Frets? Where we’re going, we don’t need, frets. Back to the 80s that is, for this classic Pino Palladino line from Paul Young’s cover of “I’m Gonna Tear Your Playhouse Down”. Grab your fretless and your Boss OC2 and join me. Mullet optional.
In this tune, Pino uses his fretless and octave pedal to great effect. It’s a masterclass in use of space and counter melodies on the bass. See if you can spot the Jaco influence.
The key to getting this one to groove is to pay attention to note lengths. Give those crotchets their full value, cutting them off just before the snare. Also watch out for the staccato notes in the choruses; they’re super important for nailing the feel. Those squiggles above some of the notes are vibrato symbols. This is achieved by rocking your fretting finger side to side or sliding very slightly backward and forwards. On a fretless the note should “sing”.
Now, the arpeggios at the end. These may require a little practise. For the theory buffs among us the first arpeggio is a up a Gmin11 chord and then down the third then root. The next is a straight Cmin7. The following one is essentially a Gmin11 played in fourths. The flourish towards the end is down a blues scale from b5 to b7 in 2 groups of 5 and a group of 6 that ends on the 5th. An incredible lick to stick into a mainstream pop song! The whole song might take some getting together but it’s definitely worth putting the work in.
Gear wise on this one I’m using my home constructed fretless bass with Seymour Duncan Steve Bailey pickups and Thomastik-Infeld flatwounds. Neck pickup off, Bridge and tone at 100%. I’m using a Markbass Compressore with a pretty quick attack and the threshold set so about 90% of the notes played are compressed. Ratio is set at 12 o’clock. Next is a Diamond BCP-1 with the compression off and a good EQ boost with the toggle set to 900hz mode. That’s going into a Boss OC2 with octave 1 off, octave 2 at around 90% and the dry all the way up. I added a little reverb with a Moore Shimverb that I picked up the other day.
I’m running that into Logic and using the SVT simulation with the golden fingers preset and then some light compression with a low threshold to tie it all together. Enough processing for you?! 80s tastic.
Thanks for reading. If you like the song, make your own video and tag me on social media, @jproudbass on twitter and instagram.
Click here to download PDF transcription
Jonathan Proud 