FDC484950

OK, so I've had a close listen to the track (from the official video on YT, apologies if you're listening to a different version). I've attached MuseScore and PDF versions. Note that the swing indication at the beginning will not play back as swung in MuseScore - if you want to hear it exactly as played you'll need to mess with the playback settings. There are a few points of note: I've added chord symbols as it helps to understand the bass line vs the harmony (more on this later). Chords in brackets are implied but not necessarily played. Tempo according to my metronome is around 147bpm but it fluctuates quite a bit (like all music!) I've used repeat signs and first and second endings wherever possible as it means less dots to read and makes the chart shorter Many of the notes marked as staccato aren't (e.g. the quarter note triplets are lazily played but held for the full duration), whereas there are genuine staccato notes (e.g. bars 40, 42, 52-54 and 79-81) The hits section (bars 28-31, 62-65 and 89-92) can in theory be written a number of ways; I would usually go with the vocals and chord changes. In this case, 2 bars of 3/4 and 2 bars of 4/4 count, read and feel the best Note the accented notes - there are a number of unison figures played and it lifts the track to give them a bit of emphasis Now the good bits! Bar 17 (and each time this section comes round) has an E7, which contains a G#, but Bedders plays a G. It's theoretically wrong but works, it's bluesy. Someone (sounds like either Gtr or Kbd) anticipates the first chord of the chorus on beat 3 of bar 98 - someone is playing G when it should be C. Again it sounds a little odd but just adds to the charm of what is a perfect 3 minute pop song Hope this helps! And excuse the forensic analysis It_Must_Be_love.pdf It_Must_Be_Love.mscz

Thanks for this. One of the hardest things when learning to read is having enough material at an appropriate level of difficulty. This would have been a great help back in the day!

The reason it’s called a power chord is due to the overtone series (harmonics). The way that a root and perfect 5th interact harmonically is very “consonant” so works well (ie is “powerful”) when played on guitar/higher up on bass with heavy distortion as distortion amplifies the overtones. Other two-note chords (ie root and major 3rd) have quite dissonant overtones that clash when distorted heavily (although can be quite pleasant with a bit of crunch in the tone), so don’t sound as “power”ful

Sadly the best answer would be to go and try both and pick the one you like the best - but not possible at the moment...

Yes it isn’t the best bit of Musescore. It’s usually simplest to write swing 8ths as straight 8ths with a direction to play swung (as you said) but Musescore cannot provide this text out of the box without a bit of hacking - same with multi-bar rests. But I can’t complain as it is such a good package that is free! I had Finale PrintMusic about 10 years ago (was about £100 at the time) and Musescore is far better. And you’re doing a fantastic job - keep up the good work

Don’t ever be beaten! I probably didn’t explain bars 9-10 very well. The intro is using swung eighths but the verse and chorus have straight eighths. Musescore doesn’t really handle that from a playback perspective. I’ll take a look at the file at the weekend and post my best guess at the part. It is quite lazily played (which suits the track brilliantly) and some of the notes are well behind the beat, so whilst fairly easy to read, it’s quite a challenge to get the feel just right.

Ok. The notes in bars 9 and 10 (and others) are swung eighths so rather than eighth and two sixteenths on beats 3 and 4 it should be using triplets and the E should be on the down beat of beat 4, not tied over from beat 3. I’ve had a good listen to the track and they’re definitely not sixteenths. Regarding the bars in question the bass does not hang over the beat. You have bass and horns doubling with an answering baritone sad playing on beat 2. Therefore it should be two regular eighth notes beamed together Finally, when indicating a staccato note, unless you need to be very specific about the duration notate it as it’s regular length and add a staccato dot above (or below) the note. E.g. bars 52 and 54.

In musescore check it - is it visible or not? Click on the note head then look in the inspector. It should have a tick box or similar for visible.

Nearly - I’d put the sixteenth note rest first and then the eighth note rest, that way you clearly define the middle of the beat and you pair the sixteenth note with the corresponding rest. It still seems very specific but having not listened to the track, you may well be spot on

Its common practice to group long numbers of rest bars together as a single bar with a number above the stave and a horizontal line in the middle of the stave - easier than counting through each of the bars. Hmm 8 bars is OK per line but when the verse gets a touch busier it looks to me like it’s too many bars on one line. It is a balance of legibility vs an overly-long chart. For me the key is where possible to start sections at the beginning of a stave - repeats, signs etc are much easier to spot when all on the left hand side rather than buried in the middle, particularly if you add chord symbols etc The first beat on bars 9 and 17 seems to have a stem but no note (maybe you’ve set the note head to invisible?) What’s going on in bars 43/45 (and elsewhere)? No-one would beam an eighth note to a dotted eighth note as it just makes it unnecessarily harder to read. I haven’t listened closely to the song but does the note really sound on the first sixteenth note of beat 2 only?

