table of contents -...

2 | First Bass And Beyond | Issue 266 | 07 November 2014 | how-to-play-bass.com

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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

Transcription: One by One.........................................................

Video Tutorial 1 - Get Back.........................................................

Video Tutorial 2 - Supermassive Black Hole..............................

Music Theory For Bass 26...........................................................

Playing Bass Lines From Chord Symbols 13..............................

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

3

5

19

23

27

35

46


INTRODUCTION

Welcome to Issue 266 of First Bass And Beyond.

What’s In This Week’s Issue:

The main transcription today is a Doobie Brothers tune from their ‘Soul/Rock’ period when Michael McDonald was one of the main singers and songwriters in the band.

The first video tutorial for Issue 266 is a look at one of Paul McCartney’s late 60s period lines - it’s the basic parts to Let It Be.

The second video tutorial for Issue 266 is one that will need you to dig out your distortion pedal or find a distorted sound on your Line 6 stomp box - it’s Supermassive Black Hole by Muse.

In the Creating Bass Lines From Chord Progressions column we’re go-ing to talk about creating chord charts for yourself - and I’ve got some scanned examples of actual chord charts that I’ve used in the past for gigs! You’ll be surprised how basic they are!

In today’s Music Theory for Bass Column we’re going to look at the sec-ond mode of the seven modes of the Major Scale. That mode is called the Dorian Mode and it’s formed by playing all the white notes on a pia-no keyboard starting at D and ending at D.

In Ask Paul I’m going to answer a question about learning how to use a pick - but I’m going to answer that question with the help of two FB&B subscribers (and thanks so much to Michael and Simon for providing great answers)!


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 ONE BY ONE by THE DOOBIE BROTHERS, bass by TIRAN PORTER

I’m about to compile a bunch of Tiran Porter bass lines into a sep-arate collection - so I’ve been lis-tening to a lot of Doobie Brothers in the last week or so.

What I find interesting is how the overall sound of the Doobie Brothers changes once Michael McDonald comes onboard.

The chord progressions in the songs get a lot more sophisticated - and they go from being a southern rock kind of band to being a more R&B oriented type of band. This bass line is an interesting departure from Tiran’s earlier lines. It sounds like some of the sections could be synth bass and not Tiran at all - see the earlier sections. And on the chorus there are notes that sound like they are ‘popped’ (as in slap and pop) and as far as I’m aware Tiran is not known as a slap and pop kind of bass player.

So there’s quite a lot of change in his bass for this song. Which goes to reinforce a lesson I often talk about - and that’s to play for the song and not for you.

Some things to notice in the line:

1. Uses full range of the bass - from Low E up to F# on the G string2. The chorus is very off beat3. If you’re into chord progressions, the chord progression on the bridge is interesting - anticipated chords, diminished chords, slash chords etc4. Almost synth bass kind of sound in the verses - I can’t tell if it’s bass or synth!


Here’s how the bass line lays out:

Letter A - Intro 0.00Letter B - Verse - 0.26Letter C - Chorus 0.53Letter D - Verse - 1.23Letter E - Chorus - 1.50Letter F - Bridge - 2.17Letter G - Chorus - 2.50Letter H - Outro - 3.17

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


VIDEO TUTORIAL 1 - GET BACK by THE BEATLES

Get Back is a song that I’ve played several times with dif-ferent bands - it’s kind of rocky and up tempo so it gets pro-grammed in band playlists from time to time.

It’s not my favourite Beatles tune or Beatles bass line - and it’s fairly straightforward. I thought as you may get asked to play it from time to time that I would feature the main parts.

The intro is really basic, four bars of A in an 8th note rhythm:

Then we’ve got the basic 8 bar format that’s used for most of the song:


If you just wanted to learn something quick and easy for a gig, you can almost get away with just playing this! However I’ve worked out some variations for you to learn. Here’s the kind of pattern McCartney plays under the first guitar solo:

And here’s what he plays for Chorus 2:

Obviously Chorus 2 has got the sustained bar at the end prior to the next section of the tune...but using the low A as a variation is something that you can start to bring into the line.

