updates to the how to play bass website · pdf filethe how to play bass monthly ezine ......

2 | Free How To Play Bass Monthly Ezine | January 2013 | how-to-play-bass.com

THE HOW TO PLAY BASS MONTHLY EZINE - JANUARY 2014

Welcome to the free how to play bass monthly ezine for January, 2014. In this month’s issue we’re going to have a song tutorial for one of my fa-vourite James Jamerson bass lines - that’s the line James played on Ain’tNo Mountain High Enough by Marvin Gaye Tammi Terrell.

Updates To The How To Play Bass Website

Before we go onto the song tutorial I just want to take a moment to tell you about upcoming changes to the how to play bass website:

1. Firstly the website is being redeveloped/redesigned at the moment. I’m not sure when the new layout will roll out...but it will be in the next couple of months hopefully.

2. Those of you who’ve subscribed for longer than a few months will no-tice that the monthly ezines were erratic in 2013. That’s something I’m rectifying and from now on they will be regular. Every month there will be a new song tutorial and the previous months song tutorial will disap-pear into the archive of First Bass And Beyond.

3. Those of you who’ve visited the website recently may notice that it hasn’t been updated with new songs recently. That’s partly because of the redesign that’s ongoing. And partly because of a change of policy.

For most of 2013 I’ve been filming two video tutorials a week to tie in with my weekly magazine First Bass And Beyond. And I’ve been posting versions of those tutorials on youtube and on the How To Play Bass web-site.

I have nearly 300 videos on YouTube and have decided that although the two video tutorials a week schedule will continue, I won’t post many of these tutorials to Youtube anymore. Perhaps it will be one a month plus the free song tutorial like this one.


4. This policy is already under way - here are videos that subscribers of First Bass And Beyond have had access to that weren’t uploaded to Youtube:

Higher Ground (Red Hot Chili Peppers)Papa’s Got A Brand New Bag (James Brown)Life In The Fast Lane (The Eagles)Stormy Monday (The Allman Brothers)He’s The Greatest Dancer (Sister Sledge)Superstition (Stevie Ray Vaughan)Rain (The Beatles)Upside Down (Diana Ross)Many Rivers To Cross (Jimmy Cliff)Wonderful World Beautiful People (Jimmy Cliff)Miss You (Rolling Stones)The Harder They Come (Jimmy Cliff)Can’t Stop (The Chili Peppers)You Can Get It If You Really Want (Jimmy Cliff)

5. Upcoming tutorials will be focused on songs that are commonly played by gigging bands. That will range from soul and R&B classics to rock and rock blues tunes. Songs that will be featured in tutorials over the next few weeks include Easy Skanking and Satisfy my Soul by Bob Marley, Mr Brightside and Smile Like You Mean It And Somebody Told Me by The Killers, I Predict A Riot by The Kaiser Chiefs and more.

6. I’ve added a new section to First Bass And Beyond called ‘Working Basslines.’ That section features complete tutorials for songs that bands commonly play - these tutorials feature streaming and downloadable videos, notation in PDF and tab, instruction on creating individual sec-tions in Band In A Box to isolate and practice (which includes necessary chords and keys and tempo information) and also bass less backing tracks to play along with.

7. Over the next few months I’m going to serialise a book I wrote - called LEARN SONGS NOT SCALES - that details the background to why I don’t think bass players should learn scales by rote. (Note bass players


DO need to understand scales and how they are formed....but we don’t need to practice them by rote. It will all be spelled out over the next few months!)

So things are changing. I’ll keep you posted as the updates roll out.

5 | Working Basslines 7 | I Feel Good | how-to-play-bass.com

AIN’T NO MOUNTAIN HIGH ENOUGH by MARVIN GAYE AND TAMMI TERRELL

The song tutorial for January 2014 is the Marvin Gaye and Tammi Ter-rell version of Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.

The bass on this was performed by James Jamerson - and in fact it’s one of my favourite Jamerson bass lines. It’s not one of his virtuoso performances - but it’s just classy all the way through and would definitely pay you to study more deeply.

Now we’re going to look at four main sections - there’s the intro, the verse, the chorus and the bridge. The chorus section will work for both Chorus 1 and Chorus 2 - you’ll see how in a minute.

After the bridge we go to Verse 3 - but there’s a key change. Everything shifts up by a semi-tone (oone fret). I’ve not included those sections here....that’s for you to do!