Yes, I have a Sterling 5HH and the bridge pickup sounds just like a classic Stingray (notwithstanding the alnico/ceramic/neodymium pickup differences). Initially I didn’t like it much but I’ve grown more attached to it now as (and thanks for the tip) you need to work the EQ. The mid position (both pickups in parallel, same as the Stingray) feels very scooped compared to the other 4 positions, possibly because on a Sterling all the other combinations are in series, but boosting the mid to the max gives a great tone. I’m just not used to boosting/cutting so much with eq - the preamp is quite subtle in that regard so it’s very hard to find a poor tone.

Blimey! It might be easier to ask some people what they do like... I like most bass shapes, colours and designs. The only design that really doesn’t work for me is all the single cut shapes other than Fodera, and specifically the Anthony Jackson model. It’s the original and only extended single cut that works - it has a properly balanced design that works on both the horizontal and the vertical. All other single cuts I’ve seen don’t have this balance - either the single cut but is too big, or the wrong shape, but most designs fall down because the bottom horn is far too small. For example - the Warwick Thumb SC is hideous.

I do love the basic design of these - does that bottom horn dig into your leg when seated? What’s the headstock balance like?

Both the headstock and body of the original Tobias bass was IMHO a masterpiece of design that works as a 4-, 5- or 6-string and is nicely ergonomic to play, too. Much better than the later MTD headstock.

What a great player. Sad to lose him to ALS, like Mike Porcaro. RIP...

Hmm. I guess we’re all different. I was a private teacher for many years. I had a wide range and ability level of students from young kids to retired. The point about taking on a personal tutor is that you’re going to put in the necessary effort to learn. Honestly, if you’re ambitions don’t reach to that level, don’t bother. It’ll just be a waste of your time and money. I’d like to think I did my best and adapted to each student’s personality and skill level, but regardless of ability, across all the students I had (probably close to 100 overall), the ones who improved the most (and appeared to enjoy it) were those who went and woodshedded. The only way to improve is through regular and structured practice. Theory, harmony, technical ability and basic playing are NOT dark arts - it’s all there for you to find either with a teacher or via online courses. Improving and being a good player is decent tuition and a lot of hard work - and it’s within the reach of everyone. Talent has very little to do with it. It can be as little as 15 minutes a day, but every day (or as much as possible) I find some say that courses or online tuition fail to sustain their interest. Is it the teacher or is it the pupil? Or is it our collective inability to concentrate or remain interested in something in this age of instant gratification (this is not aimed at anyone on this thread, just a general observation)? The quality of online tuition is streets ahead of anything I had when I was learning - but I had a private teacher from about 15 for 4-5 years and it remains the best teaching I’ve ever had. He could be a bit moody and didn’t say much, but he had an amazing depth of knowledge - from piano to upright to electric, and introduced me to styles, bands and knowledge that set me up for life. Rather than be annoyed at his personality or even intimidated, I made it my mission to get better. And I went from knowing nothing to being able to read charts, play a variety of styles, gain a good sense of time and feel and got gigs and studio work as a result. Nowadays the issue is that teachers like this are very hard to find in person, so it’s really online where you have to go. Put the teacher’s personality or delivery aside and look at the content - is it worth sticking with? Then stick with it

