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Electric Bass - Ronald LaPread

Difficulty - Intermediate

This weeks transcription is one i’ve enjoyed playing for over a decade now, and me sitting down and transcribing it in full is somewhat overdue!

I played several Commodores tunes while I was working on ships in the Caribbean but this one never failed to get the audience moving. Ronald LaPread’s line really drives the song forward and the blend of on and off beat rhythmic elements means that, although the line is quite repetitive when you analyse it, it’s never boring to listen to and certainly not to play.

There are little things worth paying attention to, not least of which is the quick switches between the fingerstyle and the little ‘pops’, something that is often overlooked with slap playing. The technique tends to be used (within popular music) as an addition to a fingerstyle groove rather than as a standalone technique and it’s something I might touch on in a lesson at some stage. In addition to these there is the bridge unison line at letter F, always fun to nail down!

Have fun!

You can request a Transcription below. I also offer a bespoke transcription service. I charge £40 for most transcription requests; more complex transcriptions are on a case-by-case basis, and I will provide a specific quote at my own discretion. If you pay for a transcription, you will receive a copy without a watermark.

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The full transcription is free via the link below, paid subscribers can download the transcription without a watermark.

Brick House WM

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Electric Bass - Andrew Gouche

Difficulty - Advanced

This transcription is the first in a series of bigger, more elaborate transcriptions and I thought I could kick off with the ‘alternate’ version of the Rufus song You Got The Love I put out a couple of weeks ago!! This song was one of several Rufus songs covered on the All The Hits! Live record which features the godfather that is Andrew Gouche on bass and also as Chaka’s musical director.

Andrew needs little introduction from me here, he’s one of the Godfathers of modern gospel bass playing and his work has influenced electric bass players for decades now. That same gospel flavour is all over this record and to get a feel for it, compare and contrast the studio version of this song with this arrangement, Andrew’s vocabulary really comes through and speaks for itself.

It’s been really interesting working on playing this too, because it hammers home just how important your musical upbringing is when it comes to musical interpretation, phrasing and vocabulary and mine was very, very different to Andrews and it shows in the way I play vs. how he plays. I would have to sit and study both his vocabulary, feel and placement for a LONG time to really get close to how he sounds on this record. The scope for inspiration is endless though, and there are little things that I absolutely love in this particular cut, such as the 10ths he puts in during the guitar solo, the unison hits at the end and the killer run down to start the song.

Enjoy!

You can request a Transcription below. I also offer a bespoke transcription service. I charge £40 for most transcription requests; more complex transcriptions are on a case-by-case basis, and I will provide a specific quote at my own discretion. If you pay for a transcription, you will receive a copy without a watermark.

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The first two pages are available for free below, paid subscribers can download the complete transcription

You Got The Love (Live) Sample

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Electric Bass - Steve Green/James Williams

Difficulty - Intermediate

Hey everyone,

This weeks transcription comes from the American RnB trio The Jones Girls, a group I was pointed towards by a former bandmate from the same area and as it turns out a group I wish i’d come into contact with earlier as they released some wonderful music.

Show Love Today was released as part of their debut album The Jones Girls, and is (for me) the standout bass part from the record. The chorus groove in particular really stood out, partly because it uses the kind of open voiced triad ideas i’m working on a lot at the moment but once I transcribed it how fiddly the line is to mute effectively! Keeping the lower strings quiet is really crucial to the clarity of the line when you move across onto the upper strings, along with paying attention to which of the 8th notes are played staccato vs legato.

I chose my Yamaha BB for this playthrough, with the passive tone rolled on quite a bit more than I usually do as the bass sound on the record is classic ‘flats with the tone open’.

Hope you all enjoy this! One thing to note is that the song is in that no-mans land between G and Ab, so i de-tuned the song .48 to bring it in tune with my bass (standard tuned in 440) so you’ll need to either de-tune the track as i’ve done or tune your bass up a little!

