VA - First Bass Amp Amp Beyond 278

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction: ............................................................................... 3
Transcription: Drunken Hearted Boy......................................... 5
Video Tutorial 1 - Alright............................................................. 18
Video Tutorial 2 - Think.............................................................. 23
Walking Bass Corner 1................................................................ 27
Deconstructing Tommy Shannon - Column 08........................ 39
Ask Paul........................................................................................ 46
2 | First Bass And Beyond | Issue 278 | 06 February 2015 | how-to-play-bass.com

INTRODUCTION
Welcome to Issue 278 of First Bass And Beyond.
What’s In This Week’s Issue:
The main transcription for today’s issue is a Berry Oakley bass line - it’s
his line on the Allman Brothers version of Drunken Hearted Boy from
the seminal Live At The Fillmore album. (One day I’m going to challenge
myself and transcribe Mountain Jam - all 33 minutes of it! LOL).
Long time subscribers of FB&B will know how much I adore Berry’s work
- which is woefully under-represented in the bass literature out there in
bass land!
The first video tutorial for Issue 278 continues the 90s “Brit Pop” vibe we
started in Issue 276 - it’s Alright by Supergrass.
The second video tutorial for Issue 276 is the fourth of a mini series of
classic R&B tutorials that Gordon is going to teach. Today’s tune is Think
by Aretha Franklin.
I’ve swapped the Music Theory Column out for a few weeks for two rea-
sons. One I want to catch up some of the videos needed for the prior
columns. And two, I want to take an idea I had for a new column for
a test drive for a few issues. That idea is Walking Bass Corner. And in
Walking Bass Corner I’m going to take just 32 bars of a walking bass
line and transcribe and analyze it. Today’s analysis is on 32 bars of Ray
Brown’s line on Killer Joe by Quincy Jones.
In Deconstructing Tommy Shannon 8 we’re going to finish up analyzing

Tommy’s performance on Love Struck Baby.
In Ask Paul I’m starting a mini series of columns designed to answer a

question on music notation symbols and texts that has FB&B subscriber
Nigel Walden foxed.

How To Contact Me
If you’ve got any questions you can email me directly. My email address
is:
paul@first-bass-and-beyond.com
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 DRUNKEN HEARTED BOY by THE ALLMAN
BROTHERS, bass by BERRY OAKLEY
I should apologize for a blues rock

tune as the main transcription -
as we are ploughing that particu-
lar furrow at the moment with the
Tommy Shannon column.
However I’ve got two words to say

to that: Berry Oakley.
From time to time I’ll spend a day

listening to Allman Brothers with
Berry Oakley and once again marvel at what Berry was doing...and won-
der what he might have gone on to do if he hadn’t been killed in a mo-
torbike accident. (And Duane too.)
Now there are several versions of Drunken Hearted Boy floating around
- this one is the take that’s 6.55 long from the Fillmore Concerts CD. If by
any chance the version you’ve got is 7.34 long, then what you need to do
is ignore the chorus that starts at 5.52 and then follow along with the last
verse when it kicks in 12 bars later.
Paul’s Note - The Fillmore Concerts were recorded over 4 nights and
some of the songs are made up by splicing sections from different ver-
sions together. Interestingly when slowed down in Anytune - and with
the track pitch shifted up an octave - I was able to hear the tape splice
clearly for the first time!
One more thing: by the time I got half way through the transcription I
realized that instead of notating this out in regular time and using the
‘shuffle 8th note notation’ I should probably have presented this in 12:8.
Unfortunately my transcription software does not let you do that easily -
and it’s a sizable task!
Berry’s approach in this is very similar to other songs like this in the All-
man’s oeuvre - see Stormy Monday for example. There’s a ton of great
ideas that you can lift from this tune - but also it’s worth going through
and analyzing and seeing what’s common to other blues rock players
like Tommy Shannon and Carl Radle and so on.
Here’s the breakdown of the song:
Letter A - Bass in - 0.03

Letter B - Verse - 0.18
Letter C - Verse - 1.05
Letter D - Solo 1.53
Letter E - Solo - 2.40

Letter F - Solo - 3.28
Letter G - Solo - 4.17
Letter H - Stop Verse 5.05
Letter I - Last Verse - 5.52
Feel free to vary my tabbed suggestions to suit your own combination of

fingering system, bass size and hand size.

