Help me finding the best songs to practice: Brit 60s and 70s

[giacecco]

Hello everybody,
I am a complete novice bass guitar player. A couple of marvellous friends who play professionally helped me with the gear, and had the possibility to take basic lessons for a few months, but then I left the country, and now live in the UK. After having settled down, I want to start again playing.

I would like to proceed with a self-training phase. My Tascam trainer will be of help, but, independently of the music I personally know, I wanted to ask for your advice in selecting a small set of songs on which I could practice, practice, practice...

About my skills... well, I am practising on "Money" by the Pink Floyd these days, and I feel quite comfortable. It is challenging enough, particularly after the first few minutes. I would like learning something by the Led Zeppelin... I really love the British music of the late 60s and 70s... Beatles, Stones, Kinks... but I am relatively too young to know about them, and to know where to find the best sounding bass guitar

Please help!

Gianfranco

[d8g3jdh]

Ooh ooh I get to post first! YAY!

Welcome to talkbass! Stick around, there's oodles of information to be had.

You're working with a great range, here's some recommendations:

Led Zeppelin: Dazed and Confused, Ramble on, Lemon Song (harder), What is and what should never be, Good times bad times...oh there's many, check out the first 5 albums

Pink Floyd: Money's a good start, also check out Hey you, easy to learn but ****ing hard to get down 100% (for me anyways)

Beatles: Just about anything really, Paul was quite the 4-string slinger. Immediately comes to mind: Day Tripper, Come together, She's so Heavy...really just go through their albums and learn the ones you like.

Queen: Another on bites the Dust and Under pressure have great lead bass, and alot of other stuff is good too.

Not to familiar with the stones/kinks, but some non-British stuff:

Rush: Warning: alot of rush is hard. Take it easy, someone else will know some of their easier songs. But once you get into it, check out stuff like Spirit of the radio, Freewill, YYZ (extremely difficult), etc.

My mind seems to have left the building, but I'll have more recommendations later. Oh Oh! Sabbath has many good ones, NIB, war pigs and electric funeral ring a bell. Kentucky Woman by Deep Purple (I believe) has lead bass, if not then just great bass.

And learn them all by ear.

Also, get lessons and learn theory, and find people to jam with. And wait for someone with more experience to respond to your question.

Edit: And there is no best sounding bass guitar, only a tone that you may be partial to. For me it's Sir Paul, whether it's the rick or the hofner I just love his playing style.

[Howard K]

Best bet is find a high street music store called 'Fopp' and buy a load of 'best of' CDs of these bands. Fopp does a huge range of CDs for £5, £7, £10 and so on.

Here's all the Fopps in the UK from Yell.com

http://www.yell.com/ucs/UcsSearchAct...on=uk&x=22&y=7

[corinpills]

As far as McCartney's bass lines, i'd suggest that while he got a bit more melodic later on, his early bass lines might give you some fundamentals taht could be useful to you. "I Saw Her Standing There" is a pretty classic bass line, but it will really build up your stamina and it will force you to concentrate on playing the notes evenly. It's in E and Pauls starts on the 7th fret of the A string- no open strings. And then get into signature Macca bass lines like Taxman, Rain, Daytripper, Hey Bulldog, etc. you can never know too many Beatles songs.

The Stones are fun as well because so much of their early stuff is steeped in blues progressions. Check out the difference in rhythm between te guitar riff and the bass line on Satisfaction. it's simple, but really genius the way Bill Wyman plays against the signature guitar riff. Another great bassline is "Under My Thumb".

The Kinks are amazing riff- meisters, of course, but Ray Davies is a highly skilled songwriter and the master of the descending chord progression (think Waterloo Sunset). Pete Quaiff is not the most earth shattering bassist, but he's very solid and Mick Avery is killer drummer. The albums "Arthur" "Village Green Preservation society" and "Lola Vs. The Powerman" have some of the greatest British songwriting of all time.

May I also suggest a slightly later British bass player who created some amazing signature bass hooks? Sting's work with the Police is the guv at creating a bass hook. Alos, it's key to note that most of the prominant Brit bassist of the 60's were heavilly influenced by American R&B- Motown, Stax, Memphis soul.

Good luck and have fun! Concentrate on conquering the basics (tone, time, tempo, muting and proper strap length for looking cool) before you worry about Rush tunes. A lot of younger players skip the essentials to get to the flashy stuff and tehir playing really suffers for it. The #1 thing i can tell you is: don't learn riffs and licks, learn songs and understand why the bass notes fit the chords in teh songs. A lot of younger players have a collection of riffs they play in music stores, but don't knw any songs.