TKenrick

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

[quote name='dand666' timestamp='1508933037' post='3395431'] Man, thats nuts. Awesome rhythm reading dude. [/quote] Thanks! I cheated slightly in that the transcription process helped me to internalise the line so I wasn't [i]really[/i] sight reading it...

If you can sight read this at tempo then you're a better man (or woman) than I am: Mark Giuliana - 'One Month' Other new charts on the site: The Monkees - Daydream Believer Whitney Houston - I Wanna Dance With Somebody Duffy - Warwick Avenue

The 50th (and final) Groove of The Week comes courtesy of Me'shell Ndegeocello: Joshua Redman - 'Greasy G'

Janek Gwizdala masterclass 2007 part 3/3 is up now: PDF download of the transcription is available HERE

Groove of The Week #49: Damian Erskine's 'Kaluanui'

New Groove of The Week post featuring Hiatus Kaiyote's 'By Fire' HERE

Weekly transcription updates: A lovely Chic groove that isn't 'Good Times' or 'Le Freak': Groove of The Week 47 Corinne Bailey Rae - 'Put Your Records On' Paramore - 'That's What You Get' Kool & The Gang - 'Celebration'

[quote name='OliverBlackman' timestamp='1505295318' post='3370763'] Great coverage. He did a masterclass in 2009 in my first term at ACM and he was pretty similar to how he was here, although I think he might have been touring with VV Brown at that point. It's funny that during the masterclass I went to, he knew nothing about gear and was very bullish in his persona, a stark contrast to what we see in the YT vlog. Funnily enough these days, I find myself caring less about gear and more about transcribing and improvisation, so I wish his vlog covered more what he said in he masterclass as I'd appreciate it more now. Did you record any others? I wish it was something I had done, there were masterclasses from Ruphus Philpot, Laurence Cottle, and Gary Willis, all where I only remember bits. [/quote] It's definitely amusing to see how he has relaxed his stance on certain topics - this may or may not be as a result of his desire to appeal to a wider audience; more people want to watch videos about gear than want to actually get down to it and [i]do the work. [/i] There weren't that many decent clinics when I was there (2005-2008), I think I we had Stu Hamm, Todd Johnson and the rhythm section from Jamiroquai. I would've loved it if we'd had Rufus, Laurence or Gary! I actually found that the most informative ones were from drummers... The last part of the Janek thing should be up in a week or so.

Some new things have gone up on the site today: - Part 2 of a Janek Gwizdala Masterclass from 2007 where he discusses how he got into playing the bass, following Laurence Cottle about, how he developed his technique and why he advocates singing while playing: Transcription is HERE - New transcriptions in the archive: The Temptations - 'My Girl' James Bay - 'Hold Back The River'

Bought a couple of pedals from Darren, great comms, pedals arrived promptly and well packed.

[quote name='CameronJ' timestamp='1503672041' post='3360210'] Cheers for clearing that up - makes my GAS much less acute! [/quote] I haven't had any noise issues with mine when running several pedals on gigs - is that your concern? [quote name='HazBeen' timestamp='1503739822' post='3360615'] I am envious of everyone that owns the Noble, I have an Avalon and JDI that are great and I never thought I would find something I like more, but then used the Noble once and have been secretly lusting for one ever since. [/quote] Only one cure for secret gear lust

[quote name='Nico@Bass' timestamp='1502292582' post='3350510'] I have no theory background and would like to describe this to the drummer to add into our music. [/quote] It's difficult to explain the rhythmic ideas in both examples without some sort of reference to music theory, but here's what I heard... Firstly, Periphery are one of my favourite bands, so it was nice to have an excuse to give them a closer listen. There's a great British band called Sikth that Periphery have 'borrowed' a lot of ideas from. Broadly speaking, both examples are interesting because they use syncopation and rhythmic displacement to move the accents away from the downbeats. I don't claim to have transcribed exactly what's going on, but it should give you an idea of the concepets that they're using. 'Absolomb' has the guitar playing a pattern of five 16th notes which creates an accent that shifts by one 16th note on each repetition (top part of the notation below). The bass and the kick drum also have a rhythmic phrase that shifts by one 16th with each repetition (bottom part in the notation): [attachment=251172:Absolomb.jpg] 'Prayer Position' uses a triplet subdivision, but almost all of the accents are syncopated, which stops it sounding too much like a regular 'shuffle' groove: [attachment=251173:Prayer position.jpg] Get a metronome, start at a slow tempo and get comfortable with clapping the examples against the metronome click; with the triplet example it's helpful to start by clapping every single 8th note in the bar until you can feel where the accents should go.