table of contents -...

� | Ezine 74 | 28 January 2011 | how-to-play-bass.com

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction.................................................................................

Transcription: I’m In A Different World.....................................

Transcription: If I Could Build My Whole World.......................

Transcription: Night ‘Fo Last......................................................

Beginner’s Corner: Jimmy Mack.................................................

Book Review -Motown Bass Classics.........................................

CD Review: Standing In The Shadows Of Motown...................

About The Author.........................................................................

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6

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INTRODUCTION

Welcome to Issue 74 of the How-To-Play-Bass.com Ezine. This is the second ‘Jamerson’ issue. If you were around this time last year, you’ll understand.

If you weren’t, you won’t. So here’s the story. Tomorrow - January 29th - is Jamerson’s birthday. Tomorrow he would have been 75.

Now if you’ve spent any time around the HTPB website, or following me, you know what a big fan of Jamerson I am. If anything, that’s deepened with the teaching I’m doing on the Cracking The Detroit Code.

When you really dig into the back catalogue of Motown recordings that he played on you can’t help but come away with a healthy appreciation of what he bought to the Snake Pit every working day. (The Snake Pit was the nickname for Studio A were Motown recorded in Detroit).

What I did last year was prepare a special ‘Jamerson’ issue to commemo-rate his birthday - and that’s now going to be an annual How To Play Bass tradition.

To that end there are 4 transcriptions of Jamerson’s work here today - all at different ability levels. For starters we’ve got one of his ‘virtuoso’ per-formances - ‘I’m In A Different World’ by The Four Tops.

There are two lines that most intermediate players should be able to get their fingers around without too much trouble. There’s ‘If I Could Build My Whole World Around You’ by Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell. And there’s ‘Night ‘Fo Last’ by Shorty Long.

Some of you may have caught Night ‘Fo Last in the ‘free’ ezine around July or August.

But I know some of you will have missed it - as it’s not a line that’s readily available anywhere else I’ve included it in today’s issue too.


In the Beginner’s Corner we’ve got a lesson on how to play Jimmy Mack by Martha Reeves. There will be a video to go with this in the next few weeks, so look out for that.

I’ve been transcribing Jamerson lines on and off for most of the year in preparation for Cracking The Detroit Code. And some of those lines are part of the ‘bonus lesson’ structure that’s in place for that course. But there’s such a rich legacy of lines that haven’t been transcribed that I’m planning to do more Jamerson transcriptions. I’m going to try and do one a month for the Membership Ezine.

As I wrote when launching Cracking The Detroit Code, modern bass playing was invented in Detroit in the 60s - and Jamerson pretty much wrote the book. Irrespective of whether you love or hate Motown music, you can learn a truckload from his bass lines.

NOTE: If there are any Jamerson bass lines that you really like and would like to see transcribed, drop me an email and let me know. I’m always on the look out for tunes that maybe I know but haven’t dug into - I found a great line called My Whole World Ended by David Ruffin from a recommendation like that.

There are no guarantees - except that if you don’t ask, you definitely won’t see a transcription!

Basslines 101

There are 25 places left on the Course at the time of writing this. (Thurs-day). The initial pre-sell offer has gone - and when I launch the enroll-ment to the main list (on Saturday) the bonus structure will change as well.

So it’s not to late to get in if you want!

To those of you who’ve already enrolled, I’ll be emailing you individually over the next 48 hours - so watch out for that!


How To Contact Me

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

If you haven’t had a response within 36 hours then it means I probably haven’t got your email. So you can either resend your email to me. Or use one of these ways to connect with me

Or you can write on my facebook wall. For various reasons my Facebook Account is tied to my other email address - [email protected] - so if you want to ‘friend’ me on Facebook that’s what you’ll need to type in.

And you could also try emailing that other emailing address if you think there is a problem: [email protected]

Have a great week.

Paul


TRANSCRIPTION to I’M IN A DIFFERENT WORLD by THE FOUR TOPS

This week’s first Jamerson tran-scription is one of those lines that I class in his ‘virtuoso’ section - lines like Home Cookin’, For Once In My LIfe, How Long Has That Evening Train Been Gone, Bernadette, Mu-tiny and others.

