How do you dismantle a bass line.

[Pbassred]

We all play along to tracks. Some times its to copy, and other times its to see what we can come up with. Right now I'm listening to some funk soul tunes. The chords are often buried in the layers, and the bass changes and improvises. I'd like to figure out the bass player's angle.

What do you do?
figure out the chords?
jam a bit until you get something (not a fan personally. It'll just sound like me and I won't learn anything.)?
Learn it exactly?

What its your approach?

[mewsie]

[quote name='Pbassred' post='350204' date='Dec 9 2008, 09:35 PM']We all play along to tracks. Some times its to copy, and other times its to see what we can come up with. Right now I'm listening to some funk soul tunes. The chords are often buried in the layers, and the bass changes and improvises. I'd like to figure out the bass player's angle.

What do you do?
figure out the chords?
jam a bit until you get something (not a fan personally. It'll just sound like me and I won't learn anything.)?
Learn it exactly?

What its your approach?[/quote]

for me, it depends on the song. i don't think i really have set ways of doing it.

it depends if there is a defining bassline or not, too. if the bassline is very well known and distinctive, then i'll just listen to it, get the first note, and work the rest out from there. the more you do it the more you start to hear intervals between notes, and eventually your fingers just head for the right notes! i rarely write anything down unless i'm working it out for someone else.

but, with a lot of funk and soul stuff where there is a lot of improvising and no bar seems the same as the one before, i'll find out where i need to be on the first note of the bar, usually it will 'anchor' with the root note here, and improvise til the '1' of the next bar. so i'll get all the 1s right, then fill the bit in between with something that has a similar feel to the song.

its an interesting exercise for me trying to figure out exactly what i do do. i hope any of that above helps. its way, way past my bedtime and i stopped understanding myself some time ago.

x

[cytania]

The first thing you are hoping for is a quick flash or 'oh that's a little bit like tune X'. If it does match a song you're already proficient in great, it's a matter of rejigging key and so forth.

Funk is a wide berth. When soul was morphing into funk/disco in the late sixties the bassist is often grooving the same strong pattern through the whole song, some of those grooves work right through the key changes. Once you get into the late seventies the funk is more complex and there's some devilish jazzy scale stuff at work. Part of all this is slap'n'pop technique where the groove has to work with the fingers making the slap/pop sounds.

Funk _can_ be approached as a straight root the note. Was doing this to the live version of 'Games Without Frontiers' last night. I don't have flying funk fingers but Peter Gabriel's 80s band gave that song a 'jump in the air and clap your hands' groove that is funky but bog basic.

At the end of the day a simple effective groove is better than funk flash that fails. I took my tutor 'Get It On' (funky T-Rex/PowerStation) having learnt the solo and fills. He gave me a simple groove to play all the way through that was rock solid. But on the record the horn section/crunch guitar make the groove happen and the solo bass is playing up front like a guitar which is why my original line failed terribly.

As ever, if in doubt simplify until bottoms start to waggle to the beat.

[Toasted]

Find the root, find the mode, the song is yours.

[The Funk]

[quote name='Pbassred' post='350204' date='Dec 9 2008, 09:35 PM']We all play along to tracks. Some times its to copy, and other times its to see what we can come up with. [...]

What do you do?
figure out the chords?
jam a bit until you get something (not a fan personally. It'll just sound like me and I won't learn anything.)?
Learn it exactly?

What its your approach?[/quote]

Depends on what I'm after. If I want to copy something I learn it exactly. If I want to noodle, I just noodle over it. If I want to deconstruct the song harmonically, I figure out the chords.

You can't just have one approach unless you only care about one of those things.

[chris_b]

[quote name='Pbassred' post='350204' date='Dec 9 2008, 09:35 PM']....We all play along to tracks. Some times its to copy, and other times its to see what we can come up with. Right now I'm listening to some funk soul tunes. The chords are often buried in the layers, and the bass changes and improvises. I'd like to figure out the bass player's angle....[/quote]
Not sure I'd agree that the chords in Funk or Soul are buried. The bass is usually on the 1 and the 1 is usually the root of the chord. I work out the structure (intro, verse, chorus and any other sections), then any riffs, then put it together. There are common conventions in most forms of music which it helps to know and the more you do it the easier it gets.