Black Crows Hard to Handle. I have been playing it wrong all these years.

[Count Bassy]

It's not wrong, it's different. Unless you are trying to be a Black Crows Tribute, and even then I'm not sure that it matters much.

If the whole band play it "Perfectly" as per the CD then you might as well stick the CD on.

[Count Bassy]

4 hours ago, Al Krow said:

Kinda reminds me of discussions I've had with bandmates and deps around playing a part that fits the song vs playing the bass line / guitar riff / drum pattern of the song.

 

Must admit I really appreciate working with drummers who include the fills and nuances of particular songs we cover vs simply bashing out a rhythm and tempo that fits the song. Maybe that's equivalent to us just playing the root notes?

 

Sure it can be "fun" to keep things simple, and horses for courses, if that is all we want to be doing with our music - getting out and gigging can be massively fulfilling in itself! But equally if we don't have to settle for less, then why not aim to be the best musicians we can? And I'm saying that knowing I've got a very long way to go...  

However: Playing the notes exactly as the original is not nessecarily being the best musician you can!

 

It's the same old argument. Do you think that the Black Crows played it the same every time? I suspect not.

[Terry M.]

4 minutes ago, Count Bassy said:

However: Playing the notes exactly as the original is not nessecarily being the best musician you can!

Thank you 👍

[dave_bass5]

8 minutes ago, Count Bassy said:

It's not wrong, it's different. Unless you are trying to be a Black Crows Tribute, and even then I'm not sure that it matters much.

If the whole band play it "Perfectly" as per the CD then you might as well stick the CD on.

What utter rubbish 🤣

[Terry M.]

10 minutes ago, Count Bassy said:

It's not wrong, it's different.

This.

[peteb]

Just looked at a recent version of them playing it on the Howard Stern Show with the great Tim Lefebvre on bass and he plays the A, not the G#...! 

 

[Geek99]

1 hour ago, dave_bass5 said:

 

 

Worst case ive witnessed is a band i auditioning on keys last year. They were doing Crazy Little thing call love. The bass player played just repeating root notes for each chord, instead of the walking bass line. When i mentioned it (as diplomatically as i could), it turned out they have been doing it this way for about a year, at gigs. No one had ever complained or commented at gigs, although they realised it wasnt right. The bass player ‘just didnt have time to work it out’ I walked away from that one. 

 

I Assume Google doesn’t work for him.
A tab or two gets you close enough 

 

well that took ages…. Who is this @TKenrick dude anyway ? 
https://freebasstranscriptions.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Queen-Crazy-Little-Thing-Called-Love-edit.pdf

Edited 14 hours ago by Geek99

[Count Bassy]

1 hour ago, dave_bass5 said:

What utter rubbish 🤣

[Terry M.]

59 minutes ago, peteb said:

Just looked at a recent version of them playing it on the Howard Stern Show with the great Tim Lefebvre on bass and he plays the A, not the G#...! 

 

And I bet it didn't sound "wrong?"

[tauzero]

1 hour ago, dave_bass5 said:

I learnt loads of songs quickly back in the day, and over the years ive gone back and fixed them. When i find im playing something wrong ill try and fix it, not just go ‘meh, the audience are still dancing so how cares’ etc. For me its about self pride. There is no reason on earth not to try your best at anything you do. 

 

When I joined the current band there were a few songs I'd done before, and I went back to some of them to check I was playing things right. Discovered I hadn't been playing "Run to you" exactly right, so I corrected that.

 

I'm house bassist at a couple of open mic nights and the host plays certain songs regularly, so I have checked most of them out to see that I was reasonably consistent with the original.

 

Something that annoys me at another open mic, where there's no house bassist but the host's assistant is a guitarist who owns a bass, is that said guitarist who owns a bass (who is, in fairness, f*cking awful as a bassist) is the favoured one to accompany a couple of the regulars, and one of the songs that one of those regulars does regularly is "Folsom Prison Blues". Possibly triggered by the word "blues", the guitarist who owns a bass always plays a walking bass line (extraordinarily badly) to this rather than the proper root-5th country line.