You can request a Transcription below. I also offer a bespoke transcription service. I charge £40 for most transcription requests; more complex transcriptions are on a case-by-case basis, and I will provide a specific quote at my own discretion. If you pay for a transcription, you will receive a copy without a watermark.

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The full transcription is free via the link below, paid subscribers can download the transcription without a watermark.

Show Love Today WM

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Curiosity

Ask yourself why you began playing an instrument in the first place. In my case it was seeing a brass band for the first time at a fair, I had absolutely no idea what was going on but I was utterly mesmerised by the sound that the ensemble was creating and after sitting spellbound I told my parents ‘I want to do that!’ and the rest, as they say, is history (and the support of my parents in that moment is something I can never adequately thank them for). That one musical encounter lit a fire of curiosity and intrigue within that has never gone away, no matter how much music I listen to, no matter how much I learn, I’m still fundamentally curious about what I’m hearing.

It occasionally concerns me that musicians (particularly adults) appear to have had this curiosity drilled out of them. They are often so concerned about what they ‘should’ be practicing and how they ‘should’ sound that they lose sight of what made them want to play music in the first place.

Don’t misunderstand me, I’m not suggesting that people should not practice their arpeggios or the other ‘eat your greens’ parts of musical study. These are as crucial as your spoken vocabulary and require disciplined work if you want to be able to communicate effectively as a musician, but beyond the fundamentals is that childlike feeling of wonder when you hear something new, something utterly incredible that you just don’t understand. That feeling of ‘I don’t understand that, but I love it and I want it’ is something that can inspire, drive and motivate you if you choose to harness it.

Don’t just let things go

Too often when we listen to music, we just let things go. We hear things, wonder at them and then let them go as we go about our day. I’ve made a very conscious effort to document things that grab me for investigation and you can do this in the simplest of ways, such as screenshotting a song or photographing your infotainment readout if you’re listening to the radio. The Shazam app can also be an absolute godsend in this respect albeit only for more mainstream discoveries, but use one of the above to make a note. One such song I recently found this way (indeed I had to pull over while driving to screenshot it) is ‘Overdose Of Joy’ by Eugene Record.

Interestingly it wasn’t the bass that grabbed me, it was the vocal melody, the horn/string arrangement and just how high both of them were mixed in the track! It was only later that I heard what a fantastic bass line there is in there too, which brings me to my next point….

Music first, Instrument second

This goes for all instrumentalists, not just bass players. It’s entirely natural that we focus on what our instrument does within the track but you should nurture your curiosity about all the different aspects of music because the offshoots and benefits to you are completely unpredictable. You also become a far better band musician when you’re curious about other instruments because you can communicate in a way that they will understand. For those of you that play bass, be curious about what drummers are doing; what you like and dislike about different drummers, drumming vocabulary and how the bass and the drums can fit together. I’ve recently become very curious about harmony and in particular how different voicings can work on both piano and guitar but I also love digging into great horn section arrangements and great melodies within compositions.

Investigate!

When it comes to transcription, curiosity should be what drives you. If you’re not curious about things you’re transcribing I honestly feel that you’re wasting valuable practice time because this is one of the areas where you learn the most about music, the playing of music and also about yourself as a musician and curiosity is the driving force behind EVERY transcription I post here in my archive for you all. Leading with curiosity rather than ‘I’m expected to transcribe so I’m going to transcribe something’ will not only make the entire transcription process more enjoyable, when things get hard you’ll be far less likely to down tools and walk away from it, and (cherry on the cake) you will internalise FAR more of the vocabulary!

If you enjoy the content I have here, you can support and contribute to me doing more of this for the price of a Café Nero latte (£4.10). Every single contribution is appreciated and enables me to bring more transcriptions, lessons and articles to the table!

Buy Me A Coffee

If you hear something that you don’t understand and you’re still thinking about it a few hours later, lead with that when you sit down to practice!

Something I finally sat down to finish transcribing recently is THIS Anthony Jackson line with Michel Camilo…I’ve heard this SO many time’s over the years, it still absolutely blows me away and I STILL don’t understand a lot of it….so I’m digging in! I’ll never be AJ, but i’ll never stop learning from him.

