Queen: Crazy Little Thing Called Love bass

[rylie]

Queen Bass player, John Deacon, recorded a now classic bass line to Crazy Little Thing Called Love. YouTube has several demos of how the bass part works. I'm asking TB players who have learned it, to share the method or source that best explained or demonstrated how to learn the bass part...thanks.

 

[Jeff Scott]

Queen Bass player, John Deacon, recorded a now classic bass line to Crazy Little Thing Called Love. YouTube has several demos of how the bass part works. I'm asking TB players who have learned it, to share the method or source that best explained or demonstrated how to learn the bass part...thanks.

I did that song in an old band years ago. To learn it I just used my ears and a bit of Transcribe!

 

[staurosjohn]

Dang… Flashback… I, last, played it in 1980 I think IIRC I just kept picking the needle up on my turntable - and going over it - again & again & again… (sry - not much help…)

 

[Michedelic]

Queen Bass player, John Deacon, recorded a now classic bass line to Crazy Little Thing Called Love. YouTube has several demos of how the bass part works. I'm asking TB players who have learned it, to share the method or source that best explained or demonstrated how to learn the bass part...thanks.

Just use your ears; there’s nothing that difficult, it’s just a collection of stock traditional lines.

 

[Jeff Scott]

Link to Transcribe!

Transcribe! - software to help transcribe recorded music

 

[pmatz2]

did you look at this ?

Bass Transcription: Queen - 'Crazy Little Thing Called Love'

 

[mutethatguitar]

If I remember the song correctly it is a great straight- ahead primer of a standard blues bass line. Learning to play this will open up any bass players ears to playing great swinging blues lines that you [and I still] can use playing blues / rock even jazz.

 

[ThinCrappyTone2]

Queen Bass player, John Deacon, recorded a now classic bass line to Crazy Little Thing Called Love. YouTube has several demos of how the bass part works. I'm asking TB players who have learned it, to share the method or source that best explained or demonstrated how to learn the bass part...thanks.

My band plays it. I learned it using this video/tab

 

[lark_z]

The transcription in this book seems to be spot on.

Bass Tab White Pages - Bass Recorded Versions Hal Leonard Online

 

[Marley's Ghost]

Funny I just learned this for my new band. It took me a while to commit to memory.

What I do is use Amazing Slow Downer and chop it up into parts. Then work on each part.

This is done by selecting the part using Start Pt and End Pt and Save As>Wav file and convert to MP3.

 

[Cave Puppy]

Ears, baby, ears. Play it over and over. And over. The only note I couldn’t get by ear is that F (hot and cold fever, cold cold sweat or whatever … ) right before turnaround. I had to cheat and look up bass cover vids for it. I only cheat like that when I’m stuck and pressed for time.

 

[Ric5]

that song is a variation of a walking blues line ... get the feel and get the key and get the timing and get most of the notes right and you are there.

 

[Ric5]

I use Invalid Link Removed to learn new songs.

they are not 100% correct but I gets you in the ball park

 

[subtlestew]

The transcription in this book seems to be spot on.

Bass Tab White Pages - Bass Recorded Versions Hal Leonard Online

I learned it using this book as well. I also have [Invalid or Expired Link Removed] of everything Queen ever recorded, which is amazing if you want to do a deeper dive. I have been using it as I work on sight reading, as it has both tab and standard notation (including pages with no tabs so you can't cheat!)

 

[dalkowski]

Ears, baby, ears. Play it over and over. And over.

Yeah, CLTCL isn't rocket surgery. A fun number and a great way to overcome fear of walking.

 

[bassdude51]

Learned it by ear off of an Lp..........a long, long, long time ago.

I'm not all that gifted on bass but I remember that the bass line wasn't difficult for me to learn.

I should search my memory banks and see if I can still play it. Been decades.

 

[john_g]

We had it in our setlist for a long time and just put it in the "extras" to give it a rest for a bit, but, I learned it mostly by ear...I think i found the isolated bass track on YT too (*think* it was the original) and that helped in the guitar solo section too.



And heres a good tutorial too:

 

[jacko]

I learned this not long after the album came out in 1980. We didn't have such things as Transcribe or Ultimate guitar tabs. Hell, we didn't even have home computers, never mind the internet. The lucky ones had a cassette recorder they could wind back and forward. I had a turntable and had to keep lifting the needle off.
Once you have the basics for this song it's pretty simple to play - just like most of Deacon's basslines but he thought of them first - that's why he's revered!

 

[bherman]

did you look at this ?

Bass Transcription: Queen - 'Crazy Little Thing Called Love'

This is a great example of why it’s important to be able to read music, the transcription is well done, and it would take me hours to figure this out as a tab!

 

[Artman]

Just like @jacko , just totally by ear. Didn’t have home computers much less an internet yet back then. Just a lot of ear training.

Today, you can use software such as Riffstation (there is still a download site for it somewhere) for Windows or Mac to slow it down without changing the pitch. That comes in really handy for working your ear training. Riffstation even allows you to tune the track up or down. There are other apps that can do this as well.

Wish I would have had that back in the day. Could have saved all that time spent carefully lifting and re-setting the tone arm on that record player and ffwding and rwnding tapes until I found the right spot.