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Learning Phil Lesh's "The Eleven"

B

Brubass

Jul 17, 2009
83
0
Ridgefield, CT
#1
I haven't had much formal training in bass (or music, in general), but I've managed to hack my way around. I'm a part-time noob and 46 years old. I've been in a 70's classic rock band for about 18 months. A couple of the guys are real deadheads and our songlist shows it. About 30 of our 70 songs are written by or are famous for being covered by the Dead.

I've been challenged trying to learn Phil Lesh's bass lines for several reasons. His style is unique and not very "rock-like". There are very few bass tabs or transcriptions or youtube covers out there of his work. Even if there are resources, I find that Phil improvises so much that each recording of a song sounds like he is playing something completely different. I find myself spending hours on end deciphering various versions of songs, trying to come up with something that works. It's a lot harder than learning McCartney, for example.

So, my latest challenge is to learn "The Eleven" and the instrumental break from "Unbroken Chain". Being a part-time noob, without a lot of time on my hands, I'm hoping to find new resources or a new approach that will speed up my learning.

Any advice?
 
#2
You picked a couple of odd-meter tunes.

The Eleven has a pretty basic chord structure. From what I remember it is basically Good Lovin' in 11/8. Eventually the jam settles on E-minor. It has been a while. You can make this song as easy or as difficult as you want. The trick is getting the 11/8 feel in your head. You need to get this down before anything us. Practice this rythmn away from the song. Use a metronome or drum machine if possible. Just get the 1-2-3, 1-2-3, 1-2-3, 1-2 in your head. Tap it out while you are walking down the street. If you are not dropping that last 3 then you won't get the song. Just play the root of each chord on every triplet subdivision. (I look at as all triplets.) Then start playing variations of that pattern. Arpeggiating the chords, playing a dotted-quarter-eighth across the chord. Once you can do that, you can fake your way through the song. When It hits the E-minor jam it goes back to 4/4. I hope this helps. Phil's little solo riff coming out the St. Stephen jam and counter parts to jerry's melody in the song are all over the place and are shear awesomeness. I'll take a listen to them over the weekend and see I can dig up any other pointers. Just remember that simplifying Phil's lines sound then trying to overachieve and falling out of the pocket. FYI - The intro to whipping post by the allmans is in 11/8 if you need another 11/8 song to help get that in your head.

The Unbroken Chain is such a great song. The rocking instrumental breakdown in the middle is another odd meter. I don't know this one, but the way i would approach it is to learn that riff and lock it in with the drummer and then add the Phil type stuff later. From what I remember this section is a repetitive cycle. The riff repeats a couple of times and then it goes through a little chord progression back to the riff. Just take it in parts, focusing on the foundation of the song and then add all the other stuff.
 
#4
Corporate Boy said:
You picked a couple of odd-meter tunes.

The Eleven has a pretty basic chord structure. From what I remember it is basically Good Lovin' in 11/8. Eventually the jam settles on E-minor. It has been a while. You can make this song as easy or as difficult as you want. The trick is getting the 11/8 feel in your head. You need to get this down before anything us. Practice this rythmn away from the song. Use a metronome or drum machine if possible. Just get the 1-2-3, 1-2-3, 1-2-3, 1-2 in your head. Tap it out while you are walking down the street. If you are not dropping that last 3 then you won't get the song. Just play the root of each chord on every triplet subdivision. (I look at as all triplets.) Then start playing variations of that pattern. Arpeggiating the chords, playing a dotted-quarter-eighth across the chord. Once you can do that, you can fake your way through the song. When It hits the E-minor jam it goes back to 4/4. I hope this helps. Phil's little solo riff coming out the St. Stephen jam and counter parts to jerry's melody in the song are all over the place and are shear awesomeness. I'll take a listen to them over the weekend and see I can dig up any other pointers. Just remember that simplifying Phil's lines sound then trying to overachieve and falling out of the pocket. FYI - The intro to whipping post by the allmans is in 11/8 if you need another 11/8 song to help get that in your head.

The Unbroken Chain is such a great song. The rocking instrumental breakdown in the middle is another odd meter. I don't know this one, but the way i would approach it is to learn that riff and lock it in with the drummer and then add the Phil type stuff later. From what I remember this section is a repetitive cycle. The riff repeats a couple of times and then it goes through a little chord progression back to the riff. Just take it in parts, focusing on the foundation of the song and then add all the other stuff.
Click to expand...

Thanks for that great advice. The drummer and I are both scratching our heads at these tunes. It helps a lot to think in terms of triplets - that will help us to stay together at points that make sense. I'll give this all a try and see how it goes. But if you or anyone else can come up with more ideas, I'd love to hear them. Thanks Again...
 