The other main variation is to hammer on to the octave A from G - as shown in this section from the 2nd guitar solo:


Here’s a suggested road map for the tune using the parts we’ve learned in the tutorial:

Intro (use 4 bar intro)Verse 1 (use basic Verse pattern)Chorus 1 (use basic verse pattern)Guitar Solo 1 (use guitar solo 1 pattern)Chorus 2 (use chorus 2 pattern)Piano Solo (use chorus 2 pattern)Verse (use basic verse pattern)Chorus (use basic verse pattern)Guitar Solo 2 (use guitar solo 2 pattern)Chorus (use guitar solo 2 pattern - watch sustained note at end)Get Back Loretta (use basic verse pattern)Chorus And Fade (use basic verse pattern)

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 A2. Aim for performance tempo to be around 125 BPM3. Choose a style for practice. I used the PopBrit 2 Guitars 120 BPM real style.


4. Mute the bass!

Here’s a screenshot showing the intro and the verse and then the chorus. You can see how the chords for the harmony instruments change but how the bass uses slash chords to maintain the driving 8th note ‘A’ pedal effect:

There is a bass less backing track for Get Back on the Issue 266 page.


VIDEO TUTORIAL 2 - SUPERMASSIVE BLACK HOLE by MUSE

Here’s another rock based tuto-rial that’s straightforward. It’s also another tune for which I’ve got the ‘guitar hero’ stems so I’ve been able to prepare a backing track with Muse’s origi-nal performance and just de-lete the bass from it. So it will fun to play along with that.

A couple of things to note be-fore we get started:

1. This one needs a distortion sound of some description on it. You’ll hear in the video that Gordon is using a distortion sound - he’s getting that from a Line 6 unit. But there are also pedals that do this - Chris Wol-stenholme of Muse reportedly uses an unfortunately named pedal called ‘The Big Muff’ to get his distorted sound.

2. In the verse there’s a line that’s played by a synth (it sounds like) rather than Chris. If you’re playing this in a band context, there’s a good chance that you’ll have to include this in what you play. So we’ve includ-ed it in the tutorial.

Ok, let’s get going. First up is the intro. The Intro has got two sections - there’s 8 bars where we’re playing a simple downbeat every other bar and then a slightly busier section that leads to the verse. The intro looks like this:


Next up is the verse section - this is the section that on the original sounds like it’s played with a bass synth rather than being played by Chris Wolstenholme. (And yep, I don’t know why you would do that ei-ther!)

This is another simple section:


Finally we’ve got the chorus section...that looks like this:

These sections are all you need to get through the tune. But it’s impor-tant to notice that you need to play these sections pretty authentically because there’s a lot of ‘unison riffing’ going on in the song that uses the same notes and rhythms.


Again, this is a good lesson for bass players to take note of - there are songs where when we’re playing them there’s not much leeway to inter-pret the parts.

When that happens it’s important that we learn our parts and reproduce them authentically!

Don’t forget to download the backing track which is based on the origi-nal Muse performances minus the bass.

Music Theory 26


MUSIC THEORY FOR BASS PLAYERS LESSON 26 - THE DORIAN MODE

Introduction

Music Theory For Bass Players is a series of lessons aimed at teaching the bass player music theory. Now there’s lots of resources out there - both paid and free - which teach music theory. But what’s going to be differ-ent about this theory course is that everything is going to be taught from the perspective of the bass player.

And the other thing that will make this theory course unique is that teaching theory from the perspective of the bass will take place by using examples from real world bass songs.

This lesson will also be transferred to the First Bass And Beyond website and all the relevant music examples will be filmed and posted on the les-son so that you can see and hear the examples.

In the last few lessons we’ve been talking about modes of the major scale. And after an introduction and overview we looked last week at the first mode of the major scale - which is both the major scale itself, but is also known as the Ionian Mode.

In today’s lesson we’re going to look at the second mode of the seven modes of the major scale - and that’s the Dorian mode.

Modes Of The Major Scale - The Dorian Mode

The second mode of the modes of the major scale is called the Dorian Mode. The Dorian Mode is formed by playing all the white keys on the piano starting and ending on D. On a piano keyboard it looks like this:


If you were to play that on your bass, it would look like this:

The reason why I say that the piano keyboard is such a good visual tool for learning theory is that there is only ONE place on the keyboard where you can play this unique sequence of notes at that pitch level.