YOU need to do the work…

There is a lot of debate at present about AI and it’s role within the world of music (and education). I’m working on an article to try and lay out my thoughts on it and where it fits in (because it is not going away) but when it comes to this? My take is: YOU need to do the work, not the AI. If you’re curious about something, sit down with the instrument and Work. It. Out. Yes, it may well be hard at first if you’re new to transcription and yes, it might well be frustrating, but that’s how you get better at the craft and it’s how you REALLY learn things in the deepest way. Yes, you can ask AI or google what something is but when it comes to improving, your brain will internalise SO much more information if you go through the full process and decipher things yourself!

In closing, be guided by your instincts, by those things that grab you, that make you wonder because that childlike sense of ‘Wow!’ is one of the most valuable guides we can ever have

I thought I’d bring some more music to the table so here are some other things that have really piqued by curiosity in recent weeks/months!

Anika Nilles - Mister/Wild Boy

I’ve loved Anika’s music and drumming for a long time now (well before she landed the much deserved gig with Rush) and in particular her original tunes (especially now that i’m starting to focus more on my own writing). The things I home in on differ from tune to tune, with Mister is was the main melody that grabbed my attention, with Wild Boy it’s the main groove, the little unisons in the middle and in particular Anika’s drum parts! If you’re lucky enough to see her play with Rush, enjoy the show. She’s an absolutely devastating drummer and wherever Neil is now, I feel as though he’ll be smiling.

Podium Trio - Soko Mogou

I’ve well and truly gone down the Anthony Jackson rabbit hole again over the last few days as part of my group classes latest teaching block looking at selected songs featuring the titans of the session world (others include Abraham Laboriel, Neil Stubenhaus and Nathan East) and this has resulted in me taking a very long look at their respective discographies so I can bring songs that are somewhat left field to the sessions rather than going over tunes many other bass channels/tutors have done to death elsewhere online.

This wasn’t the tune I selected for Anthony (that was Will Downing’s version of The World Is A Ghetto) but this one REALLY blew me away and reminded me of the sheer ferocity and depth of Anthony’s vocabulary. The unison lines are also a timely reminder that when it comes to chops, Anthony could mix it with the very best ever.

Bjorn Meyer - Nesodden

I’ve also been taking a closer look at some of Bjorn Meyers solo work recently as i’m trying to solidify what I want some of my own music to encompass, and this is a gorgeous piece from Bjorn’s latest solo work Convergence. Bjorn’s compositional sense and concept of sound are both hugely inspiring and influential for me and the ‘inner voices’ and moving within the composition are something i’m looking at quite closely at present!

Electric Bass - Dennis Belfield

Difficulty - Beginner

Well before I became aware of the Candi Staton/Florence And The Machine song of the same name, this was one of my favourite tunes to play in our Funk and Soul set on the Carnival Imagination. That particular cruise contract was a real education for me, both in terms of what being a professional bass player really means and being exposed to a LOT of music i’d only been peripherally aware of.

Rufus and Chaka Khan were both big parts of said education, it’s not difficult technically but consistency with the pushes (how the main groove starts on the last 16th of the bar before rather than dead on beat 1) really makes or breaks the overall feel. Also….there is something quite refreshing about grooves that have a LOT of space in them!

P with flats is the vibe here so i’ve gone for my Yamaha BB, recorded via my MXR M80 preamp.

Enjoy!

P.s…for my subscribers, there is a VERY different version of this song that i’ll be putting out a transcription of soon…

You can request a Transcription below. I also offer a bespoke transcription service. I charge £40 for most transcription requests; more complex transcriptions are on a case-by-case basis, and I will provide a specific quote at my own discretion. If you pay for a transcription, you will receive a copy without a watermark.

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The full transcription is free via the link below, paid subscribers can download the transcription without a watermark.

