THE HOW TO PLAY BASS MONTHLY EZINE - MAY 2015 · 4 | Free How To Play Bass Monthly Ezine | May 2015 | how-to-play-bass.com For the last few months the metronome playalong has been

2 | Free How To Play Bass Monthly Ezine | May 2015 | how-to-play-bass.com

THE HOW TO PLAY BASS MONTHLY EZINE - MAY 2015

Apologies

I’m going to start this months ezine with an apology. There’s not been an ezine for 8 months.....two of those missing months were down to be-ing hyper busy with personal stuff, and for the last six months I’ve been bogged down with the design and relaunch of the new How To Play Bass website.

Now that the new website layout is live - and most of the bugs have been fixed! - I can get back to focusing on content for the How To Play Bass website and producing regular ezines.

Introduction

So welcome to the May 2015 monthly ezine. At some stage this year I’m hoping that the ezine itself will get a new spruced up design - but if I’d waited for that design BEFORE publishing there would have been anoth-er delay of a few months.

In this month’s issue we’re going to look at the main parts of Paul Mc-Cartney’s bass line to Silly Love Songs by Wings.

Paul McCartney

Now Paul McCartney was never really a big bass playing idol of mine - there were always other guys I liked and listened to more (Jamerson, Rocco, Bruce Thomas, and so on). But over the last year or so I’ve lis-tened to a lot more McCartney lines - and transcribed quite a few as well.

And although McCartney was never as virtuosic as guys like Jamerson or Rocco, he did play some interesting stuff. And being a multi-instru-mentalist and a songwriter he often wrote from a compositional point of view. So there are some ideas and playing devices that bass players can pick up from McCartney’s bass playing that you won’t find in the works


of other bass players.

Teaching Approach To Silly Love Songs

In the last six to nine months I’ve been experimenting with teaching styles and am moving towards a ‘teaching style’ where there’s barely any talking. Instead each section of the song is ‘chunked out’ and presented with the notation/tab first and then a video of just that section so that you can isolate and work on that section.

The video has two changes from previous videos of mine that you may have seen. Firstly it’s edited with ‘picture in picture’ technology so that you can see both fretting hands and playing hands clearly. Here’s a screen grab of this combination from a recent lesson:

So you get the notation and tab, plus then you can watch the video. You’ll hear (and see with close ups!) the song section played in two ways:

1. At ‘performance’ tempo with a sound a like backing track2. Slowed down with a metronome.


For the last few months the metronome playalong has been a drum track with a hi-hat giving the rhythmic pulse of the bass line. But

Band In A Box just launched a new realband style with held piano chords and I’ve used this style with a metronome drum style that I built. So you can hear exactly how the line sounds at slow tempo AND hear the har-mony.

Now in an ideal world the tutorials for the monthly ezines will be in this format - but for this month they are not because again, I’ve got to work out how to program this with the specific website software and layout I’m using, and again I don’t want any further delays. So this month all the parts are in the same video. Hopefully next month they will be sepa-rated out so you can really see what I mean!

Ok, I think that’s it for the intro. Have a great month!

Paul Wolfewww.how-to-play-bass.comLondon

5 | Free How To Play Bass Monthly Ezine | May 2015 | www.how-to-play-bass.com

SILLY LOVE SONGS by WINGS, bass by Paul McCartney

This month’s ezine looks at the main parts to Silly Love Songs by Wings - bass played of course by Paul McCartney.

Although there’s nothing radi-cal about the playing on Silly Love Songs, it’s a good bass line with a nice loping 8th note feel bass line.

The majority of the song is built around a simple 4 bar chord sequence and there’s

plenty of scope to throw in some variations - either McCartney’s or your own! - into the mix as you’re playing through this.

Let’s dive in to the tutorial.

There’s an 8 bar intro where the bass doesn’t play - and then it comes in with a 4 bar pattern that sets up the feel of what’s to come in the bass line:

That slide from the G leads us into the verse. Now the verse is made up of the 4 bar chord sequence (C to Em7 to Fmaj7 for two bars for those that like to know these things) played three times. I’m only going to show one verse - but each 4 bars is different so you’ve already got three different ways that you can play through any of the 4 bars of the verse


or chorus (same chord sequence). Here’s the 12 bar verse:

Try and play with a staccato feel throughout this section.

That leads to a pre-chorus where the bass line changes to sustained notes (so nice compositional contrast!):


The chorus is 24 bars long - so you ‘ve got six 4 bar sections to play through. And you can use just about any combination of the three dif-ferent 4 bar sections shown above - or sections with simple rhythmic variations of your own - to play through this.

After the chorus, we’ve got a second pre-chorus which is similar to the first:

And then we’re back to the chorus again - this time it’s only 8 bars long. That leads to a bridge - where the lyric is: “Love Doesn’t Come In Min-utes....” That bridge section looks like this:


Then we’ve got a horn riff - which is played over the main chord progres-sion - and this section lasts for 16 bars.

This leads to a second bridge - this second bridge has the same chord progression as the verse, but it’s where the vocal is: How, Can I Tell, You About, My Loved One.

The first time it looks like this:


And then we’re back to the 16 bar horn section.

That’s followed by a repeat of the second bridge - this time lasting for 32 bars. The first 16 bars don’t feature any bass, and I’ve left that second 16 bars for you to work out based on the section above. (Hint: the last 8 bars contain 90% of the material you need!)

The remaining sections of the song can be played by repeating the main 4 bar patterns (and watch out for a repeat of the 4 bar intro pattern!) and finishing on an E chord.

You should be able to put all these sections together to play through the tune.


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 Quickguides - and new members will get a new song every week in that section of the web-site. (You can see the Quickguides on Youtube - but the First Bass And Beyond version has more content, downloadable backing tracks). That takes you up to 150 song tutorials in the next year.

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 tha


t is usually more advanced and doesn’t have video to go with. Other col-umns currently include Deconstructing Tommy Shannon, Learning To Count 16th Notes and Walking Bass Corner.

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

Examples Of Song Tutorials That Have Featured

To give you an idea of the kind of material that’s covered, here are the last thirty five or so video tutorials that we’ve featured in First Bass And Beyond:

How You Remind Me (Nickleback)Take It Easy (The Eagles) Not My Cross To Bear (Allman Brothes)One In Ten (UB 40)Whipping Post (Allman Brothers)Kingston Town (UB 40)Come As You Are (Nirvana)Paranoid (Black Sabbath)In My Life (The Beatles)Baby You’re A Rich Man (The Beatles)See Saw (Aretha Franklin)Helter Skelter (the Beatles)Get Down on It (Kool And The Gang)My Best Friend’s Girl (The Cars)Uptown Funk (‘Working’ version)Parisienne Walkways (Gary Moore)Weather With you (Crowded House)Boogie Wonderland (Earth Wind And Fire)Ain’t Nobody (Chaka Khan)Fall At Your Feet (Crowded Hosue)Love Somebody Today (Sister Sledge)Sex Maching (James Brown)Roll With It (Oasis)Street Life (Crusaders)Chain Of Fools (Aretha Franklin)Country House (Blur)

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


Rock Steady (Aretha Franklin)Song 2 (Blur)Do It Again (Steely Dan)Disco 2000 (Pulp)

Sweet Soul Music (Arthur Conley)Rio (Duran Duran)Lady Madonna (Beatles)Down Under (Men At Work)19th Nervous Breakdown (Rolling Stones)Running Free (Iron Maiden)

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

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THE HOW TO PLAY BASS MONTHLY EZINE - MAY 2015 · 4 | Free How To Play Bass Monthly Ezine | May 2015 | how-to-play-bass.com For the last few months the metronome playalong has been