Artist - Duran Duran
Electric Bass - John Taylor
Difficulty - Advanced
This weeks transcription is an absolute classic, in many ways a seminal bass line from the 80s, the title track from Duran Duran’s Rio! This transcription comes partly from a request from a good friend of mine and partly because i’ve been working through this song with a private student, so here is my own take!
Rio is something of a benchmark line for many bass players and the complexities are both obvious and simultaneously more subtle. The obvious stuff is how quick the song is; 141bpm is motoring so getting both plucking and fretting hands properly organised to make shifts as small and seamless as possible is essential! Subtler stuff includes the ghost notes…they don’t always come in the same place! The reason the transcription is so long is because I really tried to pay attention to them throughout and no two sections are quite the same! Another is attack and note length, some notes are a little longer than you might first think while some are REALLY short and punchy!
I don’t own a bass that really nails that 80s Aria sound, it’s surprisingly narrow and doesn’t take up a lot of space in the mix while simultaneously being really punchy. My own solution was my Fodera in dual coil mode, slightly biased towards the bridge pickup, EQ set flat and run through my Cali76 compressor.
This line is a real challenge to play, I hope some of you enjoy digging into it!!
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.
The full transcription is free via the link below, paid subscribers can download the transcription without a watermark.
