Weekly Basslines #150: (Don't Fear) The Reaper (Blue Öyster Cult)

Currently I'm working on part 4 of my lesson on "Sightreading for electric bass", but meanwhile I want to supply you with a few songs you can play when you worked through parts 1 to 3.

In part 3 we covered all the natural notes on the fretboard up to the fifth fret:

These notes can be arranged to form a major scale starting on the note C, called the C Major scale:

Or they can be arranged starting on the note A to form the relative minor scale called A minor:

(Don't Fear) The Reaper is built on the A minor scale:

The song's distinctive guitar riff is built on the i-vii-vi-vii chord progression in A minor, forming the chords A5 - G - F6(sus2):

guitar riff

BÖC's bassist Joe Bouchard mainly has two ways of playing to this chord progression:

Either he only utilizes the root the fifth and the octave of each chord.....

...or he plays the basic triads to some of the chords...

In the course of the song these two appraoches are combined and varied.

Weekly Basslines #149: Return To Sender (Elvis Presley)

Last thursday (January 8th) Elvis Presley would have turned 80. A good opportunity to take a look at the bassline of one of his songs:

"Return To Sender" was recorded for the Soundtrack of the film "Girls, Girls, Girls" in the year 1962.
The song is composed around one of the most popular chord-progressions in pop music,
the so-called I-VI-II-V-(One-Six-Two-Five)-progression.

The chords are built from the first, sixth, second and fifth degree of a major scale.
For the C major scale these chords are C (I) - Am (VI) - Dm (II) and G (V).

Many songs use the I-VI-II-V-progression throughout and even more use it in certain sections.

In "Return To Sender" the verses are built upon this progression. The key is E flat and these are the corresponding chords:

Bassist Ray Siegel plays a "walking bassline" on double bass and only uses chord tones:

Here's the song (from the movie "Girls, Girls, Girls"):

And here's the transcription:

Related Posts:
Weekly Basslines #122: Burning Love (Elvis Presley)

Weekly Basslines #103: Hungry Heart (Bruce Springsteen)

Weekly Basslines #101: Fluorescent Adolescent (Artic Monkeys)

Weekly Basslines #148: Spooky (Atlanta Rhythm Section)

"Spooky" was originally an instrumental played and composed by the saxophonist Mike Sharpe in 1966.
In 1968 a vocal version of the song became a huge success for the group Classics IV. Guitarist James Cobb and producer Buddy Buie wrote the lyrics to the song and later became founding members of the Atlanta Rhythm Section. They re-recorded the song in 1979. Bassist Paul Goddard who sadly passed away in 2014 gave the song an extra lift by adding a real cool bassline to it.

The song starts in the key of E dorian and then (after the second verse) modulates up a half step to F dorian.
The dorian mode ist derived from the major scale:

Therefore the E dorian scale includes the same seven notes as the D major scale. The main difference is a different set of chord-progressions. The important I-IV-V chords in D major are D-G-A, but in E dorian they are Em-A-Bm. The next figure shows you all the diatonic chords of E dorian:

Each scale has a set of very common chord-progressions. One of the most common in the dorian scale is the change between the I-chord (which is minor) and the IV-chord (which is major).

The famous dorian i- IV-Progression in E dorian would be Em - A. In "Spooky" the chords are embellished by adding so called "optional" notes to the basic triads.

It makes a really cool sounding progression. The next figure shows those two chords for all of you who like to try them on guitar:

The following transcription of the song is done off the 1979 album "Underdog" and might vary in some details from the bassline played in the video above. 

Here's the complete transcribtion:

Here's a little tutorial video I made playing the first two verses:

Related Posts:

Basslesson - The dorian mode (part 1)

Weekly Basslines #147: Cold As Ice (Foreigner)

The view from my window this morning:

Ice and snow...
This inspired me to do another transcription of a bassline from a bassplayer, who passed away in 2014.

Ed Gagliardi died at the age of only 62 on May 11th after losing his eight year battle against cancer.
He only played on two albums with Foreigner: the 1977 debut "Foreigner" and the second album "Double Vision" (1978).
"Cold As Ice" from the debut album became one of the group's best know songs and was in fact also the first song I ever heard from Foreigner. 

I already transcribed "Feels Like The First Time" last year as part of a basslesson about slash chords and chord inversions. Take a look!

