• TalkBass has been independent since 1998. Add your voice.
    Create a free account to reply to discussions, view embedded media, and browse with fewer display ads.
    Join free Log in
    Want zero display ads or expanded classifieds tools? Compare plans.

Bach on bass?

alphadog

alphadog

Sep 13, 2011
19
0
#1
Okay, so I'm probably nuts for wanting to play this on my bass :hmm:, but I love this piece of classical music by Bach and I'd love to get the tab for this entire song. So far I've only been able to find the intro, so I have been working on that and I have to say, learning to play Bach ON BASS is not only an enthralling experience, but a challenge, to say the least! Anyway, the song is "Toccata and Fugue in D minor" by Bach, and honestly I'm not even sure if it's possible to play this entire piece of music on the bass (?), because I believe the original composition was written for the organ. Nevertheless, possible or not, I really enjoy what I've learned so far :bassist: and I'd like to at least try to learn the rest of the song. So, my question is: does anyone know where I can find tab for this entire song, or if it's even possible to play this on bass. Thanks, I really appreciate it :smug:
 
#4
You should learn how to read music in all 3 clefs and take the piano version and try it.

I have Chromatics fantasy (at some places impossible of you don't have 6 strings and you have to use tapping or rearrange some part), 6 suites for Cello and some Dragonetti and Bottesini ( I play Double Bass too ). I learned Chopin's prelude in E minor OP28 no4 and in C minor OP28 no20 on piano maybe I should try to arrange them on bass, could be a cool project.
 
#5
Not crazy at all - there's lots of good classical that translates to electric bass. Enjoy. FYI, though: by definition, songs are sung. The composition you referenced, Toccata and Fugue in D minor, is a piece of music (specifically, a tocatta and a fugue, ironically enough :smug: ), not a song.
 
#7
Thank you everyone for the feedback here, I really appreciate it. Here's my response to everyone:

bigfellow: Wow, an entire book dedicated to J.S. Bach and the Electric Bass... sounds perfect!

Hellbastard: Thanks for the link, but this file doesn't seem to download properly, is this a pdf file?

Mayers: Thanks for the advice, sounds like I have my work cut out for me. I should mention that the closest thing I have to a formal music education right now is a few months worth of classical guitar lessons, which I studied way back in High-School, and an few audio art courses in college, which was more about the fusion of visual art and artsy audio recording, then "music" per se. So, for now, I'm sort of limited to working with bass tab (I'm not able to read full musical notation, just yet).

FretlessMainly: Thanks for the tip, makes sense to me. I have to admit, I only very recently started listening to classical music, so this is the first time I've talked about it at all. It wasn't until I came across this fantastic book, called: "Godel, Escher, & Bach..." that I even considered listening to classical music. But the underlying math, the patterns, and the structural significance of Bach's work is ultimately what brings me to this particular thread and wanting to study his music.

enricogaletta: It's funny that you mention YoYoMa because there is this new artist (new to me anyway) that I've been listening to, via Pandora, named Ennio Morricone and apparently Morricone & YoYoMa have collaborated together and I was actually just listening to the YoYoMa/Morricone collaborative stuff today at work, ha! Anyway, thanks man, I appreciate the reference and I'm definitely going to check out more of YoYoMa's work.Generally, I'm a big fan of musicians that are sort of detached from the title/label of "musician", i.e. artists like Brian Eno, Bill Laswell, Mike Patton, Karlheinz Stockhausen, JoJo Mayer, or even people like Amon Tobin and DJ Krush. These are all artists that sort of distinguish themselves from other so called "musicans" by focusing less on satisfying a particular genre and are instead more about just doing there own thing and, in my opinion, inventing there own aesthetic or artistic language. At any rate, I'm not really a classical music guy, but there are certainly particular classical artists, like Bach, YoYoMa, Hans Zimmer, etc. who I think are very interesting. If you have any other references, definitely hit me back - I love to new material :hyper:

Thanks everyone! :bassist:
 
#8
I've been meaning to post this:

[Invalid or Expired Link Removed]

A very precocious version of myself recorded this in those dim, distant days before home digital went mainstream. It is a little crackly.