#7
When I played in a GD trib band years back, what I found to work well was to learn the basic feel / structure / foundation of what Phil was doing, and then improv the rest. IMHO that's what adds to the experience and sound of what they do. Part of what makes it is your ability to devolve / evovle in and through the tunes.

if you need to, sit, listen, and write out the structure and use it as a guide.

good luck!
 
#10
Phil's playing is wacky. He is really all over the place. We play NFA, GTRFB, & I Know you Rider. They are really easy chord progressions, but Phil just plays octave up and down and all around. On a side note i finally got his "Godfather" tone out of my Foundation of all things. Crazy.
 
#11
phil was originally a trumpet player so he plays allot of melodic bass lines. you have to get the basic structure of each song, and then the rest is improv on your part. some songs are hard to get the actual motive because he himself improvises very often but once you get em u can improvise around them yourself.
 
#12
Also on the Eleven.... I never figured out or heard a good example of it, but at somepoints during the '69 era they were trying ot include Indian phrasing and cycles. This probably overlly complicate things. They would stretch phrases out to be 64 beats or even longer, maybe even switch it up so that people are playing in different cycles. They would stetch it out, and then when occasionally the cycles would all come back on a strong down beat. I think they were doing this in the The Eleven and also Viola Lee. I read plenty of interviews where they talked about it, but in all my listening I never heard them do anything like this that was really tight and obviously indian influences, besides the Raga rave up in Viola Leef. Most of the time they just sound like they are just jamming.

I just listen the to Eleven again off of 2/11/69. He is just playing off the 3 chords, but it doesn't always play the root. Besides modulating the rhythm, Phil is essentially soloing over the chord progression. He is running counterpoint to Jerry's melody, but he isn't hitting the root until the phrase Jerry is playing completes. They start off together. Bobby appears to be playing the foundation. Phil might ascend with Jerry or might doe the opposite decend, but after the phrase starts, Phil isn't laying heavily on any down beats or roots. It is very counter melodic. Practice riffing Arpaggios in 11/8, constantly ascending the neck, using chord tones to avoid dropping down in pitch might be a good exercise to open up some ideas.


I am a Warren fan. Being a Warren fan it is hard for me to understand why people don't like him. I can understand not liking Gov't Mule. I have a love/hate relationship with that band. There are some nuggets in there.

Unfortunately I am not digging Bob Weir's sense of groove or Ratdogs groove. It is very slow and methodical. He is not bringing his rock start vibe to the show anymore I love Phil with Molo... or with just Billy. That is my favorite right there. John Kadelicik<?> is a great fit for this line-up. He has the same laid back feel that Bobby and ratdog are currently going for, which is very Jerry imo. This line-up is Ratdog heavy, so I am going in with an open mind. I really miss the Phil Lesh Quintet.
 
#13
Floridabwoy said:
I am hoping for some "Unbroken Chain" this weekend at Furthur in Orlando!
Click to expand...

Nice! I'm going to the show at Verizon Wireless up here in NH in a couple of weeks. Let me know how the show is. I'm pretty pumped. I haven't seen Phil in a few years.


Edit:

BTW my favorite version of The Eleven is from "Two From The Vault". Killer St. Stephen-->Eleven. :bassist:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_from_the_Vault
 
#14
Corporate Boy said:
I am a Warren fan. Being a Warren fan it is hard for me to understand why people don't like him. I can understand not liking Gov't Mule. I have a love/hate relationship with that band. There are some nuggets in there.
Click to expand...


Yeah... Warren is an awesome technical guitar player. No doubt about it. I like him with the Brothers. Not a Mule fan at all. I think it is cool the obscure cover's they come up with. But Warren just sounds bland to me with Mule. IMO, he just doesn't have the soul/feeling and expressiveness that Derek has, or Jimmy Herring, or Jeff Beck, or some other slide players have. That is just my opinion. I didn't like Herring w. The Dead either. When you hear Jerry for so many years, nothing else sounds right.
 
#15
I hear ya....

Check out the Unbroken Chain from Mountain Jam 2007.

Stream it from Archive
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The line up was Phil with Warren and Scofield.

The magic comes in the solo during the outro of the song. It might convince you of Warren's soulful playing on Dead material. Since they started regularly playing it live now, they added a nice solo at the end of song. I am not sure if it is over the verse chord progression or it's own progression, but it is now my favorite part of the song. At this show Warren nails. Incredible soulful playing. Got to love it.


To derail this thread more even more....

Here is my favorite example of Warren's souful voice with Phil and Friends doing Comes A Time at Merriweather in 2001.... I can say that he definitely catches the moment.

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I know Warren has some traits that turn people off. His edgy voice gets to me sometimes too. I just like throwing out some good examples to show he is not all bad.

The one thing I do love about the Dead now is that they are constantly evolving. Nothing stays the same, except maybe the songs. Even if you don't like one line-up, you can't write them off because the next tour will be completely different.
 

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