If you can work out how to do that, then this tutorial becomes two songs in one! Because the Amy Winehouse song ‘Tears Dry On Their Own’ is based on the chord progression for Ain’t No Mountain. And you can play through Amy’s song just be transposing (and simplifying!!!) the appropri-ate sections of Jamerson’s line on Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.

So it’s a great song to learn. Here’s the first 8 bars that you can use for the intro:


The verse is based on the intro figure....with some extra rhythmic drive in the verse line:

Next up is the chorus - this is a busier section. Now there are two cho-ruses - so for the first chorus play from the start and then when you get to the bar with the ‘1’ over it, play that bar and that’s the first chorus fin-ished.

The second chorus is slightly longer - and has 4 bars tagged on to transi-tion to the bridge. Play the first seven bars as in Chorus 1 - then jump to the bar that says ‘2’ over it and play from there. If you’re in any doubt, watch the video tutorial!


The final section that we need to look at is the Bridge. This sets up the key change in the song - in fact the key change happens in the last two bars of the bridge. This is what we need to play:


Here’s the format of the song:

IntroVerseChorusVerse 2Chorus 2 (remember those extra bars!)BridgeVerse 3 - But Played UP A Semitone (one fret)Chorus 3 - As Chorus 1 - but played up a semitone - repeat and fade on this section.

9 | Learn Songs Not Scales| how-to-play-bass.com

LEARN SONGS NOT SCALES! - INTRODUCTION

You’ve probably seen the header on the ‘How To Play Bass’ website a gazillion times - with the unofficial motto of ‘Learn Songs Not Scales.’

This phrase is probably responsible for the most flak and kickback that I get from bass players who encounter me on the web. And this series of articles - that I will combine into a book - is going to address this prop-erly and at length so that people can understand my point fully. And hopefully they’ll come to realize that I’m right. And that if you want to become a better bass player you have to learn songs not scales.

Now I absolutely know with 100% certainty that learning scales won’t make you a better bass player. And I can share that certainty with a story from when I was a younger - and naive - bass player.

How I Became A Professional Bass Player

Back in the early 90s I became a professional bass player. And by pro-fessional, my definition is the literal one: someone who derived the bulk of their income from performing a specific activity. In my case it was playing the bass.

Now this professional status was in no way related to my ability level - with three other guys we’d started a band to play at pubs and clubs, wed-dings, corporate parties and the like. Between us there was a fortunate mix of skills - and through a fortuitous combination of circumstances we quickly became the ‘house band’ for a 5 Star chain of hotels in the Lon-don area and whenever a company booked a function with this chain, we were the band that got recommended.

So we had a steady stream of corporate gigs - clients like British Airways, American Airlines, most of the major banks, health companies, basically anyone who might organize a 2 to 3 day conference, host it near Heath-row Airport and have a party on one of the nights.

These gigs were well paid and often fun. At one of them we did a half


an hour ‘extra set’ and were paid with 4 club class return tickets to Hong Kong! That’s a war story for another day though.

So that was how I became a ‘professional’ bass player.

But I wasn’t satisfied with my level of playing - and wanted to get better. So I looked around for a teacher. But not just any teacher. I wanted a re-ally good teacher.

Meet The Arch Guru Of Scales

Did I mention I was naive back then? I didn’t know the criteria for se-lecting a good teacher - and I chose the wrong guy.

Now this guy had great credentials - he’d been to Berklee, he’d taught some ‘big’ names (like Pino), he’d been featured in Bass Player Maga-zine, people I looked up to referred to him as the ‘best private bass teacher in the UK’ and so on.

So I started taking lessons with him.

The first bunch of lessons were really helpful - I learned the fingerboard thoroughly, I worked on my left hand and right hand techniques in a sys-tematic and deliberate way. If you’ve taken - or looked at - the bass for beginners course you’ll immediately recognize those elements as they are present in the first series of lessons in that course.

But then we ‘progressed’ to scales and arpeggios.

First it was just major scales. Over one octave. And then over two oc-taves. And then starting with different fingers. And then using extension fingering. (Paul’s Note: extension fingering is where you cover five frets with four fingers.)

From there we went through all the modes of the major scale in the same depth: one octave; two octaves; starting on different fingers.

