TKenrick

NERD ALERT - the latest video and blog post deal with the value of tracking your practice: Full article is HERE Updated/corrected transcriptions: • Lionel Richie - 'Dancing On The Ceiling' • The Beatles - 'Help' • David Gray - 'Babylon'

Bought an MXR octave from Ed, pleasure to deal with from start to finish, pedal arrived swiftly and was well packaged. Top lad.

New chart just added to the site: Queen - 'Killer Queen' bass transcription

New video on why we can all still benefit from lessons and how to find the right teacher: The full blog post is available HERE

New transcription of Andy Rourke's great part on 'Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now' - those double stops almost make listening to Morrissey bearable... The Smiths - 'Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now' bass transcription There's also a new series on how to practise the bass, beginning with some thoughts on posture (blog post is HERE)

Not the usual sort of thing that I post, but as it's January I've been thinking a lot about how to get the most out of practising and realised that there's not much point putting in the hours if you can't focus in the first place: There's a more detailed rundown of all the books, apps and strategies mentioned in the video HERE The site has had a facelift and been transferred to a new server, so things should be looking better and running more smoothly than before. New transcriptions on the way next week...

Not explicitly about harmony, but a well-written book that isn't really a conventional 'study method' is 'Primacy of The Ear' by Ran Blake, quite different from most books on ear training (I wrote about it in more depth here).

Ran a little competition for subscribers last week and this was the winning transcription request. Great tune (from a cracking album) that has some interesting harmonic twists and turns: Sting - 'It's Probably Me' bass transcription

Sean bought an EUB from me, he was an absolute pleasure to deal with from start to finish - top man!

Having worked on a project where everyone was in drop-C apart from me, I'd say that the simplest option is to use the same tuning as everyone else - it might be a headache in the beginning, but in the long run you'll probably save some time and effort. Most guitar players who use drop tunings tend to write based parts based around the ease with which they can 'bounce' off the lowest open string - if you're playing lots of stuff in unison then it won't have the same sound or feel if you have to use a fretted low C all the time.

Somewhat late to the party, but this is still a great tune: Vulfpeck - 'Dean Town' bass transcription Not a great tune, but this might save some people from having to actually listen to the damn thing before a gig Mariah Carey - 'All I Want For Christmas is You' bass transcription

Some sublime Jamerson-style keyboard bass playing by Donny Hathaway makes this the only Christmas tune worth bothering with: Donny Hathaway - 'This Christmas' bass transcription

Insanely fun bassline to play - I would never have guessed that it was Nathan East, though! Every day's a school day... Kenny Loggins - 'Footloose' bass transcription

New walking bass transcription/lesson featuring things that I stole from John Patitucci: Learning by Stealing - walking bass a la John Patitucci

Thanks, always nice to hear that people get something out of the site!

Stunning bass! AJ is my idol and I could never get on with C strings, so this is pretty much my idea of perfection.

This is, without a doubt, my favourite Louis Johnson/Michael Jackson collaboration: Michael Jackson - 'Burn This Disco Out' bass transcription

As another person who grew up on TAB and didn't learn to read until 10 years into playing, I definitely know how frustrating the 'back to square one' feeling of learning to read is; the only consolation is that if you stick at it then your musical abilities will begin to advance way beyond the level that they were when you were reliant on TAB. Improved fretboard knowledge, sense of time, articulation, dynamics and the ability to access music written for any instrument are just some of the areas that reading opens up. As far as 16ths and associated rests go, I found it helpful to isolate all the different possible 'fragments' of 8ths,16ths and associated rests that can occupy 1 beat and then learn them individually as you would do with new words. This may sound like a rather OCD way of looking at things, but much of sight reading is pattern recognition and you need to develop the ability to 'pre-hear' a rhythm before you play it - rhythm reading books like Louis Bellson's 'Modern Reading in 4/4 Time' are great for getting this stuff together (if a little dull!).

The great Deon Estus being a very bad man on possibly the campest song ever: Wham! - Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go bass transcription

John Deacon's fantastic part on Queen's 'We Are The Champions'... great ledger line reading practice! Queen - 'We Are The Champions' bass transcription

[quote name='PaulWarning' timestamp='1509264517' post='3397574'] can't read and have no motivation to learn but I've asked this question before and nobody answered, how accurate is sheet music? [/quote] As Jay has already said, it's largely down to the skills of the person writing it - the quality of the original recording also plays a huge part, especially if you're trying to decipher basslines. Although I spend a fair bit of time writing sheet music, I'm often appalled at the stupid mistakes that I find in my own charts - ears get fatigued like anything else and it's easy for them to start playing tricks on you. [quote name='PaulWarning' timestamp='1509285947' post='3397777'] thanks for that. I guess it depends whether the original composer could write music, otherwise it's down to what someone thinks it is [/quote] The fact is that there are lots of elements other than the rhythms and pitches that contribute to the overall sound of a piece of music, and these are often very difficult to capture on paper; the phrase 'the map is not the terrain' definitely applies to this. Even the most accurate transcriptions will lack some of the nuances of the original performance, because notation can't fully represent every sound that people produce from their instruments.

Full transcription and analysis of why Jaco's debut recording as a sideman is so significant when looking at his influence in a wider context: You can find the transcription and written analysis HERE