[Geek99]

3 minutes ago, tauzero said:

Something that annoys me at another open mic, where there's no house bassist but the host's assistant is a guitarist who owns a bass, is that said guitarist who owns a bass (who is, in fairness, f*cking awful as a bassist) is the favoured one to accompany a couple of the regulars, and one of the songs that one of those regulars does regularly is "Folsom Prison Blues". Possibly triggered by the word "blues", the guitarist who owns a bass always plays a walking bass line (extraordinarily badly) to this rather than the proper root-5th country line.

Loser 

totally get why that would piss you off 

[tauzero]

9 hours ago, Al Krow said:

 

 

Edited 13 hours ago by tauzero

[peteb]

31 minutes ago, Terry M. said:

And I bet it didn't sound "wrong?"

 

Of course it doesn't, it's Tim Lefebvre playing it. I'm sure that he wouldn't play anything that sounded 'wrong', or that the band wasn't happy with! 

 

Edited 12 hours ago by peteb

[Terry M.]

13 minutes ago, peteb said:

 

Of course it doesn't, it's Tim Lefebvre playing it. I'm sure that he wouldn't play anything that sounded 'wrong', or that the band wasn't happy with! 

 

That's my point,no matter who played it an A is an A and it sounded good. Had no idea this cover version even existed before the start of this thread. Otis Redding fan here.

Edited 12 hours ago by Terry M.

[Doctor J]

I recall a similar major/minor line issue at a Stone Roses tribute many years ago. The bassist in question constantly played one passing note of the chorus of She Bangs The Drums one fret from where it should have been. Most people didn't notice but, to me, it came across as half-arsed. If you're charging money, and it's as hard to get it wrong as it is to get it right, it's just laziness not to get it right, regardless of whether anyone but you notices or not.

[TimR]

Doesn't the original have brass?

 

To be honest, I can't be bothered to bring a brass section into the pub for a single song.

 

So the bass and guitar will have to have a different arrangement to cover that song. Black Crowes arrangement, Otis Reding, Committments, or our arrangement. Most people are just listening to the singer. 

 

 

[Dan Dare]

"I'm sticking it to The Man/making a stand for artistic freedom by playing a load of wrong notes". Cool.

Edited 4 hours ago by Dan Dare

[Terry M.]

6 minutes ago, Dan Dare said:

"I'm sticking it to The Man/making a stand for artistic freedom by playing a load of wrong notes". Cool.

We're discussing one semitone 🤣

[Dan Dare]

26 minutes ago, Terry M. said:

We're discussing one semitone 🤣

 

No, we're not. As someone who has stated above that reworking entire songs = artistic freedom, etc, you should know that. That one semitone started the discussion, but it's broadened a lot more since.

[Terry M.]

38 minutes ago, Dan Dare said:

 

No, we're not. As someone who has stated above that reworking entire songs = artistic freedom, etc, you should know that. That one semitone started the discussion, but it's broadened a lot more since.

Okay. So how does artistic freedom and reworking equate to "playing a load of wrong notes?"

[Misdee]

At the risk of stating the obvious, the "right" way to play it would be the original version by Otis Redding. 

 

I've had a very quick listen to the original. It's in a different key for a start, and to play it the same way as Johnny Colt does you would have to tune down a semitone. To my ear Duck Dunn plays the part in question  completely differently, with a root-five-octave figure replacing the bit with a low E. It's quite clear however, that he plays the contentious G# version, except it's a G because Otis' version is in B flat.

 

To my sensibilities the bass part works better the "right" way because part of the musical effect of the song is how it moves between major and minor tonalities. 

 

I'm all in favour of making adjustments in the name of individual expression, but sometimes it's a question of judgement whether embellishments are to the detriment of what made the song what it was originally. In this case either approach will work, but I think the "right" way is the  right choice because it sounds better.

Edited 3 hours ago by Misdee

[Dan Dare]

12 minutes ago, Terry M. said:

Okay. So how does artistic freedom and reworking equate to "playing a load of wrong notes?"

 

You can't have it both ways. You brought up the notion of entire reworking/artistic freedom and then claimed we were discussing one semitone. Make your mind up.

