Knocks Me Off My Feet

This week’s track is off one of my favourite albums of all time: ‘Songs in the Key of Life’ by Stevie Wonder. I first heard it while at university and it didn’t leave my Minidisc (showing my age) player for about 6 months. An interesting fact about this tune is that all the instruments were played by Stevie himself! That’s right, as well as being an incredible singer, songwriter, arranger and pianist he was also a great drummer and great (synth) bassist.

There’s a real James Jamerson influence in this one. Have a look at the final section in Db, those lines could have been played by Jamerson himself. It’s clear that all those years playing with him really rubbed off. Pay attention to the note lengths in this tune; almost the whole line is staccato. Also make sure to nail the hammer ons to really get the vibe. Enjoy the Db section! I’m sorry for the double flats, they’re enharmonically correct though.

I recorded this on my Fender 50s Precision Bass with Ernie Ball Slinky Flatwounds. The tone was at about 20%. I used my Diamond BCP-1 compressor with a hint of compression and a touch of EQ boost. I then went into my new Tech21 VT DI pedal, added a little bit of mids and went for a general SVT tone. I added some compression in Logic using the Vintage FET setting and a slight EQ bump at around 1khz.

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.