When I sat down to play it I had to marvel at what Jamerson was able to achieve with his one fingered approach to plucking. Most of us

struggle to play lines like this with two fingers (Yep, that includes me).

There’s a bunch of great lines you could take from this and put into other keys. One of the things I really like is how Jamerson differentiates sec-tions of the tune with different approaches - there’s lots of sudden ver-ticality that really catches the ear in the Verse and Chorus sections, but the ‘bridge’ section is much more horizontal in nature (although being Jamerson, he can’t resist throwing in some root/5th/octave patterns).

Here’s how the tune lays out:

Letter A: Verse - 0.00Letter B: Chorus - 0.19Letter C: Bridge - 0.38Letter D: Verse - 1.11Letter E: Chorus - 1.29Letter F: Bridge - 1.49Letter G: Bridge - 2.20Letter H: Chorus/Fade - 2.44


As always, the tabbed positions are guidelines only. If you want to change whereabouts you are playing these lines, please feel free to ex-periment to find a system that suits you and your style of playing, your fingering system, your hand size and the scale of your fretboard.

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TRANSCRIPTION to IF I COULD BUILD MY WHOLE WORLD by Mar-vin Gaye & Tammi Terrell

This week’s second Jamerson tran-scription is more of an intermediate type line

You’ll find the tune on a great reis-sue double CD called ‘The Com-plete Duets.’ There’s some great tunes and some great bass playing on this CD - it definitely goes on my recommended pile. (Funny thing - I’m not a great fan of Marvin Gaye’s Motown output - except the stuff he

did with Tammi Terrell, which is golden!).

Here’s how the tune lays out:

Letter A: Intro - 0.00Letter B: Verse 1- Marvin - 0.08Letter C: Verse 2 - Tammi - 0.41Letter D: “Do do do dee do” - 1.11Letter E: Verse 3 and Fade - 1.23

As always feel free to experiment with the tab - I’ve tabbed it in ‘first’ position which uses a lot of open strings. You might want to rejig some of that - or you might want to work on your use of open strings and your ‘damping’ of strings once you’ve played them.

This tune is a good technical exerise for that.

�0 | Ezine 74 | 28 January 2011 | how-to-play-bass.com

�� | Ezine 74 | 28 January 2011 | how-to-play-bass.com


TRANSCRIPTION to NIGHT FO’ LAST BY SHORTY LONG

This week’s third Jamerson tran-scription is more of an intermediate type line. One thing to note - on the Here Comes The Judge album there are two versions of Night Fo’ Last. There’s the vocal version, and there’s an instrumental version.

I’ve transcribed the instrumental version. These versions are NOT the same. The vocal version is pretty similar - but the two bridge

sections (Letters C and G on the transcription) are simpler in the vocal version than the instrumental version.

From an analytical point of view there’s more interesting bass playing going on in the instrumental section, so that’s the main reason I chose that version.

Here’s how the tune lays out.

Section A: Intro 0.03Section B: Verse 1 0.21Section C: Bridge 0.37Section D - Verse 0.59Section E - ‘Break’ - 1.15Section F - Verse 1.32Section G: Bridge - 1.47Section H: Verse/Fade Out - 2.08

The transcription is presented in notation only, and then notation with bass tab. Tabbed positions marked out are where I’d probably play it...but you may want to experiment depending on your fingering system, hand size and scale of your bass.


BEGINNER’S CORNER -JIMMI MACK by MARTHA & THE VAN-DELLAS

This week’s Beginner’s Corner is a very simple early Jamerson line.

There’s basically only two sections to the tune, the verse and the chorus.

I’ll give you a section for each - play-ing just these sections will get you through the tune.

If you want to vary the line up for different verses and chorus then please do so!

Ok the tune starts with a chorus with no bass - the bass comes in with the last bar of that chorus - which you can copy in a moment from the chorus section - and then here’s the verse:


The Chorus is another simple section:

Now bear in mind that you can throw in some simple variations to these two sections - though the lines themselves are really simple, the trick is to play them with rhythmic authority and make them swing.