On a bass guitar there are many different ways to play this sequence of notes.

Now if you listen to the example on the Theory Web Page this should be a very familiar sound to you - the Dorian mode is a commonly used mi-nor scale.

Here are the notes of the Dorian mode displayed in table format and dis-playing what type of note each successive degree is:

D Root RootE 2nd Major 2ndF 3rd Minor 3rdG 4th Perfect 4thA 5th Perfect 5thB 6th Major 6thC 7th Minor 7thD Octave perfect octave


The Dorian Mode ALWAYS contains these notes.

So if you transposed to E you’d still have a sequence of Root, Major 2nd, Minor 3rd, Perfect 4th, Perfect 5th, Major 6th, Minor 7th and Perfect Oc-tave. On your bass that would look like this:

On a piano keyboard it would look like this:

If you play that note sequence on a piano - or on your bass - you’ll soon hear that it’s the same sound as the C Major scale, only it’s a tone higher.

So the Dorian Mode (also known as the dorian minor scale) is formed of this sequence of steps:

Root to second - toneSecond to third - semi-toneThird to fourth - toneFourth to fifth - toneFifth to sixth - toneSixth to seventh - semi-toneSeventh to Octave -tone

Now as well as D to D giving us the dorian minor scale, it also gives us a chord. Knowing the chords built from the parent mode scales is a


necessary piece of theory to know. It helps with creating bass lines, solo-ing AND song writing!

Let’s look at the chord formed from the D Dorian mode.

What Chord Is Formed From The D Dorian Mode

We obtain the chord by stacking the ‘scale notes’ in thirds rather than playing them sequentially.

So on a piano keyboard here’s what we’d get:

Now that gives us the root note, a minor third, a perfect fifth and a major 7th. If you played those together on the piano you’d get the distinctive sound we call the D minor 7 chord. (See the earlier sections of the theo-ry course for more on this as well.)

So as well as getting the Dorian mode from playing D to Don the key-board using white keys only, we also get the chord that goes with that scale.

Advanced Theory - Chord Extensions

We talked above about getting the chord by stacking the scale notes in thirds rather than playing them sequentially.

But we only used four of the scale notes - D,F, A and C. And as with the C Major 7 chord we looked at in the last theory lesson we can continue ‘stacking’ chord notes on top. Like this:


Now if you were to play these notes together you’d get the sound of a D Minor 9 chord. E is the 2nd - but that note played up an octave is called the 9th. Hence this chord consisting of the D minor triad, the minor 7th and the 9th, would be called D Minor 9. You’ll often see it written as Dm9.

Similarly you can add the other scale notes above - we’ve run out of room on our virtual piano keyboard. The octave of G is the 11th. And the octave of B is the 13th.

Now these notes when used chordally are like ‘flavouring’ notes - they don’t change the basic nature of the chord. But they do add an extra ele-ment to the sound of the chord.

You won’t encounter these extension chords too often in rock and pop music. But you’ll find them in jazz a lot.

As a bass player if you are confronted with a Minor 9 chord or a Minor 13 chord you can actually treat them, from a bass line creation perspective, as a minor 7 and focus on the arpeggio notes of the minor 7 chord.

That’s because the four notes that make up the minor 7 chord are the fundamental tones of that chord. The extension notes - the 9th, the 11th and the 13th - are colour tones and should be picked up by either the guitarist or the keyboard player.

Of course we can use 2nds (or 9ths), 4ths (or 11ths) and 6ths (or 13ths) in our lines - but the point is we don’t have to. Using the chord tones of the minor 7 chord to build our lines around will communicate the har-mony of the song we are playing well enough.


Chord Extensions are a more advanced topic - and affect players much more if those players are regularly soloing. But now when you see a chord like a Major 9th (or a minor 11th, or a dominant 7 b9 chord etc) you can work out what chord tones need to be covered by your bass line (the fundamental chord tones - the degrees that are 7ths or less) and what chord tones are colour tones and can be safely ignored if necessary.