And beyond that there was the natural minor scale and the harmonic


minor scale. AND all the modes of those scales. (You ever played a locrian #2 scale? Or deliberately used one? Me neither - but I could play it in 16th notes at a pretty quick tempo over 3 octaves by this time on my 5 string).

Here’s How I Know Learning Scales Doesn’t Make You A Better Player

I took these scale exercises as a personal challenge - and I used to prac-tice anywhere from 4 to 8 hours a day. Over the course of about 15 months I must have logged somewhere in the region of 1200 practice hours. If you’ve read Deliberate Practice - or have heard of the 10,000 hour theory - that’s obviously a tenth of the hours needed to be invested to make yourself much better.

Only there was a problem.

One day I realized that while I could play scales and arpeggios smoothly and fluently - it hadn’t changed my bass playing in any significant way whatsoever. Maybe I was a bit more fluent on the fingerboard - but what’s the point of being able to play faster if you don’t know what to play?

And literally overnight I stopped practicing. And stopped taking lessons with this guy. Believed (erroneously) that I’d reached the ‘limit’ of my talent.

And went in the span of 6 months from practicing obsessively to only playing at rehearsals and gigs and when I needed to learn new songs for gigs.

All because this guy I’d entrusted to teach me built his method on the rote learning of scales.

Important Caveat

There’s an important caveat to throw down here - I absolutely believe that learning scales by rote won’t make you a better bass player. But that doesn’t mean that scales or music theory aren’t important. And the


motto ‘learn songs not scales’ does not in any way, shape or form mean that to become a better bass player you don’t need to learn any music theory.

Understanding what you are playing in songs at a theoretical level is absolutely crucial to being able to take that idea and use it in other songs that use different (or similar) chord progressions.

So whilst ‘Learn Songs Not Scales’ makes a convenient motto - it does not mean, has never meant, and will never mean that you can afford to ignore music theory.

We clear on that?

Good, then we’ll move on and pick this up in next month’s ezine.


FIRST BASS AND BEYOND - THE ULTIMATE SONG RESOURCE FOR BEGINNER AND INTERMEDIATE BASS PLAYERS

If you’ve read this far it shows that you’re interested in detailed song tu-torials for bass. How would you like to get access to over 200 song tutori-als over the next year for less than a dollar a tutorial? Well First Bass And Beyond gives you that....

Here’s how it works.

First Bass And Beyond is based on a magazine model and I publish a PDF like this one every Friday at 5pm GMT. Each magazine includes two song tutorials in the PDF that are complemented with video tutori-als and MP3s as well.

I publish 50 issues a year - so that’s 100 song tutorials over the next year.

Additionally there is a section of the website called Working Bass Lines - and new members will get a new song every week in that section of the website. That takes you up to 150 song tutorials in the next year. (See list at the end of this PDF)

When you join you get access to the archive of the free How To Play Bass monthly ezine - there are currently 35 videos in that archive. That’s 185 song tutorials. (These 35 tutorials are all immediately available - and to see what songs are available, see the list at the end of the PDF)

When you join you also get access to the Bass For Beginners course which currently includes another 35 song tutorials - that makes 220 song tutorials. (And these 35 tutorials are available immediately).

Plus if you subscribe as an annual member you get 10 back issues of the magazine as a bonus - that could potentially add another 20 song tutori-als to your song tutorial library!

There’s more in the magazine too - a main transcription every week that is usually more advanced and doesn’t have video to go with. Plus there’s


a theory column for bass players taught from the perspective of the bass player’s role in a band playing songs. And there’s currently a columndeconstructing the playing of Rocco Prestia of Tower Of Power. When this column has finished I’ll move on and deconstruct Tommy Shannon’s bass playing. And so on.

All this costs either $57 for a quarter or $187 for a year. The full details are here:

http://www.how-to-play-bass.com/first-bass-and-beyond.html

Contact

If you’ve got any other questions don’t hesitate to email me via the con-tact form on the website.

Have a great month, and enjoy.

Paul

PS - there are lists of what songs are featured in the Archive and what songs are featured in the Working Bass Line Section to follow.

http://www.how-to-play-bass.com/first-bass-and-beyond.html


LIST OF SONGS INCLUDED IN THE WORKING BASS LINES SECTION OF THE FIRST BASS AND BEYOND WEBSITE

When I decided on creating this section of the First Bass And Beyond website I polled the current subscribers who are currently in gigging bands and asked for them to post their set lists. The following list of songs is pooled from these set lists - and bear in mind that although the bulk of those who responded live and gig in the US, I also had responses from the UK, Australia and other countries.