Although Jamerson could create virtuoisic bass lines if needed as we’ve seen, he could also create simple lines and nail them for the duration of a song. That’s a lesson EVERY bass player needs to learn!


BOOK REVIEW

MOTOWN BASS CLASSICS


BOOK REVIEW - MOTOWN BASS CLASSICS

Today’s first review is naturally Jamerson related.

This is a book that I got for the sake of completeness and wasn’t especially im-pressed with.

However I have revised my opinion of this book somewhat. By now you probably now how highly I regard Jamerson’s bass playing - and you’ve heard me talk about him as the Father of modern bass playing.

The obvious natural resource for studying Jamerson is the book Standing In The Shadows Of Motown. However the authors and publishers of that book have created a barrier - you can only really work with that book if you can read music.

And although I advise anyone serious about getting better that they should learn to read music, it takes a certain amount of time and dedica-tion to actually gain proficiency in reading music. And it can be a mo-notonous and frustrating chord - I’m hoping to make that easier when I rework the Sight Reading Course that formed the first instructional col-umn in the HTPB Membership Ezine. But that will be a while yet.

And this book - Motown Bass Classics - actually provides a bridge to studying Jamerson for those players who can’t yet read music. That ‘bridge’ is two fold - firstly all the transcriptions are tabbed out. And secondly the bulk of the songs are simple to intermediate level. Of the 21 songs there are only 2 that are really advanced (Ain’t Nothing Like the Real Thing and the insane line to For Once In My Life).

What Songs Are Covered In Motown Bass Classics?

Here’s a full list of the songs in the book:


Ain’t No Mountain High Enough (Marvin & Tammi version)Ain’t Nothing Like The Real ThingAin’t Too Proud To BegBaby LoveDancing In The StreetFor Once In My LifeGet ReadyI Can’t Help MyselfI Heard It Through The GrapevineI Just Want To CelebrateI Second that EmotionIt’s The Same Old SongMy GirlMy GuyReach Out I’ll Be ThereShot GunStop! In The Name Of LoveWhat’s Going ONWhere Did Our Love GoYou Can’t Hurry LoveYou Keep Me Hanging On

Note: Get Ready and I Just Want To Celebrate were by a group called Rare Earth who had their own bass player - so they don’t feature Jamerson.

More Thoughts About The Book

Hal Leonard’s transcriptions are usually pretty accurate - and are always well presented. Additionally you have the chords to the tune notated out, along with the melody.

This is helpful if you’re starting to do some serious analysis of the lines and what to cross reference the chords and the melody. But it can be distracting if you’re just trying to learn the tune.

The other disadvantage of adding the melody is that it reduces the num-ber of bars that can be printed on each page - therefore lengthening


each score.

In itself that’s not a problem - but it complicates the process of learn-ing a tune by spreading the bass line out over multiple pages. And as the book is not spiral bound it just makes it harder to keep it on your music stand and actually use it. My advice if you’re working on a tune is to photocopy the relevant pages and use that on your music stand. Not only will that be easier to actually use, but also it will preserve your book longer.

How To Use The Book There are multiple ways you can use this book.

1) You can just pick tunes that you want to learn at random and learn them.

2) You can use the book as a way of improving your bass playing. Re-or-der the tunes from simple to hard and learn them one at a time. By the time you get down to the harder ones (You Keep Me Hanging On, Reach Out I’ll Be There, Grapevine by Gladys) your playing will have improved.

Plus you’ll have learned some great tunes!

3) You can analyze the tunes for greater appreciation. You can take vo-cabulary from these tunes - or methodology. It all depends how deep you want to go.

How Could The Book Be Better?

Spiral binding would be great for a start! (Anyone tired of hearing me say that yet?).

Also, I don’t like the way Hal Leonard has of calling a particular line Bass Fig 1 or Bass Fig 2, and then printing the melody line out and putting ‘Use Bass 1 here’ under the melody line.