Summary

In this lesson we’ve looked at the second mode of the minor Scale. That mode is called the dorian scale, or the dorian minor

The Dorian scale has the following degrees:

1. Root2. Major Second3. Minor Third4. Perfect Fourth5. Perfect Fifth6. Major Sixth7. Minor Seventh

Irrespective of what root note you start with, to be a Dorian scale it has to consist of those scale degrees.

The Dorian Scale when played chordally becomes a Minor 7th Chord. The fundamental tones of this chord are the Root, the minor third, the perfect fifth and the minor seventh.

The second, fourth and the sixth can be added as ‘extension’ tones. The chord then becomes a minor 9th, a minor 11th or a minor 13th chord. When playing on chords like that, bass players should still build their lines around the fundamental chord tones of the minor 7th chord.

Next week we’ll look at the third mode of the major scale in a similar level of detail. If you remember from the previous column this mode is formed by playing all the white notes on the piano keyboard, but


starting at E and ending at E. The mode formed by doing this is called the Phrygian mode.

Questions.

As always, if you have any questions please don’t hesitate to email me or post a comment on the appropriate lesson page.

Creating Lines From Chord Symbols - Col 13


HOW TO CREATE BASS LINES FROM CHORD SYMBOLS - COLUMN 13

Introduction

So far we’ve covered these topics in learning how to create bass lines from chord symbols:

1. Using root notes2. Using root notes and octaves.3. Using root notes and octaves and fifths.4. Using root notes and major/minor thirds.5. Using chromatic connectors in several different instances6. Using scalar connectors.7. Slash chords8. Rhythmic patterns9. Genre specific rhythm

Now we could keep going with bass line devices....but this ISN’T a course on creating bass lines per se. It’s a step by step method showing you how to go about learning and practicing how to create bass lines either on the fly or from a chord chart.

What we’re going to talk about in Lesson 12 is how to go about creating your own chord charts that you can use at gigs to create bass lines from.

Creating Chord Charts

There are plenty of ways that you can create a chord chart. We’ll take a detailed look in a moment at how you should go about putting one to-gether - but I went to my ‘Gig’ folder and pulled out a chord chart that I must have used over fifty times and I remember writing it out at a gig when told that we would probably be playing this song on the gig.

Here’s the chord chart:


Now you can’t get much more basic than that right? And another thing I did on this one that I don’t normally do is that I didn’t even write in the qualities of the chords - I only planned to play root notes or octaves and so I just wrote those in!

For those of you who want to know, this chord chart is for the song “ I Can’t Take My Eyes Off You.” And there are three sections noted out on this chart:

1. The verse2. The horn riff (“de dah”)3. The up tempo disco octaves bit (I Love You Baby....)

So, the first thing to take from this column is that you don’t need any fancy software to write out a chord chart.

In fact for many years I used Microsoft Word to produce my chord charts! Here is another scan...this time it’s for a tune called ‘Shine’ by Take That that I remember we had to play at a Summer Ball in a mar-quee somewhere in deepest, darkest Essex:


Now this scan is much more indicative of the kind of chord charts that I use. And again, this is not high technology - it’s just a table used for each section of the song and each bar is represented by one ‘cell’ of the table.

So let’s look at making chord charts for yourself.

How To Make Your Own Chord Charts

The Shine chart above gives you an indication of the bare minimum in-formation that you must include in a chord chart.

Now, there’s a problem with this chord chart. And that problem is that when I wrote it I used it when playing along with the original track - and I must have committed to memory the kind of rhythm being used (straight and staccato 8th notes) as well as the song format.


If you put me on a stage now with this chord chart, told me we were playing Shine in the original key and the drummer counted it off....I’m not totally sure that I would successfully make it through.

So as a believer in not having to repeat work here’s what I’d say are the minimum requirements that a chord chart must have to be usable 5 years or 10 years after the chart was first created:

1. Name of the song2. The sections of the song 3. The chords for the sections of the song4. Some kind of format map5. An indication of the rhythm.

So I don’t have a copy of this chart in Word - it’s possible it was done on another computer - so I’ve fired up Word and refigured the chart so that it’s usable for a bass player who only vaguely knows the song.