VIDEO TUTORIAL 1 - ALRIGHT by SUPERGRASS
The next tutorial in the mini-

series of tunes that were brack-
eted in the ‘Britpop’ genre is
probably the tune that was my
favourite to play live.
I don’t know why that is, it’s a

simple tune both chordally and
in the bass line. But it was just
one of those tunes that was al-
ways really fun to play live.
We’ve got four sections to learn. The first of those sections is the verse -
which comes in after the piano intro. It looks like this:
We’ll go through the song format in a moment - the next section we need
to learn is the section under the lyric: Are we like you? That section looks
like this:
STOP PRESS! If you look closely at the section in Bar 4 you’ll see some-
thing that’s nearly as rare as the dodo - it’s an ascending major scale
played in its entirety!!! This is Issue 278 and I feature anywhere from 2
to 4 tunes per issue and this is the FIRST time I’ve ever featured a tune
with a complete scale in the bass line! Now do you see why I advise NOT
learning scales!
OK, excitement over, back to the regular programming. The verse after
this uses a simple variation - here’s what we can use:
And the final section we need to learn is the guitar break:
Song Format
Here’s how the song lays out and what sections to use:
4 bar intro - no bass

Verse 1 - use verse
Verse 2 - use verse
We Like You - use We Like You
Verse 3- use verse variation
Verse 4 - use verse variation
We like you - use We Like You
Verse 5 - use verse
Guitar break 1 - use Guitar Section
Guitar break 2 - use verse
Guitar break 3 - use verse (or verse variation)
We Like You - use We Like You
Verse 6 - use verse
Repeat Verse to fade
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 D
2. Aim for performance tempo to be around 145 BPM
3. Choose a style for practice. I chose the BritBluesInvasion Piano style -
it’s got lots of piano so it makes a good style to practice the song sections
too.
4. I then muted the bass. It’s not ideal...but it’s not too bad.
Here is the main sections of the song programmed - we’ve got two verses
and then the ‘Are we like you?” section:
The only other section we need to program is the guitar break. That
looks like this:
There will be a bass less backing track to practice along with for when
you’ve worked this one up to performance tempo.
VIDEO TUTORIAL 2 - THINK BY ARETHA FRANKLIN
This week’s second video tuto-

rial is the next in a mini series
of classic R&B lines that Gor-
don will be teaching.
Today we’re going to look at

some more Artetha - and it’s
the main sections for the clas-
sic Jerry Jemmott groove on
‘Think.’
Think starts off with a piano intro that lasts for three and a bit bars be-
fore a combined drum and bass fill brings the main groove in:
Now the main sections of the verse and chorus are based on a repeating
groove. It looks like this:
Here’s a repetition of the groove that you can use for the four bars prior
to the bridge (the bridge is the section with the lyrics “Freedom, Free-
dom....”):
And here’s the ‘Freedom’ bridge section:
This bridge gives way to a key change - the main groove goes up a semi
tone to B - the main groove is the section within the repeat bars. The
first two bars are the first two bars you play after you come out of the
bridge above:
There’s only one more section we need to program. That section has the
lyric: “You need me. And I need you....” and it’s a 4 bar vamp on the IV
chord. It looks like this:
After that we return to the basic groove in B and just repeat it to the fade.
Now these are the basic parts - if you’re playing this live there’s a lot you
can do to vary things up with simple rhythmic variations.
How To Program The Sections In Band In A Box
If you want to program and isolate the main sections in Band In A Box
(and play with the tempos)here’s how to do it:
1. Set key to Bb
2. Aim for performance tempo to be around 110 BPM
3. Choose a style for practice. The 60 soul style (no tambourine) works
perfectly fine.
4. I then muted the bass!
Here’s what the entire song looks like when programmed in Band In A
Box. This starts from where the vocals come in - so we’re missing the
first 4 bars of the piano intro:
As always there is a bass less backing track on the Issue 278 page for you
to play along with.
Walking Bass Corner 1
WALKING BASS CORNER 1
I’ve had enough emails down the years to know that there are some
FB&B subscribers who are interested in jazz bass lines. And you may or
may not know but I’ve created a really comprehensive course teaching
walking bass. The last lesson of that course talks about what to do be-
yond the course - and my advice boiled down to this:
1. If your goals were to play reasonably authentic walking bass lines

all you need to do was practice the different lessons in the course thor-
oughly and you’ll have a lot of tools in your toolbox to create bass lines
from.
2. But if your goals were to go beyond what I taught in the course, then
you need to start transcribing and studying the jazz greats.
And creating that course stretched me - and continues to stretch me as

