Baby Be Mine
Sometimes it’s good to learn lines that were played on instruments other than bass. For jazzers it’s often sax or piano solos, anything that takes you out of your standard hand positions and note choices. In the pop world, it’s great to learn basslines that were written and played by keyboard bassists. It can be a rewarding challenge trying to follow the articulation and general groove.
This weeks bassline was played by Greg Phillinganes on what sounds like a moog synthesiser. It’s best played on 5 string but I’ll include an octave up transcription for anyone that wants to play it on 4 string or with an octave pedal.
Once again it will benefit you to really pay attention to the articulations if you want to nail this groove. Watch out for the staccato notes and hammer on/pull offs/slides. They really help with getting the vibe. If you listen properly you’ll hear Greg playing around with the feel. Sometimes ahead of the beat, sometimes behind. I’ll leave you to figure out where they are! It can be a fun challenge to try to slap this whole bass line. The choruses sound particularly good slapped.
This was recorded on my custom built 5 String with Aguilar DCB pickups and an Aguilar OBP-3 preamp. I soloed the bridge pickup, boosted the bass slightly and boosted the mids a lot. I ran it through my Markbass Compressore with a quick attack and release and the threshold set to where most notes were compressed. I then went into a Diamond BCP-1 compressor with a slight boost on the 900hz side a smidge of compression. In Logic I added some vibrato and chorus to get a more synthy vibe.
(In order to be in tune with the recorded version of this song you’ll need to set your tuner to 446hz)
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 