You Got The Love WM

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Electric Bass - Anthony Jackson

Difficulty - Intermediate/Advanced

I first transcribed this particular tune last year for my weekly group class and since i’ve gone back down the Anthony Jackson rabbit hole for my current teaching block looking at greats of the session world, I came across Teena Marie’s Robbery record again and decided to work through this for my own benefit and post the transcription for you all! This specific version is the extended 12” mix from the US Robbery reissue.

AJ needs no introduction from me at this point but this particular line is one of his finest in the pop realm. Something that always floors me with Anthony is his incredible control of sound, time and note length and just listening to him execute the main groove from this song over and over is a real education in what consistency actually sounds like. For those of you wanting some AJ magic…take a look at the fills on the last two pages, i’ll be filming some tutorials on those in the next few days because there is a lot you can pick out of them!

Since it’s AJ, my Fodera was my choice (its always a pleasure picking this bass up and playing it!), biased slightly towards the front pickup, single coil mode and the tone control almost wide open. The only other thing in the chain before the interface was my Cali76 compressor.

Enjoy!

You can request a Transcription below. I also offer a bespoke transcription service. I charge £40 for most transcription requests; more complex transcriptions are on a case-by-case basis, and I will provide a specific quote at my own discretion. If you pay for a transcription, you will receive a copy without a watermark.

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The full transcription is free via the link below, paid subscribers can download the transcription without a watermark.

Playboy WM

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Electric Bass - Stuart Price

Difficulty - Intermediate

Hey all,

Hope you’re all well! This week’s transcription is one of a pair of Dua Lipa tunes i’ve needed to become familiar with over the last few months (the other being Levitating) and in transcribing them properly it shows that there are still some fun bass lines out there within pop music.

While the line itself appears simple enough, some of the little details to pay attention to include slides, varied note lengths, the integration of pops into the octave patterns and the melodic lines in the final outtro.

I chose my Fodera for this take, biased slightly towards the front pickup, tone control 30% on and quite heavily compressed using my Cali76 compressor!

Enjoy!

You can request a Transcription below. I also offer a bespoke transcription service. I charge £40 for most transcription requests; more complex transcriptions are on a case-by-case basis, and I will provide a specific quote at my own discretion. If you pay for a transcription, you will receive a copy without a watermark.

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Don't Start Now WM

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Electric Bass - Chris Squire

Difficulty - Beginner/Intermediate

This weeks transcription is another from the world of prog rock, this time the British band Yes. Owner Of A Lonely Heart was part of a playlist in one of the hotels we were staying at while on the road in Europe recently and it got me thinking about the 90125 album. It’s from an interesting period in Yes’ history, given that it originated from what was supposed to be a side project (Cinema), and hearing this track on the radio prompted me to not only go and re-listen to the record but also to transcribe Chris Squire’s bass line!

This song is something of an antidote to the idea that the Prog bands of the 70s/80s didn’t know how to write ‘songs’, the main groove and the chorus melody were in my head for a good day and a half after I heard it. Executing the song properly means working on a given idea and executing it consistently and repetitively, something i’ve been working on recently with some of my students. Alongside an incredibly catchy groove there are also fun instrumental unison lines and some lovely melodic ideas.

I don’t own a Rickenbacker and the closest I could get to Squire’s sound on this track was my Fodera in dual coil mode, biased towards the front pickup, EQ flat and my Boss CEB-3 chorus.

Hope you all enjoy!

You can request a Transcription below. I also offer a bespoke transcription service. I charge £40 for most transcription requests; more complex transcriptions are on a case-by-case basis, and I will provide a specific quote at my own discretion. If you pay for a transcription, you will receive a copy without a watermark.

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Owner Of A Lonely Heart WM

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Hope you’re all keeping well (and staying cool and hydrated if you’re in Europe!), I’ve had several interesting conversations about teaching and what teaches us ‘best’ and what teaches us the most. Lots of interesting stuff covered but one thing consistently came up.

Failure.