Here’s what the refigured version looks like:


Now I just listened through to the song so that I could create the format map and add the other pieces of information that are needed to play through this from the chord symbols.

The one other thing that I’d add to this chord chart that aren’t there, are the chord qualities. Again, because this is a root note oriented bass line I’ve just listed the root notes that I need to play. But taking the time to get the qualities of the chords right makes the Chord Sheet usable by other members of the band (e.g. keyboard or guitar players) in a pinch.

Notice also that everything in the chord chart is printed out in BOLD FONT. That makes it easier to read in a typical gig situation - where it’s likely to be dark. The other thing that I’d advise if you read chord charts or notation regularly is to buy a clip on light for your music stand. They can be literal life savers!

The other thing to notice about this particular chord chart is that every-thing is condensed onto one page. That means it takes up less space in your music book AND it means you don’t have to move your gaze to a different page. I’m a great believer in making everything as easy as pos-sible.

Why Is Word (or any other word processor) Superior To Music Software For Creating Chord Charts

So far in the course I’ve been creating chord patterns using a piece of music software called Sibelius. And those chord patterns and progres-sions appear like this:

Now these look more ‘authentic’ for reading - but the problem with


using this type of proprietary music software is that the actual chord names aren’t printed out in particularly big type. And smaller type means you have to work harder to read the chords that you’re playing from.

Other proprietary musical software that you can use to create chord pro-gressions are Finale or even Band In A Box. Again, using a word proces-sor is quicker and more legible and it tends to win out every time.

There’s one exception though, where you might go with a piece of music software. And that’s where you need to indicate the kind of generic bass pattern used in the song.

Let’s imagine the chord progression above makes up the verse of a song we’re going to play and is played four times based around a specific rhythm. If so, we could create a graphic and paste something like this into our chord chart arrangement:

The instruction to play ‘4 Times Sim’ gives us the option to either play the repeats without variation - or to use this noted bass line as a guide and use the bass line ideas we’ve worked on in the course so far to help us create some variations to this basic idea.

Once you start writing in specific parts though you’re starting to get beyond the boundaries of this course as we’re now talking about sight reading bass lines. And that’s a totally different topic!

Sometimes with chord charts I’ll print them out in Word as above, and then write a suggested rhythm for the bass line over the top of each sec-tion (if the rhythm changes from section to section) in Pen!


How To Make Accurate Chord Charts

There are three ways for you to create accurate chord charts for gigging purposes.

The first way is to train your ear so that you can hear different quali-ties of chords, and then you transcribe the root notes of each chord and write them down.

The second way is you ask your guitar player or keyboard player what the chord qualities are. The third way is you purchase published music and use that. It’s usually reasonably accurate and nowadays most music publishers have digi-tized their catalogues so you can buy individual songs online and print immediately.

The one caveat with buying published music is to remember that the chords you see aren’t the chords the songwriter wrote - they are how the person who transcribed the music for the music publisher perceives the chords. Oh, and watch out for songs that are cover versions - often the published music is based on the original version and if the cover version is different the published music won’t reflect that.

Summary

There’s no Action Plan as such in this Column. What I’ve tried to do is give you some guidelines on creating your own chord charts based on my years of experience using them on gigs.

One word of warning - if you’re going to be playing a song multiple times in your band using a chord chart is a lazy way out and you should actu-ally take the time to learn the song thoroughly using any of the methods we’ve talked about in First Bass And Beyond down the years.

Being able to play a bass line from a chord charts is a great skill to have - and to work on - but it should never stop you learning a song properly


in the first place! You should use this skill when you have a lot of songs to learn at short notice...and target those songs where the bass lines are generic and where playing from chord symbols won’t show you up as not having prepared thoroughly.

The best way of working out what kind of chord charts you need is to make some. In the next column I’m going to give you some short songs to play with - both chord charts and backing tracks - and get you to prac-tice creating your own lines with these charts.

But in the meantime, try creating some of your own and then most im-portantly, try creating some bass lines from them! If you’ve been follow-ing the column carefully you should be able to do this!

Questions

As always if you have any questions you can either drop me an email or you can post a question on the Lesson 7 page on the website version of this lesson.