 

Interestingly, we play this number in my soul band. Our keyboard player was playing the major third on the way up as well as on the way down. We had a quick word and played him the Otis original and, being a sensible grown-up, he didn't try to double down or claim he was "interpreting" it. He just said "Thanks, chaps. Got it" and played it right from then on.

Edited 2 hours ago by Dan Dare

[Terry M.]

17 minutes ago, Dan Dare said:

 

You can't have it both ways. You brought up the notion of entire reworking/artistic freedom and then claimed we were discussing one semitone. Make your mind up.

 

Interestingly, we play this number in my soul band. Our keyboard player was playing the major third on the way up as well as on the way down. We had a quick word and played him the Otis original and, being a sensible grown-up, he didn't try to double down or claim he was "interpreting" it. He just said "Thanks, chaps. Got it" and played it right from then on.

I mentioned artistic freedom and reworking with reference to projects that are avoiding playing songs as was originally composed on purpose. That is separate and apart from projects that look to nail an original note for note. I'm not suggesting that hitting a wrong note accidentally should be passed off as an interpretation,by all means it should be corrected.

Edited 2 hours ago by Terry M.

[Phil Starr]

I agree with @TimR it's a long time since I played HtoH but I'm pretty sure my bass line included a lot of what the brass section were doing. In a lot of songs over the years I've found a lot of the original bassists playing things musically wrong but those things survived the edits and are there in the original rerecording. Famously Jean Genie contains quite a 'few slips' including in the bass riff that runs through most of the song. Trevor Bolder the bassist says he can't remember what he played. The whole idea of original is quite a blurred vision of music. Is the 'original' the first take, what the bassist played or something the composer wrote down before the session man walked in? Is it the album version or the single version? Or maybe the version wher the original bassist played the wrong note?

 

I think those of us who have played in multiple bands probably do it differently. We've often got a lot of songs to learn in a short time often in bands that prove to be unstable/short lived and with people who work full time so rehearsals are a luxury. I'd have 'learned' this as part of a batch of 30 songs and I'd probably have known 10 of the songs. I'd never heard the Black Crowes before. Learning would have been lots of listening followed by downloading the chord sheet and initially just playing the rhythm and the root notes and making notes of any fills, stops and stabs etc. The aim would be to be able to go through the first rehearsal with a firm base from the rhythm section so the rest of the band can do their stuff without any startling errors. If it worked I'd take that to the gigs. I'd also know that the band might be missing some of the instruments or that the drummer would be playing four to the floor and I might add in bits to the bass line not in the original. Each song sets up musical challenges and with limited abilities I do my best. Set lists often change and songs get dropped so with 20 songs getting things 'correct' is a waste of time, if the songs last I'll add in refinements but this is often based upon what the rest of the band are doing.

 

Like @Al Krow I take a pragmatic approach. Go Your Own Way is a good example. There are at least three guitar parts in the intro and I've played with drummers and guitarists that struggle with the intro. I've variously started the song playing one of the rhythm guitar parts on Bass and I've also played it properly. It's got that lovely run at the end and initially I played the notes all 'wrong' but with the rhythm and feel of the original and nothing that would clash with the guitarists solo. Later I went back and learned it properly but I doubt a single band member noticed and the audience not at all. It's great to sometimes learn things note for note and you learn loads by doing it but criticising people by describing it a lazy isn't seeing the bigger picture IMO

 

Now I must go and learn the proper ending to that Monkees song

 

btw it's the Black Crowes in the original spelling, couldn't resist it

Edited 1 hour ago by Phil Starr

[TimR]

30 minutes ago, Phil Starr said:

think those of us who have played in multiple bands probably do it differently. We've often got a lot of songs to learn in a short time often in bands that prove to be unstable/short lived and with people who work full time so rehearsals are a luxury. I'd have 'learned' this as part of a batch of 30 songs and I'd probably have known 10 of the songs.

 

Quite. Even worse if you're depping. 

 

Hard to Handle is a standard. I suspect there are as many 'versions' as there are bands.