Failure is uncomfortable. It’s hard. We don’t celebrate it. We avoid it if possible. It can be humiliating if the circumstances are public. What it does do however is tell us as students, very clearly and directly, the things that we NEED to be told as opposed to what we WANT to be told.

Branford Marsalis savages a number of his students in an old interview on YouTube, talking about how they only want to be told how good they are, and some teachers/listeners do indeed tell their students what they want to hear. This can come from not wanting to upset them, not have them flounce off and leave, among others… Failure, however, is entirely matter of fact. It isn’t good or bad, it isn’t polite or abrupt, It just ‘is’. It’s how you respond to it and learn from it that really matters here.

Failing at something as a musician is never a bad thing. It tells you what you really need to be working on in order to get better and indeed get where you want to be IF you’re honest enough to confront and learn from it without getting defensive or letting it demoralise you. You might want to be work on tapping or soloing but if you’re going on stage and you can’t nail down the key and form of the songs you’re supposed to be playing? That is telling you in the most direct and unvarnished way that you need to be working on those aspect of your playing, and if you want to be a better musician you should be paying attention to this as opposed to the other (perhaps more flashy and exciting) things. The universal thing that was come out of conversations with some world class musicians i’m fortunate enough to know is that they never stop working on those basics. We shouldn’t either.

How to make use of this? Here are two things I fall back on…

Record yourself regularly. One of the fun (and instructive) things about transcribing stuff for you all is that I get to hear myself on a regular basis, and when you hear a recording of yourself…you hear what you really sound like not what you ‘think’ you sound like as you’re playing (Real vs Feel as Janek Gwizdala says). Home recording has never been easier or more affordable, indeed my own recording setup consists of my basses, a small pedalboard, an interface and a macbook, and there is a wealth of free tutorials out there on YouTube to help you get started with this if you’re new to the concept! My recommendation to get going with home recording is always one of the Focusrite Scarlet units, they are incredibly easy and intuitive to use and come with some free recording software to boot! Record yourself at least once a week and you will never run out of things to practice, which bring me to the second thing…

Listen honestly to your own playing. While I don’t advocate for absolutely shredding everything you ever record (I don’t think it’s particularly healthy or helpful), you need to listen to yourself with a critical and honest ear. Treat your own recordings with the same respect you give to your own heroes and when you hear things that aren’t good enough or you don’t like? Devise a plan for your practice routine in order to fix them until they are no longer something that sticks out to you. Rinse and repeat for the rest of your playing career and you’ll never run out of things to practice and you will never stop improving!

If you enjoy the content I have here, you can support and contribute to me doing more of this for the price of a Café Nero latte (£4.10). Every single contribution is appreciated and enables me to bring more transcriptions, lessons and articles to the table!

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That extends to gigs and rehearsals, because how you (and your bandmates) perceive things when you’re within the band and how things actually sound can be very, very different. Record them regularly and find those things that bug you, that don’t go well, that you persistently make mistakes on and get in the practice room and fix them permanently! Do these things and you will be all the better for it I promise you.

In closing, embrace your mistakes. Pay close attention to them. Learn from them!

Electric Bass - Nathan East

Difficulty - Intermediate

Nathan East is one of those players that, when you listen to him, you often think “Yes. Perfect. Nothing else needed”. This is particularly the case in a lot of what he has recorded with the great singer Anita Baker, the record ‘Giving You The Best That I’ve Got’ being a favourite of mine.

This particular track, Just Because, not only demonstrates Nathan’s incredible sense of taste but also his absolute mastery of what I think of as ‘connective ideas’. The movement from one chord to another and one phrase to another appears completely fluid and rarely repeats the same exact idea twice. As the song moves on, Nathan’s ideas develop and he has some REALLY tasty fills towards the end, not that they are enormously complex or harmonically ambiguous but they suit the music and the mood just perfectly. All in all, it’s a perfect demonstration of why Nathan has been one of the first call bass players on the LA scene for decades.

I used my Fodera for this particular playthrough, pickups centred in single coil mode and the passive tone 60% open.

