Victor Wooten & Amazing Grace help

[Tony Canevaro]

So I was noodling around my bass the other night and played the high octave D on the D string then the same thing on the G string and it sounded like the amazing grace I hear Victor play. Trouble, is I can't figure out the rest of song...too fast and my ear is still very new and very bad. Anyone else play this or something similar? Victor's version is likely far to advanced for me right now but I would like to try and play a simple version of this song...one of my all time favorite songs.

What I need to figure is the note progression in the pieve but can't quite get it yet. If someone could help get a handle on this I would appreciate it.

 

[Bruce Lindfield]

There was a complete transcription in Bass Player magazine recently....?

 

[dirtgroove]

It's not too advanced. You just have to think of it as playing another instrument- or an instrument with different interval spacing.

play around with the harmonics from the seventh fret down to the 4th (I think- can't remember off the top of my head). You should be able to find all of the notes he hits on you d and g strings- with the exception of one that is over on the a.

PS- Once you've gotten over the initial Wow- "look at all these notes that I didn't know were there" factor (like me) you'll probably hate yourself for even bothering to figure it out.(like me)
PPS You'll probably also get banned from any shops you go into if you dare play this on one of their basses.

 

[TaySte_2000]

Theres a tab in the tab section thats pretty good to get started on.

Hope this helps if not there is a Victor Wooten book out that he wrote. I've got it and amazing grace is very well transcribed.

 

[Mike Flynn]

I worked it out in two stages really - firts the slow rubato bit - which isn't too bad but the really tricky part is the groove part. I worked on the feel of that minus the harmonics then added them in gradually - the real key is to make it groove and make it sound as natural as possible - and yeah, it's quite hard to do that well. AS for the really fast bit - I can do that quite easily but Vic varies that so much from performance to performance that there's a variety of ways to play that - but all in all you have your work cut out - sorry!

 

[Tony Canevaro]

OK Dumb new guy question here. I had a look at an amazing grace tab on another site...it was Jaco's and talked about harmonics...then I read the replies to this thread and several of you have mentioned harmonics as well.

What the heck are harmonics?

 

[Tony Canevaro]

...I would like to try and play a simple version of this song...one of my all time favorite songs.

What I need to figure is the note progression in the pieve but can't quite get it yet. If someone could help get a handle on this I would appreciate it.

How about tips on just plain old Amazing Grace?

 

[Groove_Master]

btw he played amazing grace on his bass which is tuned (up to down) ADGC
and i couldnt get how his he doing the dead note stuff in the groove part?

 

[bill_banwell]

OK Dumb new guy question here. I had a look at an amazing grace tab on another site...it was Jaco's and talked about harmonics...then I read the replies to this thread and several of you have mentioned harmonics as well.

What the heck are harmonics?

there bell like tones that can be found on a bass guitar and a standard guitar, check out portrait of tracy by jaco pastorius, thats full of harmonics, go to, http://www.cyberfretbass.com for lessons on how too learn harmonics..

 

[cgworkman]

btw he played amazing grace on his bass which is tuned (up to down) ADGC

No he's not - his bass isn't tuned to anything but EADG. I have his TAB book and it plainly says that he's using a standard tuning of EADG.

 

[i like tictacs]

He uses C#ADG on Flight of the Cosmic Hippo...

 

[cgworkman]

He uses C#ADG on Flight of the Cosmic Hippo...

There you go!

 

[Danksalot]

I've seen Vic play this song on his tenor bass (ADGC) [Flecktones Live at the Quick] and the regular one (EADG) [Bass Day '98], so you're both right. No need to argue.