Weekly Basslines #146: I feel free (Cream)

Looking back at 2014 sadly reveals that the list of musicians who died in the past 12 month contains a notably number of my personal heroes. I grew up with the music of Jack Bruce and Cream, Johnny Winter or Joe Cocker and now they're gone forever. I had the privilege to open up for Johnny Winter in 1999 and for Joe Cocker in 2003. I unfortunately never met Jack Bruce, but as a young musician I always felt a kind of "connection" because my birthday (May 14th) was the same as his. And so he became a role model for me when I started playing bass. When Jack Bruce died on October 25th I was to busy too pay hommage to him here on my blog, but now during the X-mas holidays I sat down and transcribed the bassline to the first Cream song I heard in my youth. And here it is:

R.I.P. Jack Bruce

Most popular posts of 2014

At the end of the year it's time to look back.
Here's the Top Ten of the most viewed posts of the year 2014:

1. (1228 views) Lesson To Go #1 - Sightreading für E-Bass (Teil 1) (german version)

Im April habe ich die "Lessons To Go"-Reihe gestartet und gleich die erste Lektion beschäftigt sich mit Notenlesen, weil ich der Überzeugung bin, dass Notenlesen für jeden Musiker eine ganz wichtige Fähigkeit ist. Es fördert das allgemeines Verständnis für Musik und macht einen "bässeren" Musiker aus dir. Wie sich gezeigt hat, habt ihr dieses Angebot sehr gut angenommen, was mich riesig freut. Platz 1 für diesen Post hätte ich nie erwartet. Es ist eines meiner großen Ziele für 2015 hier noch viel mehr Material zum Notenlesen lernen anzubieten, um noch mehr Bassisten zu zeigen, dass Notenlesen gar nicht so schwer ist, aber sich dadurch eine ganze neue Welt in der Musik eröffnet.


2. ( 833 views) Jazz bass for beginners: When Sunny Gets Blue (german + english)

Diese Lektion ist ganz spontan, während einer Unterrichtsstunde mit einem meiner Schüler entstanden. Ich wollte ihm zeigen, wie er ganz schnell eine Basslinie zu einem Jazzstandard erfinden kann und habe zu diesem Zweck einmal zu "When Sunny Gets Blue" improvisiert. Damit wir mein Spiel anschließend gemeinsam analysieren konnten, habe ich diese Improvisation auf Video aufgenommen.

This lesson was created very spontaneous during one of my regular basslessons. One of my students wanted to know how to improvise a bassline over the chords of a jazz standard tune. For this purpose I played a line over "When Sunny Gets Blue" and recorded myself on video to analyse it with him afterwards.

3. (805 views) Weekly Basslines #133: Free Me (Joss Stone)

A cool funky ostinato riff, requested by one of my followers from Switzerland!


4. (753 views) Weekly Basslines #137: Easy Songs for Sightreading (No Tabs!)

Ich wurde gefragt, ob ich nicht als Ergänzung zum Sightreading-Kurs ein paar einfache Songs ohne Tabulaturen posten könnte. Natürlich konnte ich! Und nächstes Jahr - versprochen - gibt es noch viel mehr!

I was asked, if I could post a few easy basslines without tabs in addition to the Sightreading lessons. Of course I did! And - promise - next year I'm going to post a lot more.
 

5. (734 views) Lesson To Go #2 - Blues Bass (Teil 1) (german version)

Das ich mal einen speziellen Workshop über Blues machen würde, war mir immer schon klar. Im Mai 2014 habe ich schließlich den Anfang gemacht, im August 2014 gab's Teil 2 und auch da dürft ihr Euch nächstes Jahr auf mehr freuen.

6. (700 views) Lesson To Go #1 - Sightreading for electric bass (part 1) (english version)

I started the "Lessons To Go" series in April 2014 and I started off with a lesson about reading music, because I think that it's a very important skill for any musician to develop. Being able to read will enhance your understanding of music and make you a better musician. It's one of my goals in 2015 to give you a lot more material to improve your reading skills.

7. (641 views) Weekly Basslines # 136: Season's Trees (Danger Mouse & Daniel Luppi) 

Another request from one of my students.

8. (637 views)  Lesson To Go #3 - Basslines mit Dur-Arpeggien (Teil 1) (german)

9. (604 views) Weekly Basslines #134: My Oh My (Slade)

10. (546 views) Lesson To Go #5 - Groovekonzepte für E-Bass (Teil 1) (only german)

Weekly Basslines #145: With A Little Help From My Friends (Joe Cocker)

R.I.P. Joe Cocker