I work on the bonus lessons! - but I’m not content to sit there. I want to
discover more ideas if possible and add them to my own repertoire of
playing ideas and playing devices.
But at this point in time I don’t have time to do a massive amount of

walking bass transcription. So I was talking via email with a few sub-
scribers from FB&B and came up with the idea of Walking Bass Corner.
And I thought I’d run it for two or three weeks and see what response it
gets.
So please do leave feedback!
What Is Walking Bass Corner?
Walking Bass Corner is a transcription and analysis column. The main

difference from some of my other columns is that each week we’re go-
ing to focus on just 32 bars of transcription. And if this ‘Corner’ catches
on, then we’ll cover a lot of different jazz bass players and different jazz
tunes as we go on.
28 First Bass And Beyond | Issue 278 | 06 Feb 2015 | how-to-play-bass.com
One thing I will try and do during this series is to use reasonably well
known tunes, or tunes that use generic chord progressions so that the
value of the material that we analyze is enhanced. E.g. I’ll look at the
Jazz Blues. Or Autumn Leaves. Or Stella By Starlight. Or I Got Rhythm
or one of the many songs based on I Got Rhythm. That way you’ll be
able to take ideas to other songs which combine standard chord pro-
gressions in different ways.
So What Tune Are We Going To Get Started With Today?
The tune we’re going to kick off with is 32 bars of a Benny Golson tune
called Killer Joe.
The version we’re going to look at is the version by Quincy Jones on his
Walking In Space album. And the bass player on that album was the in-
imitable Ray Brown.
So we’re going to take 32 bars starting at approximately the 2.10 mark

of the song - this is the chorus where there is the trumpet solo. (I think
that’s Freddie Hubbard).
First here’s those 32 bars notated and tabbed out:
The next step is to analyze this as best we can - I say as best we can be-
cause jazz is very much an in the moment kind of music, and often play-
ers are ‘just playing’ and sometimes that might take them outside the
harmony that we’re expecting them to use!
Here’s the analysis:
Before we start looking at this a little bit deeper, a quick word on the an-
notation below the notes.
If the annotation is a number, that’s the scale degree. 5=the fifth. 3 -=

the major third. b3 = the minor third and so on.
L.c. equals a lower chromatic approach note.

U.c. equals an upper chromatic approach note.
l.d. equals a lower dominant note.
And os equals an open string.
Let’s get analyzing.
1. The Downbeat
If you look at the note that Ray plays on the downbeat of the chord he’s
very traditional. Of the 32 bars here, Ray plays the root or the 5th 26
times. He plays the major third on the downbeat four times. And there
are two bars where I think he makes a mistake!
The bars in question are bars 9 and 10 and Ray plays this:
Now it’s possible that this was a deliberate use of a non chord tone to de-
lay the resolution of the chord tone to beat 2. And note that he uses the
third on beat 3 of the both the C7 and Bb7 bars - so that any ‘obscuring’
of the harmony by playing that chord tone is resolved by using the root
and the major third. And then more chord tones on Beat 4.
It’s also possible that this was an error as he was playing - and to make it
sound like it wasn’t an error he repeated it the bar afterwards! (I forget
where I learned this ‘trick’ - if you make an error make it sound like it
was something you were trying to do by repeating it shortly afterwards!)
Either way Ray makes it work. So it could be an idea you could work on
and add to your box of tricks. The components of this would be:
L.C on downbeat
R on Beat 2
Third on Beat 3
5th/Other Chord Tones on Beat 4.
2. Use Of Open Strings To Create Rhythmic Interest
In the last two bars of this chorus we’ve got this figure:
Notice how the linear descending pattern is broken up with open
strings. Plus also notice how Ray continues the pattern into the Bb7
chord and starts the Bb7 chord on the next note in the pattern - which is
C - and is the 9th of the chord.
We’ve also got another example in Bar 24:
And whilst we’re on the use of open string, they are also used to help
facilitate position shifts (either upwards OR downwards). Check out this
example from Bars 5 and 6:
There’s also an indirect resolution at the end of Bar 5 - we’ve got the up-
per scalar/lower chromatic indirect resolution to the fifth at the start of
the Bb7 bar. That’s something that’s definitely worth practicing!
3. Extensive Use Of Chordal Patterns
If you go through the various patterns that Ray uses - you’ll find a lot of
chordal patterns - that is patterns with R,3 (b3 for minor) ,5 and b7 (or 7
if major chord) in them.
And there are several patterns that whilst not strictly chordal, rely heav-
ily on chordal material - e.g. 3-4-5-R or 5-4-3-5 or R-3-6-5 or R-2-b3-5.
Using some of these other notes allows Ray to play predominantly