This section WILL be expanded to 100 songs in the future - and un-doubtedly there will be more classic rock, more classic R&B, more Mo-town, a heap of blues songs and more!

PLEASE NOTE: when you join FB&B these songs appear on a weekly basis....starting with Midnight Hour.

1. Midnight Hour by Wilson Pickett2. Brown Sugar by The Rolling Stones3. Proud Mary by Creedence Clearwater Revival4. Jumping Jack Flash by The Rolling Stones5. Superstition by Stevie Wonder6. Play That Funky Music b7 Wild Cherry7. I Feel Good by James Brown8. Cocaine by Eric Clapton9. Respect by Aretha Franklin10. Sweet Home Alabama by Lynyrd Skynyrd11.Sultans Of Swing by Dire Straits12.La Grange by ZZ Top13. Johnny B Goode by Chuck Berry154. Brown Eyed Girl by Van Morrison15. We Are Young by Fun16. Light My Fire by The Doors17. Who’ll Stop The Rain by Creedence Clearwater Revival18. Gimme Some Loving by The Blues Brothers19. September by Earth Wind and Fire20. Twist and Shout by The Beatles21. Good Times by Chic


22. Mustang Sally by The Commitments23. Pride And Joy by Stevie Ray Vaughan24. I Wish by Stevie Wonder25. Long Train Running by The Doobie Brothers26.Little Wing by Jimi Hendrix27. Satisfaction by The Rolling Stones28. I Saw Her Standing There by The Beatles29. Summer of 69 by Bryan Adams30. Lost In Music by Sister Sledge31.Soul Man by Sam And Dave32. Suspicious Minds by Elvis33.Back In The USSR by The Beatles34.Carwash by Rose Royce35. Le Freak by Chic36. Stand By Me by Ben E King37. Pinball Wizard by The Who38. Billie Jean by Michael Jackson39. Honky Tonk Woman by The Rolling Stones40. Hey Joe by Jimi Hendrix41. Forget You by Ceelo Green42. Locked Out Of Heaven by Bruno Mars43. Let’s Stick Together by Roxy Music44. Stuck In The Middle With You by Stealer’s Wheel45. Brick House by The Commodores46. Great Balls Of Fire by Jerry Lee Lewis47. Moves Like Jagger by Maroon 548. Smooth by Santana49.Roadhouse Blues by The Doors50. Black Magic Woman by Santana

Note: Tutorials for some of these songs can be found on my YouTube channel. The ‘working basslines’ section has a fuller tutorial with tab and notation, has bass less backing tracks to practice with, and also has a tutorial section on programming the different sections of the tune with Band In A Box so that you can isolate sections giving you problems.


LIST OF SONGS INCLUDED IN THE ARCHIVE SECTION OF THE FIRST BASS AND BEYOND WEBSITE

A Love Of Their Own by The Average White BandAfter Midnight by Eric ClaptonAll The Small Things by Blink 182Alright Now by FreeBand Of Gold by Freda Payne7 Nation Army by The White StripesSunshine Of Your Love by CreamGreen Onions by Booker TBehind A Painted Smile by The Isley BrothersBlack Dog by Led ZeppelinCrossroads by CreamDock Of The Bay by Otis ReddingDon’t Stand So Close to me by The PoliceFactory Of Faith by The Red Hot Chili PeppersGet Lucky by Daft PunkGo Your Own Way by Fleetwood MacGrapevine by Marvin GayeHey Soul Sister by TrainI Fought The Law by The ClashI Wish by Stevie WonderLayla by Derek and The DominosLondon Calling by The ClashMan On The Moon by REMRespect by Aretha Franklin Rock The Casbah by The ClashSex On Fire by The Kings of LeonSigned Sealed Delivered by Stevie WonderStir It Up by Bob MarleySummer of 69 by Bryan AdamsSuperstition by Stevie WonderSweet Home Alabama by Lynyrd SkynyrdThe One I Love by REMValerie by Amy WinehouseWhen You Were Young by The Killers

updates to the how to play bass website · pdf filethe how to play bass monthly ezine ......

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