But I am able to play the original bass lines for what I feel are fairly challenging songs like Rhiannon (Fleetwood Mac) and Bus Stop (The Hollies), for example, because of the methods I use. However, my spontaneous ability to play is sorely lacking, so far. I’m playing out, so it seems to work ok for me. All of these cues help me to be where I’m supposed to be-especially on fast songs.Ĭlearly, I’m not a master bass player, but we find ways to compensate, when needed. Intros, instrumentals and outros are green.
#Barney clean up song chords code#
Because I do play on open strings occasionally, I either totally leave the those notes with no superscript (to signify it’s open) or I use a zero for the superscript.Īnother approach I use to help me visually during a gig, because I always have music infront of me, is I color code my music parts. The reason why I do this is because a song might call for a lower F in one area, yet a higher F in another area of the song later on, so I’d label that higher F as F with a superscript of 4, for example-F played on the G (4th) string.
For example, F with a superscript of 1 (sorry, I can’t type that out on my phone for your visual), means I play the F root note on the E string, which I have called the 1 string.
I write the root note above the lyric in which it is to be played, but sometimes I also use a superscript to identify what string I am playing that note on (in addition to a subscript for the counts, if I feel I need the reminder). I also use a weird shorthand I came up with to compensate for not knowing my fretboard cold (even though I continue to try to embed it in my brain). All of this includes lyrics for me because I find them very helpful, especially during a gig if I happen to somehow have an errant thought and find myself momentarily confused about where I’m at in the song. I add the “…….” after my pattern is identified to signify that I repeat that pattern until I come to either the next pattern or a place where I have actually written out notes for a bridge or other tricky part. For some songs, I’ll just write, for example, “Pattern 1….” over the verses so I don’t need to write it out a bunch of times, and I write “Pattern 2….” over the Chorus for the same reason. Before my intros on my music I’ll have a “notes“ area-I’ll write out typical bass patterns used in the song and label them “Pattern 1”, “Pattern 2”, etc. I also create funky notations over a page of lyrics and chords that the guitar players in our band use. If I’m NOT using tabs (which is probably 2/3 the time now): I always have music infront of me, but since I can’t read music, I use either tabs I’ve found online (and 99%of the time I’ve corrected and modified them to create my own), or I create my own tabs (ugh-so laborious). Rinse and repeat.įor me, to learn a new bass line it’s repetition over and over again until my muscle memory kicks in. If I screw up, I go back and check the tab and fix that part. I don’t rely on it in the sense of needing to look at it while I’m playing the song I use it to make sure that I’m learning the parts properly, then I play along with the backing track (and then the actual recording) without watching tab. I’m playing with a different band now, and I’m having to learn a lot of new material once again, so my subscription has certainly paid for itself in terms of time saved.īy the way, I would not recommend relying on tablature. I’m not here to advertise for them, and I hope when my one year subscription runs out that I won’t feel the need to pay for it again, but if you find yourself in a situation where you need to learn lots of songs, I would recommend it. I am the guy from “Yikes! I’ve got an audition!” if you’ve seen that epic thread, and there’s just no way that I could have managed learning that many songs - keeping up with that many YouTube videos or writing out that many cheat sheets - without UG. Oh, it’s different this one time in this certain spot.Īlso, I don’t think anyone has mentioned this (I confess I didn’t read every word of every post above me)… I went ahead and bought into Ultimate Guitar, which has helped. Oh, this riff during this section, that line during that section. Noticing how it works, where to play, where to pause. The number one takeaway for me was simply listening to the song. I found this video interesting and helpful.
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