chordal patterns that are linear sounding instead of sounding like arpeg-
giated patterns. So he can create variety without losing the sound of the
chord.
Note that the patterns Ray uses in the ‘B’ section - bars 16 to 24 - are very
chordal and strongly outline the different chords used in this section.
4. Range Of Fingerboard
Note the wide range of the fingerboard in this 32 bar section - from the
open E string right up to the G at the 12th fret of the G string. A full two
octaves plus a minor third. And often he uses open strings to facilitate
transitioning between upper and lower registers of the fingerboard.
That’s worth checking out and devising some exercises to practice.
5. Use Of Triplets
Ray’s use of triplets here is interesting. When ascending he tends to use

linear note choices for his triplets. But when descending he uses much
wider intervals and either descending chordal type figures or figures that
incorporate open string position shifts.
The one exception here is the triplet on Beat 3 of Bar 16 - that’s an odd
figure to work out.
6. Mistakes?
I already noted the two instances where Ray plays the lower chromatic
note of either the C7 or Bb7 chords on the downbeat. There are a couple
of other notes that don’t make any sense to me.
In the descending pattern in Bar 6 - over a Bb7 chord - Ray goes from F
to E to D. F and D are the 5th and the 3rd and fall on the ‘strong’ beats of
the bar. But that E natural....it’s not in the scale of Bb7 and possibly he
should have played an Eb - the 4th of Bb7 to create a scalar sequence.
However this is jazz....and what’s more important is the linear flow of the
line. Any tension created by that note is instantly dissipated by landing
on the major third on Beat 3. So if you’re practicing linear runs you can
incorporate 5-#4 - 3-Ap into your exercises to give you a more tension
filled alternative to 5-4-3-Ap.
In Bar 15 over the C7 chord Ray plays E-A-F#-G - again, I can’t reconcile
this. And again think that maybe it’s a ‘mistake.’ The point about mak-
ing mistakes - if having the temerity to ‘criticize’ the great Ray Brown - to
note from what we’ve seen is that whenever Ray appears to make a mis-
take he immediately creates a resolution to a strong chordal note.
Summary
One of the reasons I started this column with Killer Joe is that I’m having
a ‘Ray Brown’ challenge with FB&B subscriber Simon Davies. What we’re
going to do is learn this section by rote and then play it along with the
original recording and try and match Ray’s feel and compare and con-
trast video footage of us both doing this!
That’s the other great lesson from listening to this 32 bar segment - Ray’s
time and sound is utterly fabulous. His tone is warm and round, and his
playing always swings hard.
Beyond that, there are some ideas that we can pick up from this brief
analysis. The lower chromatic and delaying the resolution to the root is
an interesting idea that I’m going to play with. As is the 5-#4-3-Ap
pattern.
Hopefully you can see the kind of thing that we’re going to be doing with
this column. Please don’t hesitate to ask any questions or comment on
this - either on the Issue 278 page or via email.
Deconstructing Tommy
Shannon - Col 08
DECONSTRUCTING TOMMY SHANNON - COLUMN 08
Introduction
In Column 7 of Deconstructing Tommy Shannon we started looking at

the main sections of Love Struck Baby.
Love Struck Baby if you remember is a tune made up of two sections - a

