Whats the hardest bassline you've ever played?

[Dood]

[quote name='uptonmark' post='189964' date='May 1 2008, 08:21 PM']another one bites the dust sounds like that bas(s)tard john deacon stole it from the legendary bernard edwards... [b]"good times"[/b] [/quote]


more imitation being form of flattery. I understand they were both in the same studio at the time ;o)

[s_u_y_*]

[quote name='Rich' post='189687' date='May 1 2008, 01:04 PM']Rhythm Stick, it really is a git at first.[/quote]

It's still a git for me. I always work on it and get it almost right, but come back to it and I lose it. I've let my chops fall off by the wayside these past weeks. Hopefully this summer, this will be one line to get completely down.

[Hot Tub]

Probably not a particularly "hard" bassline, but I learned the whole of [i]Hemispheres [/i]just from listening to it. It took a loooooong time to get it right. Haven't played it for years and I don't have the album anymore, but I reckon it would come back fairly quickly if I put my mind to it.

[Welshbassist]

Viridian by Between The Buried and Me - what a song!

[Mr Fudge]

Ahhhh ... Mr Astronomer ..... I often pick my bass up unplugged in front of the telly. Kids in bed and missus asleep on the sofa and just dabble with a bit of Rush. Rush bass lines are great to learn. Years later you sit and play one you sorted years ago and it's a pleasure all over again. In the last few weeks I've had a bit of a signals and GUP renaissance. You learn the chops, practice and eventually after regular playing forget them but inevitably you will pick up a few little moves that stay with your playing forever and then you turn it into something of your own .... I found myself playing those opening harmonics to hemispheres on a toy piano in woolworths the other day. I only ever tried a fretless once and thought the camera eye would be an acid test.

[FJ1200]

I find just about ANYTHING difficult these days. Having not played properly in - oh - a couple of decades - it's taking me a lot of time and a LOT of frustration! But I'm gettin' there...

[Adrenochrome]

There's very little covers music that I struggle with once I work out the best position(s) to play it in.
The only stuff I've ever REALLY struggled with was doubling some guitar riffs in one of my old metal bands; the riffs were really fast and though I could play them but I had trouble with the fast hammer-ons causing the strings to bounce all over the place, especially when played against pedalled open strings.

[jakenewmanbass]

The hardest tunes I played are numbers five and six on my myspace page.
It was my first album session, which made it 'the hardest'. I dare say I've played trickier parts since but the fact that this was recorded FOR EVER makes it feel 'hardest' in relative terms

[chaypup]

[quote name='garbev' timestamp='1209590502' post='189307']
Any Motown featuring Mr Jamerson, may sound like
a 'nice' part to start, but delve deeper and play it
as the record and.....ulp.

Oh yeh 'only so much oil in the ground', Tower of Power
(10 minute version), solo from start to end.

Gary.
[/quote]

Thread from the dead but I have to learn this for a new band and MAN it's a workout!
Although, thankfully, not that hard to work out what to play.

[Highfox]

I have only played a few covers live and always try to put my own twist on them and never anything too demanding.

For some reason I seem to struggle more with slow tempo ballad type songs .. even our own.
Trying to be tasteful on what and what not to play, as well as dropping in and out, the amount of space you have to experiment with and how bad you can sound getting it wrong lol.

[Bilbo]

'One Song' from Karl Jenkins' The Peacemakers. It was Laurence Cottle on the original recording. I had 6 weeks to learn it and didn't quite cut it on the night (with a 14 piece orchestra and 60 piece choir). Cottle [i]read[/i] it cold.

[cheddatom]

repetition is what gets me. I can play bass all day long if I'm playing what I want. I play drums in a reggae band, and the bassist plays extremely repetitive lines. I tried it one time and my hands were killing me! The same bassline over and over for 5 minutes just seems to cramp my left hand

[SpaceChick]

[quote name='Bilbo' timestamp='1423152679' post='2681511']
'One Song' from Karl Jenkins' The Peacemakers. It was Laurence Cottle on the original recording. I had 6 weeks to learn it and didn't quite cut it on the night (with a 14 piece orchestra and 60 piece choir). Cottle [i]read[/i] it cold.
[/quote]

Cottle is a legend!!