I had Isao Tomita's live in new york album, and he had a rendition of Bach's 3-part invention #2. I transcribed that version by ear and recorded it with two basses.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
#9
Free sheet music : Bach, Johann Sebastian - Toccata and Fugue in D Minor (Organ solo)

the piece is a fugue. not "impossible" to play on an electric bass, but you'd need to do some serious arranging and be really skilled. i doubt victor wooten could make it work, even on an extended range bass. (and thats assuming leaving out tons of stuff)

bach's cello suites and certainly the prelude 1 in C major work fine on electric bass. i find the result to generally be really boring though- the pizzicato sound of an electric bass just doesen't do the (cello pieces especially) music justice. the pieces are really difficult to get under your hands on a double bass, too.

bach wrote tons of music. if you dig through it, you can find great stuff to arrange for electric bass. the solo parts from any type of concerto of his would be a great place to start.
 
#10
alphadog said:
It wasn't until I came across this fantastic book, called: "Godel, Escher, & Bach..." that I even considered listening to classical music. But the underlying math, the patterns, and the structural significance of Bach's work is ultimately what brings me to this particular thread and wanting to study his music.
Click to expand...

Fantastic book indeed - I read it about 25 years ago. I'll have to find it and pull it off the shelf one more time.
 
#11
Maxgrant: Thank you for posting the music, this is great! Roughly how long did it take you to get this down? I'm just curious because I've been chipping away, slowly, at Toccato & Fugue for the past few weeks and there are a couple of phrases that are taking me awhile to wrap my head around? I don't know if you feel this way about Bach too, but I feel as though Bach sort of messes with my head (in a good way of course) and certainly raises the bar, in terms of technique. Also, I'm new to soundcloud, is this download-able? I'd like to share this with some friends.

groooove: Thank you for the sheet music link and the advice. Do you know where I can find tab for any of the cello suites that you mentioned? Also, any other composers that you recommend?

FretlessMainly: Yes, it's one of my favorite books and it's the type of book where I have to take it in small doses, because I find myself reading a chapter or two and what I'm reading shoots my imagination off into "Thoughtland", so eventually I have to set the book aside and just let the ideas simmer for a while, before I move on to the next chapter or whatever. Speaking of Thoughtland, if you like Godel, Escher, & Bach... you might enjoy another book called "Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions" by Edwin A. Abbott. This is my all time favorite book in the world! It's SO good that one year for Christmas, I bought it in bulk (maybe a dozen copies or so) and just handed them out at Christmas, as gifts. From what I understand, the author was a math teacher and was famous among his students for his unique ability to explain complicated concepts in mathematics, through simple stories, such as the story told in Flatland. I'm not sure if he's had any other stories published, but Flatland is fantastic. However you interpret Flatland, the magic of this story is that the characters and setting are all abstract and based on geometry and overall Flatland is about levels of awareness or perspective per se. Anyway, it's a quick read (around 80 pages), completely unique (I've never read anything quite like it before), and as simple as it is to read, the theme of the story is actually quite complex, revealing, witty, and overall just kind of 'out there'.

:bassist:
 
#12
Ahh Toccata and Fugue in D minor. Classic! I imagine that piece being hard to play on bass though. It is an organ piece, and he gets high into the treble and plays a lot of chords. It is possible to look at the sheet music and just play the bass note or to just learn the melody in a lower register. Either way, that is a difficult piece.

I would like to recommend to you the Cello Suite 1 Prelude by Bach. It is a great piece to learn on bass.
 
#13
Papa Dangerous: Thank you for the comments. I'm working on Cello Suite #1 (and #6 looks fun too!), but your right; it seems Toccata & Fugue in D Minor will need some serious tweaking in order to translate and play it on my bass. I was hoping to find bass tab for it and someone mentioned in another comment [above] that there is a book on Bach & bass, so I'll have to check that out. So far, I managed to learn the intro and first, oh about the first minute-minute and 1/2. So far so good, but you're right, some of the chords and higher notes, later on in the piece, are just not possible to play, note for note. AT any rate, I may post a youtube video soon, just for fun, but we'll see...

:bassist:
 
#14
alphadog said:
Maxgrant: Thank you for posting the music, this is great! Roughly how long did it take you to get this down? I'm just curious because I've been chipping away, slowly, at Toccato & Fugue for the past few weeks and there are a couple of phrases that are taking me awhile to wrap my head around? I don't know if you feel this way about Bach too, but I feel as though Bach sort of messes with my head (in a good way of course) and certainly raises the bar, in terms of technique. Also, I'm new to soundcloud, is this download-able? I'd like to share this with some friends.
Click to expand...

I have to tell you this recording dates to approximately 1992. I'm only guessing about how long it took me to transcribe it but typically something complex like that I probably did it in fits and starts over a period of two or three days, working at it 3-5 hours at a time (that's just a guess, there).

I think the recording I published is the second run at it. I remember doing one before I owned a four-track where I used two tape recorders and a drum machine to keep time between the tracks.