12 bar section (a chorus) , and an 8 bar section (the verse). We covered
those in Part 1 of the tutorial.
The guitar solo is where we get the next major variations - this is played
over the 12 bar chord form. Let’s look at the first guitar solo section.
Guitar Solo - Section 1
Here’s the first 12 bars of the guitar solo:
If you’ve been following this column from the Pride And Joy analysis
there’s a lot of material here that you should remember and recognize.
Let’s go through it.
1. For the first two bars Tommy uses a traditional two bar, up and down
blues pattern that we saw in Pride And Joy.
2. For the second two bars there’s a variation where the downbeat of Bar
4 is the b7 instead of the octave - again we saw this variation in Pride
And Joy.
3. The two bars of the D7 chord use patterns that again we saw in Pride
And Joy - the main difference being that the notes are doubled rather
than use a lower open string for ‘bounce.’ (We’ll see that in a minute
though!) Note particularly the 8-b7-6-Ch pattern.
4. Bars 7 and 8 again use patterns we are familiar with from Pride And
Joy.
5. In Bars 9 and 10 - notice how Tommy uses the low E string to bounce
off just as he did in Pride And Joy. Very interesting - the patterns are
again familiar patterns.
6. In the final two bars Tommy reverts to the two bar phrase - notice how
this phrase neatly falls on the E7 chord at Beat 3 of Bar 12.
Let’s look at the second guitar solo.
Here’s the second guitar solo:
This section is much more ‘riff based.’ The two bar R-2-5-6- to b7-6-5-3
pattern is used for the first eight bars.
Bars 9 and 10 have got some simple variations, made effective by switch-
ing in some quarter notes - and Tommy finishes up the chorus by play-
ing the two bar figure that goes to the octave.
Let’s look at the third solo and see if Tommy dishes up any variations for
that.
Here’s the third guitar solo:
And this is almost identical to the previous chorus - the only thing that’s
different are a couple of rhythmic changes. In Bar 7 there’s a quarter
note on Beat 3. And in Bars 9 and 10 Tommy uses the same patterns but
switches to 8th notes.
Remaining Song Sections
The remaining song sections are almost entirely the same as sections we
looked at last week - so if you want to play through the song you should
be able to. (There’s an ending that you’ll need to work it, but it’s fairly
straightforward. I’ve not covered it because it’s not relevant to this tuto-
rial).
Thoughts On Love Struck Baby
Love Struck Baby is a relatively simple song in the Stevie Ray canon - but
it’s highly interesting because apart from a rhythm change - swing 8th to
straight 8th - all of the patterns that Tommy used on this version of the
tune were found in Pride And Joy.
The live versions of Love Struck Baby are interesting because Tommy
stretches out a bit more. And it may be that I’ll take a listen to that ver-
sion and see if Tommy is doing anything radically different.
Tommy’s performance on Love Struck Baby could be used as a template

for a ‘riff’ tune - a riff tune is a tune where you pick a riff and repeat that
through the chord changes. And even in the solos on the studio re-
cording his variations are mostly ‘riff’ based. Of the three choruses we
looked at, the first one was by far and away the most interesting (at least
to me.)
We’ll look at how to play a riff blues in next week’s column.
Summary
In this lesson we’ve looked at the patterns Tommy uses in the guitar solo
sections of Love Struck Baby. And as with the patterns he used in the
prior sections of the song that we looked at in Column 7 we’ve not really
found any new patterns that we didn’t discover in Pride And Joy.
That to me is really interesting. Because it may mean that Tommy is

playing from a fairly narrow vocabulary - but disguising that with per-
mutations of rhythm and changing the order of the patterns.
What will be interesting is to see as we analyze more Tommy Shannon

performances whether we discover that he did have a relatively limited
melodic vocabulary - or whether we’ve got more ideas to throw into the
mix from his later recordings.
It will also be interesting to see if and how these patterns show up in his
non 8th note style lines - e.g. a ballad performance like Texas Flood
(which a couple of people have requested) or some of his 16th note style
lines for example Mary Had A Little Lamb.
I hope you’re finding this deep dive into Tommy’s style interesting
though - I know I am!!!
Questions
As we go through this column if you have any questions please don’t

