In The Stone
I’ve decided to set myself the challenge of doing a transcription/video every week for the whole of 2017. I missed the first week due to work commitments so there’ll be 2 this week and another 50 over the rest of the year! Gulp!
I’ll be aiming to release each video on the Monday of each week so feel free to learn each song with me and expand your musical vocabulary. Any suggestions for tunes will be helpful. As groove based as possible though I’m open to some more of the heavier stuff as long as the bass is reasonably audible!
This week’s first tune and the first of the year is ‘In the Stone’ by Earth, Wind & Fire. I was always aware of EWF but properly got into them while driving back from gigs late at night and needing some upbeat music to keep me going. I was amazed by the ambitious arrangements and chord sequences, the rock solid drum grooves, and the sublime pocket playing of Mr Verdine White. This tune always stuck out to me due to it’s brilliant game show style intro and the easy sounding but difficult to nail bass grooves.
Most of the bass line can be played on the first 5-6 frets apart from the odd flourish at frets 7-9. It’s played in a very precise manner with lots of staccato notes which is reflected in the transcription. The key to getting this song to groove is relaxing, try not to rush all the semiquaver pushes and feel the spaces. Watch the video and study the score. Count if you need to but the aim is to feel the rests rather than count them! Get practising those semiquavers.
Best of luck with this one, I hope you enjoy playing it as much as I did.
This was recorded on my custom built 5 String with Aguilar DCB pickups and an Aguilar OBP-3 preamp. The front pickup was rolled off by about 60-70%, I boosted the bass slightly and boosted the mids with the push-pull pot in the up position. I ran it through my Diamond BCP-1 compressor with a slight boost on the 900hz side into Logic where I boosted the EQ by 2.5db at around 1khz with a Q of .30. I then added some light compression.
Thanks for reading. If you like the song, make your own video and tag me on social media, @jproudbass on twitter and instagram.
Till next week.
Jonathan Proud 