The last area where the book could have been more valuable is the


choice of songs.At least 6 of the songs are present in their entirety in Standing In The Shadows of Motown. And 4 or 5 of the others have been covered in ei-ther the R&B Bass Bible or Motown Bass. It would have made this a much more essential resource if they could have put in some other Mo-town songs.

That said, this is still worth buying, it’s pretty cheaply available on Ama-zon or www.bassbooks.com. It’s a 4 Star book in my opinion if you can read music - if you can’t read music it’s a 5 Star book and will serve as your best introduction to Jamerson’s work (other than listening to it of course!).


CD REVIEW - STANDING IN THE SHADOWS OF MOTOWN DE-LUXE 2 X CD

Today’s second review is also Jamerson related.

The film Standing In The Shadows of Motown was released in 2002 (and won an Oscar!) - and told the story of the Funk Brothers in more detail than covered in Dr Licks book that focuses on Jamerson.

It’s an inspiring, interesting, poignant and humbling film. If you haven’t seen it, you should go check it out.

However this review is not about the film, but about the CD that was released with it. If you don’t know the story, the film’s creators got the surviving Funk Brothers together and staged a concert playing Motown tunes and featuring singers like Ben Harper, Bootsy Collins, Joan Os-borne, Chaka Khan and Gerald Levert.

The 1 disc version of this concert is kind of OK. But the 2 disc version is gold dust.

The 2 disc version features the concert recordings - plus the second disc has got some inspiring interview snippets, and a bunch of interesting re-mixes of the original Motown recordings with the vocals mixed out. Plus there’s parts of some of the tunes that really zero in on Jamerson’s bass and allow you to hear it stripped of a lot of the surrounding instrumen-tation that normally accompanies it.

Here is a full list of songs that have been remixed from the Motown origi-nals:

BernadetteYou Keep Me Hanging OnStanding In the Shadows Of LoveThe One Who Really Loves YouPride And Joy


My GirlLove Is Lie An Itching In My HeartDon’t Mess With BillThe Hunter Gets Captured By The GameI Second That EmotionI Was Made To Love HerI Heard It Through the Grapevine (Gladys version)Home CookingFor Once In My LifeI Can’t Get Next To youIt’s A ShameAin’t No Mountain High Enough (Diana Ross version)Mercy Mercy meYou’re My Everything

If you’ve been with me for a while you’ll know that the last song on that list - You’re My Everything - was the transcription that I marked Jamer-son’s birthday with two years ago. In the remixed version it’s stripped down to only vocals and bass, it’s an extraordinary performance.

(If you don’t have the transcription, drop me an email and I’ll send it to you, it’s pretty widely available).

If you’re into Jamerson, I can’t recommend this two CD recording enough. The chance to hear Jamerson up close and personal is a great experience. Although this is quite pricey - if you’re into Jamerson it’s a must buy. Simple as that.


ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Paul has played the bass since he was 15 (a LONG time ago!) and has made a living from music since 1992.

In 1994 Paul co-founded CARTE BLANCHE, one of the UK’s most popular party/function bands, which he now manages.

In addition to Carte Blanche, Paul has played with numberous tribute bands covering Abba, Robbie Williams, Elvis Presley, Tom Jones, Blues Brothers, Freddie Mercury, Kylie Minogue, Seventies Disco, Eighties New Romantic, Britpop, Bee Gees and more.

Paul has played at the business end of nearly 2000 gigs since 1990 ranging from jazz duos in pizza bars to open air festivals for 10,000 people. Paul has played all over the UK and Europe - plus the odd couple of times in the middle east - but has now retired from playing cover tunes for rich people who are often too cool to dance! His last gig for Carte Blanche was New Years Eve at the London Ritz where guests paid over £1000 a head!

In March 2008 Paul set up the website www.how-to-play-bass.com - a website aimed at teaching the bass guitar to beginners, with a particular emphasis on song based learning. The website - and this unique approach - came about as a result of Paul’s dissatisfaction with how the bass guitar is taught.

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