Hope you enjoy this one as much as I have!

You can request a Transcription below. I also offer a bespoke transcription service. I charge £40 for most transcription requests; more complex transcriptions are on a case-by-case basis, and I will provide a specific quote at my own discretion. If you pay for a transcription, you will receive a copy without a watermark.

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Just Because WM

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Electric Bass - Geddy Lee

Difficulty - Advanced

Hey everyone,

This transcription comes after checking out recent videos of Rush on the 50 Something tour with Annika Nilles on the drum chair (Spoiler altert: She’s ABSOLUTELY destroying it, as I anticipated she would. I feel that Neil is watching somewhere and smiling). This led me to going back through bits of the rush discography (i’ve got a couple of bigger cuts coming for subscribers in the next month or so) and one record that I keep coming back to is Counterparts.

This record doesn’t have the cache of Moving Pictures or Permanent Waves or the grand concept of 2112 but (for me at least) it has some great songwriting and some fantastic bass work by Geddy, chief among them Leave That Thing Alone.

This track has all the hallmarks of the ‘Rush Instrumental’, bass specific hooks (Geddy’s first entry in bar 5), bass leads, unison lines….it’s all in here! The unison line in 3/4 is particularly fun to play!

It sounds to me like Geddy is using his Fender J on this record (i’m not a Rush scholar on this point) so I went for my Fodera, pickups in single coil mode and the passive tone wide open. To get that Geddy bite I put it through my MXR M80 preamp/overdrive with the saturation dialled back a fraction and the top end boosted.

Enjoy!

You can request a Transcription below. I also offer a bespoke transcription service. I charge £40 for most transcription requests; more complex transcriptions are on a case-by-case basis, and I will provide a specific quote at my own discretion. If you pay for a transcription, you will receive a copy without a watermark.

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The full transcription is free via the link below, paid subscribers can download the transcription without a watermark.

Leave That Thing Alone WM

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Having had questions about this topic (and having walked some of my students through this) recently, in this lesson i’m taking you through my process for arranging a basic piece of classical music, starting with the fundamental principles and ending with some of the embellishments you can add!

The arrangements include 4 and 6 string versions (or 5 string with a high C).

Enjoy!

Ben

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Electric Bass - Phil Lynott

Difficulty - Beginner/Intermediate

Hey everyone,

This one is a direct request from my dad and goes back to the very first band I ever played bass in! Prior to me sitting down a while back to transcribe this properly it was very much in the ‘sort of learned it but not really’ category, and having transcribed it properly (as with a lot of songs from this era), there are a range of little nuggets that jump out.

The first is the shift in inversions in the choruses, something that completely bypassed me as a teenager, but it’s a really fun little shift in the harmony! The other that comes to mind immediately is the shift to running 8th notes in the final part of the song, representing a real shift in energy that I wish I’d learned in full the first time around!

Given that I always associate Lynott with his black P bass, I grabbed my own Fender P for this recording, along with my Boss CEB-3 bass chorus plus a little additional processing in garageband.

Have fun!

You can request a Transcription below. I also offer a bespoke transcription service. I charge £40 for most transcription requests; more complex transcriptions are on a case-by-case basis, and I will provide a specific quote at my own discretion. If you pay for a transcription, you will receive a copy without a watermark.

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The full transcription is free via the link below, paid subscribers can download the transcription without a watermark.

Dancing In The Moonlight WM

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Electric Bass - P-Nut

Difficulty - Intermediate

Hey all,

This weeks transcription features a band (and a bass player) that people keep requesting over on one of the other bass education platforms I work for, the band being 311 and the bass player being Aaron ‘P-Nut’ Wills. The track i’ve worked through here is Paradise from their debut album and there are various things about it that stand out.

The first is that active pentatonic-based line in the verses, there is a lot of life there and it’s a good example of how you can apply your pentatonic scales within a bass groove. In the chorus, P-Nut doesn’t hit the root on the second chord (C), something that really stands out given that we as bass players often fixate upon the root. Finally there are little things like the harmonics in the 4th bar of letter E (note that those need to be played just ABOVE 3rd fret) and the octave slapped figures!

