R-Ch-2-3 line:

This is a stock pattern lifted directly from walking bass lines - there’s an example of it in Ray Brown’s line in this week’s Walking Bass Corner - but hopefully it’s an illustration to you that music is music....and you can draw influences and ideas from just about any musical genre.

Caveat

When creating bass lines with major chords you can use the b3 to create that blue effect. But be careful, the same doesn’t apply in reverse to minor blues. Using the major third on a minor blues will nearly always sound dissonant and wrong! So if you’re playing on a minor blues please don’t play the minor 3 to major 3 variation! (Though you could use the


note that is the major 3rd as a chromatic note between the minor third and the root note of the next chord is ascending a 4th! Other than that, it’s a no-no!)

Summary

In today’s Ask Paul we’ve looked at something that has caused a few people to ask me questions - and that’s the use of the minor or flat 3rd in bass lines (specifically blues bass lines) where the chord is major (i.e. dominant).

The answer is found in the blues scale.

To really understand how to use the blues scale in blues bass lines you should probably go through a bunch of tunes that use the blues scale and see how the bass players are using it to create their bass lines.

The blues scale isn’t found just in the blues though - there are bass lines in funk that use the blues scale. And the riff of Michael Jackson’s tune ‘Bad’ is made up of the first five notes of the blues scale!

If you have any questions for me, please don’t hesitate to use the ASK PAUL page, or drop me an email!

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