hesitate to shout up - you can either email me directly or post a com-
ment on the appropriate magazine issue page on the FB&B website.
Ask Paul?
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/
A couple of weeks ago FB&B subscriber Nigel Walden posted this

question on FB&B:
“Hi Paul
This is probably the wrong place for this question, but it sits between a
couple of stools really. I am at the stage now where I get (or am given)
sheet music, usually guitar or piano sheets, to create a bass line for a song.
Sheet music seems to have its own language and I would like to ask if
there is somewhere on FBAB or elsewhere, that you could point me to, to
try to understand it?
Examples are things like “Rit” or DS Al Coda (not a detective of Italian

extraction apparently) I guess your superb layout of bass notation has
spoiled me. There are other terms and symbols that are not easy to
understand. I cannot show my favourite as my keyboard does not have
one, but I would describe it as the love child of a percentage sign and a
drunken “S”
I don’t recall covering this on “Sight Reading from the ground up” and
don’t expect it to figure in Music Theory either, so I thought I would try it
here!”
This is a great question and I’m going to spend the next two or three
columns going over some Sight Reading symbols so that they are
47 First Bass And Beyond | Issue 278 | 06 Februaryy 2015 | how-to-play-bass.com
more understandable.
Getting Started With Understanding The Language Of Music Notation
Nigel mentioned the word ‘rit’ and that’s as good a place to get started as
any.
Now without going into a long (and probably boring) history of how
music notation evolved, all that you really need to know is the system
of music notation that we still use to this day began to get codified with
what we now think of as European classical music.
So a lot of the words that are used for various musical terms tend to be
latin sounding, or Italian sounding.
We’ll start this overview of music terms with Nigel’s first question ‘rit’
and then I’ll cover the other most common ones.
Rit or Ritardando
In Drunken Hearted Boy in this week’s issue there was an example of a

‘rit’ at the end of the tune:
The Rit or Ritardando instruction tells the musician that the tempo
of the music should be gradually decreased. And the dotted line
underneath the music also indicates to precisely what sections of the
music notation the ‘rit’ should be applied to.
In pop and rock music this instruction is most commonly found at the
end of tunes. But in classical music it can be found in the middle of
a composition. If the original tempo needs to be restored there’s a
command for that. And it’s either tempo primo or a tempo.
The opposite of slowing down the music is obviously speeding it up.

And there’s an instruction for that too: that instruction is accelerando.
Again, you won’t see that instruction used in rock and pop very much.
Let’s look at some other common instructions that you do find in rock
and pop - and these are instructions that determine what volume you
play at.
Dynamic Markings
Here’s a two bar phrase we’re going to use for this section:
Now that’s pretty straightforward, and if you encountered it and had to

play it you’d play it at your normal ‘volume’ level.
But what if you were a composer and you wanted this section to be
quieter. If so, here’s what you’d do:
That ‘p’ stands for ‘piano’ or ‘soft.’ And it’s possible - though unusual,
especially on rock and pop scores - to see that written. If you want to
music to be played softer, you simply add another ‘p’ - ‘pp’ stands for
pianissimo and means very soft:
If you want it softer still, add another ‘p- now we’re on ppp and that
stands for pianississimo and means very, very soft:
The same kind of thinking applies if you want to indicate that the music
is played louder. Only this time we use an ‘f’ - which is short for ‘forte’ or
‘loud’:
And if you want it louder still we can go to fortissimo or ff:
Or even louder - you can add fff which stands for fortississimo and
means very, very loud:
Now when reading music and encountering these symbols what
complicates matters somewhat is that these symbols indicate relative
levels of sound and not absolute levels. So if your normal plucking style
is louder than mine we might interpret the overall volume level from the
same piece of written music differently!
To complicate matters even further, we’ve also got mp, which stands for
mezzo-piano and means moderately soft:
And there’s mf which stands for mezzo-forte and means moderately