P-Nut is known for his signature Warwick Streamer so I grabbed my own Warwick for this playthrough, straight into the interface with a little compression!

Enjoy!

You can request a Transcription below. I also offer a bespoke transcription service. I charge £40 for most transcription requests; more complex transcriptions are on a case-by-case basis, and I will provide a specific quote at my own discretion. If you pay for a transcription, you will receive a copy without a watermark.

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The full transcription is free via the link below, paid subscribers can download the transcription without a watermark.

Paradise WM

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This is the final part in this series of lessons looking at chromatic approaches to triads! In this lesson we’re looking at combining double chromatic approaches to minor triads and looking at some grooves i’ve written to ddemonstrate.

In future lessons we’ll get into using chromatic devices over chord progressions, combining different chromatic approaches and chromatic devices such as enclosures but for now, have fun working on these grooves, and hopefully you can take some of my ideas and apply them to your own lines!

Enjoy

As always, the PDF and the backing track i’ve used can be downloaded below!

Chromatic Approaches Partt 12 - Basic

Chromatic Approaches Part 12 - Track

For those of you who are paid subscribers, you’ll need the expanded PDF linked below for the additional bonus groove!

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Electric Bass - Robert ‘Kool’ Bell

Difficulty - Beginner

This is a song that sometimes comes up at gigs and the challenge is always not to overplay! Much like Billie Jean, Thriller and Play That Funky Music, the groove is incredibly consistent throughout and players often tamper with that to the detriment of the music (i’m not saying don’t add anything, just be judicious!)

For those of you towards the start of your bass journey and looking to build some repertoire, this tune is a fun one to work in, it’s not difficult technically and once you get the geography of the song worked out, it’s all about consistency of execution!

Yamaha BB was once again on duty for this, P pickup with the tone rolled off and my trusty MXR M80.

Have fun!

You can request a Transcription below. I also offer a bespoke transcription service. I charge £40 for most transcription requests; more complex transcriptions are on a case-by-case basis, and I will provide a specific quote at my own discretion. If you pay for a transcription, you will receive a copy without a watermark.

Request A Transcription

The full transcription is free via the link below, paid subscribers can download the transcription without a watermark.

Get Down On It WM

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Hope you’re well, in this lesson we get into approaching minor triads using double chromatic approach from above each chord tone. Those of you that have been following this series will be well versed in my exercises built around the cycle of 4ths so this time we’ll get straight into some musical examples and how they have been constructed!

As always, the PDF and the backing track i’ve used can be downloaded below!

Chromatic Approaches Part 11 Basic

Chromatic Approaches Part 11 Track

For those of you who are paid subscribers, you’ll need the expanded PDF linked below for the additional bonus groove!

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Electric Bass - Curt Smith

Difficulty - Beginner/Intermediate

Tears For Fears are one of those bands that i’ve heard regularly but have never sat down and seriously examined, until this particular tune came on the radio as I was on my way to a gig, and as I sat there listening in the car quite a few things in the track really struc…

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In part 10 of this series on chromatic approaches to triads, we’re approaching our minor triads using double chromatics from below each chord tone.

Double chromatic approaches are one of the most useful pieces of chromatic vocabulary you can develop (as i’ll be illustrating in the next couple of weeks with some bass line breakdowns) and the more fluid you become with them, the more you will be able to integrate them into your own lines! One of the things I love about them is the really strong ‘pull’ they have towards the chord tone that makes for really effective harmonic resolutions.

Without further ado we’re going to look at a couple of useful exercises to develop basic fluency and an example bass groove. As always, the PDF and the backing track i’ve used can be downloaded below!

Chromatic Approaches Part 10 - Basic

Chromatic Approaches Part 10 - Track

For those of you who are paid subscribers, you’ll need the expanded PDF linked below for the additional bonus groove!

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