I enabled downloads from Soundcloud, so try again. You should be able to snag it.

I don't know if you have studied theory yet, but you should. That makes Bach a lot easier to follow. Also remember that his major contribution to music came at a time when the "equal-tempered" or "well-tempered" tuning scheme had just been introduced. Before Bach's time fixed-pitch instruments were limited to just a couple of enharmonic keys due to how they were tuned. Equal-tempered tuning sort of smooths over the mathematical "rounding" error that creeps into tuning say a keyboard across a large range. So Bach had a huge palette at his disposal that previous generations of composers did not.

That's a long way of saying he changes keys quite a bit. I never actually wrote down the notes of the 3-part invention. I just memorized the patterns on the board, and I saw that the key shifted often between phrases.

The good thing is all of Bach's music that we know about is written down, and it is all in the public domain. You should not have trouble finding transcriptions.

If you're struggling with Tocatta & Fugue, keep in mind that he's using the melodic minor there, I believe. It's the same as a regular minor key which would leave you with one flat, but then the "melodic" part I believe is that there is another leading tone introduced right before the tonic, which would be the c#, which also requires you to cancel the flat b and make it natural, and that is only when you are ascending (a rule which I am pretty sure Bach breaks almost immediately). But, at least that's something. If you're having trouble there, google Melodic Minor. I can hack my way through the opening of the T&F up through about the first minute and a half on keyboard. Never have thought to try it on bass. There's so many long, long runs that would eat up the entire fretboard of the bass, even if transposed up or down. If you get it sorted out and recorded, I'd love to hear it.
 
#15
Maxgrant: Kudos! Download worked great, thanks man!

Unfortunately, no music theory, not yet anyway, but I have had mild exposure to music history, back in college. My background is actually in fine art- multimedia art, experimental performance art (Blue Man Group-esque performance), traditional art, interactive animation...yatta-yatta (the list goes on and on here), but anyway I used to spend rainy days in our college music library reading books about John Cage and listening to Karlheinz Stockhausen records. I took a semesters worth of "electronic music composition", where we talked about interesting things that were happening during the Dada and Fluxus art movements, but aside from those few books, records, and conversations in college- honestly I'm a bit of an amateur when it comes to music theory or when it comes to any of the "formal" aspects of music, per se.

Aside from my visual art background, up until a few years ago I was actually a drummer (sprinkle in a couple of years on classical/electric guitar, back in high-school), and one day I just got tired of the many drum kit roadblocks; i.e. expensive equipment, cranky neighbors, space restrictions, etc. So, in my last year of college, after a semesters worth of building, refinishing, and customizing this fairly nice little custom drum kit, for whatever reason I discovered the bass and decided that this is what I wanted to play, the missing link if you will. So, within a week or two, after purchasing my first bass (5 string Cort), I sold off my entire drum kit (on ebay of all places) and replaced the empty space in our stereo-typical college "party house" living room with a great big Gallien Krueger half-stack amp. That was it... bass in... everything else (visual art, drums, guitar, pretentious professors) out! Anyway, here I am today, three years later, and although I miss my drums now and then, at least now I can finally keep music in my daily life & routine (and actually practice everyday) without the restrictions or hassle that are the typical issues in a drummers life. And now, just to explain how far this goes, I'm actually in the beginning stages of launching my own custom bass company (AlphaDog Bass Co.), with AlphaDog Bass # 1 (sort of a functional prototype) in the final stages of production. So, long story short, it seems this block of wood, magnets, and steel string has slowly but surely replaced one art form for another, placing my life long passion for visual art on the back burner, which sounds kind of unfortunate as I am writing this, but really I've just thrown in one towel in exchange for another bigger and better towel (that's how I see it anyway).

So, okay, now that I'm totally off the subject (my apology) I'll end here by saying thank you for the Bach info, I appreciate it. If you don't mind, I'd like to use your comments here to initiate conversation with my music friends, who I should mention are much further along than myself, in terms of their music "breaks" (musical background, education, & professional experience). Luckily, I lived in an exclusive "art students only" dorm in the first two years of college, so I have all of these professional music friends scattered here, there, and everywhere; which is nice when you're me and suddenly picking everyones music brains, in an attempt to feed my bass playing addiction, to learn more about Bach and other interesting composers, and overall to sort of just play catch up with some of these formal aspects of music theory, notation, history, etc. Anyway, your Bach comments and mp3 track should make for an interesting spring board into some new discussions about Bach and music in general, so again; thank you, I really appreciate it :bassist:
 

Latest posts

Top Bottom
Back