It’s all about connecting what you see when you’re playing to how it sounds. The more complete that connection, the better you will improvise. It’s not a book recommendation but here’s my tips from (now past 30 years, playing, that came as a shock when I counted!) You need something to improvise over. Jamey Aebersold play-alongside, loops from something like GarageBand, (I was going to say other musicians but that’s out!) because when you start it’s vital to hear how the notes you’re playing sound over the chord. Start building a library of licks. Many musicians turn their nose up at licks but these are the building blocks of improvising and are valuable pointers to melodic ideas. Develop your ear. A wise person once said “you’re paid to think fast, not play fast!”. This ties in with the first point of relating what you’re hearing to what you’re playing Be specific and structured when practising. It’s all to easy when you start improvising just to noodle, which may sound good in isolation but over a proper piece of music it rarely works well. Take a basic standard or a blues and improvise using only two notes. Get as much mileage as you can out of those two notes. The move onto just chord tones (and be disciplined to stay only with chord tones, it really forces you to know what the chordal harmony looks like on the bass If you hit a note that sounds bad, stop. This seems counterintuitive as when performing you’d never stop playing if you hit a bum note. This is practising and you need to explore why that note didn’t work in that context. Then work out how you can make it fit (every note can fit somehow!) Take melodic idea you like and work them out. Transcribe if you can read/write, or just do it by ear. The most important thing is to learn how to play the idea freely. Then see if you can adapt that idea to a different chord or progression - the beauty of improvising is that often just changing one or two notes in a line will make it fit over a completely different chord. Avoid starting ideas on the first beat of the bar and the root note of the chord, at least when staring out. Bass players are hard-wired for root-5th so you need to break out of that mindset as most melodic content is nothing like a bass line - unless it is a bass line, of course! As you get better, try playing ideas that go through chord changes. A sign of a less accomplished improviser is someone who stops each time the chord changes. A good exercise to develop this skill is the continuous scale exercise: start at the lowest note that first the first chord, then play 4 notes per bar/chord. When you get to the second chord, keep ascending and go to the next available note from where you are (it’ll be one fret or two frets). Keep going until you run out of notes, and go back down again. It forces you out of the root on the one mindset, too. Conversely, develop ideas that have wider intervals. Many bass players tend to play very scalar lines, one note aft the other, whereas more interesting ideas have larger intervals. Practising exercises using thirds, fourths, fifths, sixths and sevenths, especially if you start inverting pairs of notes e.g. in C, play a descending major 3rd on (E, C) followed by an ascending third in the next scale tone up (D, F) and repeat: E, C, D, F, G, E, F, A, B, G, A, C, D, B, C, E and then back down again starting from the same high E. Develop phrasing. This means singing an idea and playing it. Try taking a breath between phrases - if your struggling to breathe then the phrase is too long. Think of it as a conversation rather than a monologue! Learn some Charlie Parker lines. You can take an 8 bar solo from a standard and it’s like study in its own right - he came up with so many great melodic lines, and you’ll get a thorough grounding on chord tone playing plus bebop scales and chromaticism (again, it doesn’t matter whether you have any theory knowledge; it helps but it all about the sound of a line) If you really don’t like a style or genre, don’t bother with it - use your valuable practice time on stuff you do like. Quite a bit above references Jazz but much of it applies regardless of style. Remember however there are little gold nuggets to be had in any style Finally, start slowly and precisely, don’t rush playing or fudge the timing. You can play a wonderful solo with just a few notes and impeccable timing and feel; but it’s all to easy to be too busy or vague rhythmically, and even good melodic ideas will fall flat. Less is more! Hope this helps!

There is already another thread on this very video. AH is very much an acquired taste - I can’t say I could take large doses, especially some of his solo work. I respect him however for being unique, for always wanting to choose his own path and never compromising - even when it cost him personally and financially. Victor’s advice is of course sound - but as I said on the other thread, it’s a bit amusing from someone who played on the Sinister Minister 😂

.

That sounds unfortunate and most unlike Ibanez. I’ve had a bit of a love/hate relationship with their basses but even the cheapest models have had pretty faultless fit and finish. Shame really as I was gassing for the EHB1506MS but a) I’d much prefer it in a natural finish and b) it looks like it’s worth waiting until they’ve ironed out these QC issues.

I’ve ordered a monitor from (yes, I know), Amazon. I now wish I’d looked a bit more closely at the details. It is sold by Amazon (UK) but fulfilled by a seller... in Latvia. I don’t have anything at all against Latvia but if it turns up damaged then returning it is going to be a PITA. I shouldn’t be surprised but nevertheless it is annoying. At least it is actually in transit (for now...)

I’d agree with the above. The Sterling Stingray or the actual US Stingray can’t really be beaten. The ATK I owned definitely didn’t have the stingray clank and neither does my Fender Dimension, which in theory should do but doesn’t, possibly due to the 2 pickup version having very different pickup placement to a Stingray H or HH. I’ve not heard any other basses that get very close (eg Lakland have an MM at the bridge but the two I owned and several I played sounded nothing like a Stingray).

Er, I think you’ve missed the point. The promise to deliver is there IF a courier is arranged. It’s pretty obvious if it’s collection then it’s not relevant. Whether the item is as described or not has nothing to do with it. Now YOU may get off your behind and pack and weigh and measure and do everything to a tee, but frankly how does the buyer know that? You know, there are a lot of lazy people who can’t be bothered to do all of that stuff properly, and as a buyer you then assume ALL the risk by a) paying upfront b) booking the courier yourself c) hope the seller answers the door and e) working things out if the parcel is damaged or lost. The answer to all this is of course to collect. Let’s just agree to disagree - you think a buyer expecting the seller to courier is lazy, I think a seller washing their hands of the transaction once they have the money and the bass is picked up is also lazy.

You know nothing about me, but your comment says everything about you. And you had to make it personal, didn’t you...