Ask Paul?

47 First Bass And Beyond | Issue 266 | 07 November 2014 | how-to-play-bass.com

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/

The recent few columns talking about bands have been interesting for me to write...but I think we’re done with that topic for a while! So it’s back to more normal and more specific bass topics.

This week I got a great question from FB&B subscriber Tom Bonomo:

“Maybe you’ve commented on this in the past and I missed it, but I’ve never seen anything about using a pick instead of fingerstyle. There’s a lot written and taught about racking and alternate picking, but everyone seems strangely silent about using a pick. This seems odd, as many famous players use picks.

“There are many tunes for which a pick produces a more authentic sound, IMHO (the Doobie Brothers and Grateful Dead come to mind), so I thought it might be worthwhile to learn the technique. Any thoughts you have on the subject would be greatly appreciated. There doesn’t seem to be much written about pick technique.

“Some guys use upstroke, others downstroke, others both up and down or even random. I’d like to get this right the first time so I don’t have to unlearn some bad habits. Thanks in advance for your thoughts!”


Now picking has been on wish list of techniques that I wished I knew for a long time! But I still haven’t found the time to learn it. So I reached out to two FB&B subscribers - Simon Davies and Michael Ashton - who both use a pick and both ‘think’ about what they are doing and why they are doing it.

First, here’s how Simon responded:

I, like a lot of bass players, come from playing guitar and already have pick based technique already under their belts. Most guitar players turned bass players start with pick and the some stick with it others move to fingers - this IMHO explains a lot of the famous pick based players.

Certain songs require the drive of a pick and are even derived from it. You can play very fast (listen to Paul McCartney on Taxman). I am constantly reading interviews with pros who say in order to cut though in large venues it’s got to be a pick – the fingers are too rounded in sound. That then carries into the studio - though fingers are also used - I think it’s the feel/timing nuances. I myself came from guitar and used pick for a long time (5 years back in the 80s) but now I predominately use fingers – it’s a choice thing. I’ve mellowed and like a warm, round and smooth sound. But back in the mid 80s I was an aggressive little bugger with that pick!!! – you couldn’t do that with fingers. The sound of youth ! Pick certainly has its place and I think most players should at least try it and if possible take it to an intermediate level. It will impact your finger playing in a positive way. It’s far more accurate so you need good timing – also you can be far more dominant though you can also lose your role in the soundstage. On guitar you are taught alternative picking (up-down-up-down) and told never to deviate or you will suffer for eternity ! However I watched a Carole Kaye DVD and she encourages a different approach and less linear – not to go into too much detail – she says – down down up and variations (random) in order to give it more rhythm and set up the next down or up stroke ie raking. I actually wrote to her about it and


questioned her approach versus alternative picking – and she responded saying she was confident she had it right. Where my pick playing is now I tend to agree with Carol – I think you need all approaches. I’ve ben playing 30 years and I will vary it – ie random, uniform etc… until I find the groove – and similarly I will try different frets, open stings for the same note which would impact on how I use the pick. However I think if you’re starting out I’d stick with the guitar players approach first. So use alternate picking - strictly down-up-down-up. Don’t get locked in the Sid Vicious approach of all down or all up strokes.

After that you should learn how to rake up and down to change strings. How you do this will depend on the groove of each song.

Also listen to the different sounds you get depending on where you strike the string.

Finally muting – start with palm muting on the bridge. Then later try finger fretting hand - muting - (once you try palm muting you will see why this works ;-) Hope this helps - just one opinion - YMMV

And now, here’s how Michael answered the question:

I started with a pick as I was a guitar player so I didn’t (and don’t) think about it too much.

However, I did get some of Carol Kaye’s instructional material. She advocates a very strict down/up regime.

So for example if you are playing a 4/4 eight note rhythm you play with the pick moving down (towards your feet) on the beat and up on the ‘and’ beats.. For any rest the pick continues to move and just jumps over the string


you are playing. This makes your timing very even.

Of course this can also make your playing sound very “square”- I think that is how Paul described it in the Kaye vs Jamerson column. That will work pretty well with songs like Every breath you take & With or Without you.