I had a spell with a metal band and anything Iron Maiden was pretty darn challenging!!

Quite enjoy the simpler pace of life with Welsh Floyd! My biggest challenges of an evening are Time and Money (that sounds quite funny... I do have time to play and I do get paid money ) both are easy basslines really speaking, they are just an endurance test as they stretch your fingers and my little finger on my fretting hand gets put to work more than usual

[leschirons]

Just to humour a guitarist we were playing with ages ago, we all agreed to have a go at Stressfest by Steve Morse. I knew of the track but had never played it. Drummer had never heard of it but we decided to give it a go to teach the guitarist a lesson as we were convinced he was living in dreamland.

It took me nearly two months to get somewhere near and the drummer was spitting feathers by the time he'd got anywhere close.

Turns out the guitarist really could play it and we got through the whole song a couple of times. We never gigged it but ended up with a little egg - on faces to say the least. I should really try it again now and then and play along to the CD as it's a real work out.

[Nicko]

Generally I can overcome the physical problems when playing covers as long as I devote enough time to it (as long as theres no slapping involved). What I find most difficult is internalising the bass line where it appears to be rhytmically random (like You Oughta Know - not too difficult technically but took me sooooooo long to get your hear around playing notes in the right place) or is difficult to hear properly in the mix (like old Stones numbers). Maybe our setlist is too easy on me. Neither Alanis nor the Stones features btw.

[tom5string]

"Face the face" from Townshends White City album. Dont know who's the original bass player - I doubt that it's Pino.
Anyway - I just managed twice to get through the whole song. These shuffled 16th are right away too fast for me :-)

[pfonck334]

U2 "with or without you" ;-)

[Norris]

The Edgar Winter Band - Frankenstein. It's a doddle now but took many hours to nail it

[Rodders]

I Want You Back - Jackson 5.

The notes you can get down pretty quickly, but the feel is much harder to get when it comes to playing it with a band.

[NancyJohnson]

I think it was something by Adam Clayton, only because it was so difficult to stop myself doing something interesting.*

[NancyJohnson]

*I was being ironic. I would never play anything by U2.

[BassistInTheNorth]

[quote name='Bilbo' timestamp='1423152679' post='2681511']
'One Song' from Karl Jenkins' The Peacemakers. It was Laurence Cottle on the original recording. I had 6 weeks to learn it and didn't quite cut it on the night (with a 14 piece orchestra and 60 piece choir). Cottle [i]read[/i] it cold.
[/quote]

Saw Laurence Cottle with the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra doing a tribute to Jaco Pastorius. Absolutely phenomenal player.

[fretmeister]

Colorado Bulldog.

Took me frakking ages to get that right.

[ubit]

TNT by AC/DC!








Ok, just joking, but any of Geddys stuff just does my head in. Dig by Mudvayne is a bugger too!

[Delberthot]

[quote name='Rodders' timestamp='1423162793' post='2681685']
I Want You Back - Jackson 5.

The notes you can get down pretty quickly, but the feel is much harder to get when it comes to playing it with a band.
[/quote]

This is one of the few songs that I've gone on Youtube and watched someone play along to it to get the notes.

Another song I have just learned is Footloose played by one of my all time favourite bass players, Nathan East. I had played it for years but no where near the original and I wanted to learn it properly with the new band I have recently joined so I found the Youtube video below. If you go to the guy's website he has even transcribed it so I was able to read the part rather than keep stopping and starting the clip to get the correct notes.

[media]http://youtu.be/-QCJAvmJITc[/media]

This is undoubtably the most difficult bass line I have ever had to play just because it is a relentless barrage of notes and one fumble has you galloping up diarrhea drive without a saddle

Edited February 5, 2015 by Delberthot