loud:
It’s also worth remembering that what’s written down on a music score
- especially for rock and pop - is usually the interpretation of the person
who transcribed the music for publication. And is NOT - repeat NOT -
something that was written by the composer!
And music notation is often an attempt to ‘capture’ what has been
played after the fact. Music has so many subtle variations - volume,
tempo, note duration, etc etc - that it’s very difficult to capture all these
nuances 100% accurately.
You may have noticed that I don’t use these markings in my own scores
very often. That’s for these two reasons:
1. The primary information I’m working on when transcribing is pitch

and rhythm.
2. My scores are intended to help people study bass lines and learn
them. And I always recommend cross-reference with the original line so
that you can get a clearer idea of dynamics and timing and the like.
Summary
I think this mini-series of Ask Paul columns on common musical terms

encountered when working with scores will actually be really useful. So
we’ll pick this up again next week.
In this week’s column we’ve looked at the notation ‘rit’ or ritardando.

Which means to slow down. And then we moved on to look at various
different ways that are used to indicate to approach particular sections
in terms of volume.
Always remember that written music - especially as it relates to bass

players - is usually one person’s interpretation of that music. Cross
reference to the original track is always advised!

VA - First Bass Amp Amp Beyond 278

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Transcription: Drunken Hearted Boy......................................... 5

Video Tutorial 1 - Alright............................................................. 18

Video Tutorial 2 - Think.............................................................. 23

Walking Bass Corner 1................................................................ 27

Deconstructing Tommy Shannon - Column 08........................ 39

2 | First Bass And Beyond | Issue 278 | 06 February 2015 | how-to-play-bass.com

What’s In This Week’s Issue:

In Deconstructing Tommy Shannon 8 we’re going to finish up analyzing

In Ask Paul I’m starting a mini series of columns designed to answer a

3 | First Bass And Beyond | Issue 278 | 06 February 2015 | how-to-play-bass.com

Or you can post on my Facebook Page, which you’ll find here:

Have a great week.

4 | First Bass And Beyond | Issue 278 | 06 February 2015 | how-to-play-bass.com

I should apologize for a blues rock

However I’ve got two words to say

From time to time I’ll spend a day

Here’s the breakdown of the song:

Letter A - Bass in - 0.03

Letter E - Solo - 2.40

Feel free to vary my tabbed suggestions to suit your own combination of

6 | First Bass And Beyond | Issue 278 | 06 February 2015 | how-to-play-bass.com

The next tutorial in the mini-

I don’t know why that is, it’s a

And the final section we need to learn is the guitar break:

4 bar intro - no bass

This week’s second video tuto-

Today we’re going to look at

How To Program The Sections In Band In A Box

1. If your goals were to play reasonably authentic walking bass lines

And creating that course stretched me - and continues to stretch me as

But at this point in time I don’t have time to do a massive amount of

So please do leave feedback!

What Is Walking Bass Corner?

Walking Bass Corner is a transcription and analysis column. The main

So What Tune Are We Going To Get Started With Today?

So we’re going to take 32 bars starting at approximately the 2.10 mark

First here’s those 32 bars notated and tabbed out:

Here’s the analysis:

If the annotation is a number, that’s the scale degree. 5=the fifth. 3 -=

L.c. equals a lower chromatic approach note.

Let’s get analyzing.

2. Use Of Open Strings To Create Rhythmic Interest

We’ve also got another example in Bar 24:

Using some of these other notes allows Ray to play predominantly

That’s worth checking out and devising some exercises to practice.

Ray’s use of triplets here is interesting. When ascending he tends to use

In Column 7 of Deconstructing Tommy Shannon we started looking at

Love Struck Baby if you remember is a tune made up of two sections - a

Guitar Solo - Section 1

Here’s the first 12 bars of the guitar solo:

Let’s go through it.

Let’s look at the second guitar solo.

Guitar Solo - Section 2

Here’s the second guitar solo:

Guitar Solo - Section 3

Here’s the third guitar solo:

Remaining Song Sections

Tommy’s performance on Love Struck Baby could be used as a template

We’ll look at how to play a riff blues in next week’s column.

That to me is really interesting. Because it may mean that Tommy is

What will be interesting is to see as we analyze more Tommy Shannon

As we go through this column if you have any questions please don’t