I mostly play like that. I didn’t think I did, but I just played a few things and observed. I think how I play depends upon how fast the song is and how funky.

If it’s fast and you are going across strings it makes sense to play in the direction your hand is moving (sweep picking I think its called). One advantage of a pick is that ‘rakes’ can be done in both directions! So I found that on I Heard It Through The Grapevine (Marvin version) I play downstrokes if the note is on the beat and up on the “and”.

But on “Good Times” (Chic) in places I use consecutive strokes in the same direction - like up / up when going from D to A string on consecutive 1/16th notes.

So in bar 4 below if you follow the strict up/down (Up on the beat and the “and”, down on the “e” and the “a”) you would play (rest) up down up down down.

So three times when you are changing strings the preceding stroke is in the opposite direction and at 106bpm that is a challenge (for me). I think I just discovered why I cannot play this correctly at 106 bpm. It’s easier with fingers.... Its also difficult to damp the open A on the “3” of bar 4 when using a pick.


So, I think in general the strict method works. Bar 2 is okay that way due to it being 1/8 notes mostly. Bar 4 there is no easy way with a pick other than developing blistering speed.

Probably when you are learning something in the “not to tempo/out of time” phase, work out how to pick it.

If it was originally played with a pick it will probably lay out nicely anyway as the original player was working within the restrictions. Hope that helps.

Paul’s Thoughts On Resources

Now notice that both Simon and Michael were guitar players before they were bass players. What’s interesting about this (to me) is that in the classical guitar field players have been using a pick for two hundred years.

And I once went through the detail of collecting resources to help me learn the pick - and then never had the time to implement it.

So here are the resources I would use as a guide in learning to play with a pick:

1. Carol Kaye’s Bass DVD Course

I know I just talked about classical guitar and this isn’t a classical guitar method....but although the production values of this package are awful, Kaye talks about pick playing in the context of the bass. And I’ve no problems with her doing that. Her method is thorough and worth checking out.


2. The Principles Of Correct Practice For Guitar by Jamie Andreas

This book is worth getting hold of for all bassists. For aspiring pick players you can learn a lot about posture and muscle relaxation of the hands, arms, shoulders neck and back from this book as well as how to hold a pick and how to use it efficiently and with economy of movement.

Good book.

3. Maximum Speed Picking by Ney Mello

Ney is a Brazilian guitarist who I found via Jamie Andreas (above) and her forum. He’s an incredible classical guitarist and this DVD will help you move beyond Carol Kaye’s approach and add speed and control to your picking technique.

Does Anyone Have Bobby Vega’s Picking DVD???

Bobby Vega is a bay area bass player who plays with a pick - and he’s incredibly funky! When Rocco was absent with kidney issues, Bobby was one of the guys who subbed. There’s a video clip from a Bass Player Live show where Bobby is doing a clinic and plays What Is Hip with a pick - very inspiring.

Now Bobby released a DVD in 2010 about picking - but it’s no longer available and I can’t find a copy of it for sale in the usual channels. And I’d love to review it - so if anyone has a copy, can you drop me an email!

One Final Note

There’s a curious snobbery about playing with a pick in some elements of the bass community - as if playing with a pick isn’t “proper’ bass playing.

If you’re a working bass player this is a technique that probably should be in your armoury. As you play bigger gigs, note what Simon said about playing with a pick to make sure your bass cuts through.


And there are some great players who’ve played with a pick down the years and not always in the rock genre - Anthony Jackson immediately springs to mind.

Hopefully anyone wanting to learn to play with a pick has now got some ideas of where to go to start picking this technique up.

Summary

Learning to play with a pick for bass players is a topic where there are surprisingly few bass specific resources available. There’s only really Kaye’s DVD and Bobby Vega’s - Kaye’s DVD is poorly produced (though the info is good) and Bobby’s is unavailable at the time of writing.

By combining Kaye’s material with the two classical guitar oriented resources that I suggested - Jamie Andreas and Ney Mello - anyone wanting to learn this technique properly and thoroughly should be able to start confident that they have enough technical resources at hand. Thanks to Tom for the great question and as always, feel free to ask any questions you have. Whether band related. Or bass related.

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