BassChat 50 must know bass riffs!

[Bikenbass]

Fever - Peggy Lee - Am - (I think)

My Generation - The Ox - G to C and a couple on the way.

[steve-bbb]

...and this

Play it on auto-pilot and whatever you do don't try and count it

http://youtu.be/ASoUUKzgCG0

[ColinB]

Rescue Me - Fontella Bass
Bend Me, Shape Me - Amen Corner

Edited August 15, 2015 by ColinB

[Rich]

[quote name='chris_b' timestamp='1439631912' post='2844504']
I think we need 3 lists. . . . Need To Know, Nice To Know and You're Kidding, Right?
[/quote]

[juliusmonk]

Beat it - M. Jackson
Let's work - Prince
True believers - Level 42
Detroit - M. Miller
Barbarism begins at home - The Smiths
Buena - Morphine

So many...

[Hobbayne]

The very simple but very famous bass line in 'Radar Love' is also up there, but the unison guitar/bass middle 8 is not compulsary.

[JTUK]

[quote name='Hobbayne' timestamp='1440250387' post='2849364']
The very simple but very famous bass line in 'Radar Love' is also up there, but the unison guitar/bass middle 8 is not compulsary.
[/quote]

I think you'll find any gtr that plays that will make it so...

[Lloyd P]

Canned Heat - Jamiroquai (Stuart Zender on bass)

[Bass Lady]

Heart Of The Sunrise - Chris Squires - Yes

[tauzero]

[quote name='Hobbayne' timestamp='1440250387' post='2849364']
The very simple but very famous bass line in 'Radar Love' is also up there, but the unison guitar/bass middle 8 is not compulsary.
[/quote]

It's also not unison. As I had to point out to my previous guitarist...

I could, of course have missed your point

[TKenrick]

If these haven't already made it in...

Roy Ayers: Running Away (because without it Jamiroquai wouldn't have 'Runaway'...)
[media]http://youtu.be/q1zm1-HpW0A[/media]

Joe Tex - I Gotcha
[media]http://youtu.be/qDEZQxg2TSM[/media]

Pleasure - Glide (normally not a slap fan but this is the exception)
[media]http://youtu.be/3q3PsoWbW9I[/media]

[Stealth]

The Stealer. Free
Thorazine Shuffle. Goverment Mule (awesome gritty bas tone)
Carry on my wayward son. Kansas
Highway Star. Deep Purple
Aeroplne. RHCP

[TimR]

[quote name='dood' timestamp='1439581379' post='2844230']
...

This post is more about single riffs for everyone from complete beginner to advanced playing, I think anyway!
[/quote]

That's what I thought when I read the first post but reading the replies, that's far from what has been posted

I was expecting tunes like:
Another one bites the dust
The Chain
Superstition (The keys part everyone plays on bass )
Money

To name but a few. A riff is a repeating motif that the song is based on.

Isn't it?

[ras52]

[quote name='Bilbo' timestamp='1439546678' post='2843713']
Air on a G-String - Bach
[/quote]
[quote name='Leonard Smalls' timestamp='1439562427' post='2843954']
I once played a gig [i]wearing[/i] a G-string and baby doll nightie...
[/quote]

Also known as - for the benefit of our older readers - the Hamlet cigar tune!


[i]Off-topic edit: if you want more "air" on your G-string, you could try one of those new cabs that goes up to 50KHz...[/i]

Edited August 24, 2015 by ras52

[TimR]

Billie Jean.

[Dood]

[quote name='TimR' timestamp='1440406090' post='2850303']
That's what I thought when I read the first post but reading the replies, that's far from what has been posted

I was expecting tunes like:
Another one bites the dust
The Chain
Superstition (The keys part everyone plays on bass )
Money

To name but a few. A riff is a repeating motif that the song is based on.

Isn't it?
[/quote]

I was intending that the list should be just well known riffs rather than whole songs yes!! The ones you mention are for sure right at the top of the need to know list TimR!!

Edited August 24, 2015 by dood

[2elliot]

Phantom of the Opera - Iron Maiden
Black Dog - Led Zep
Love Cats - The Cure

[lowdown]

It's actually making me feel sick posting this....but...
'Sunshine Of Your Love'.

Back in the day, a music shop wasn't a music shop,
unless some shop worker was sitting on top of a combo,
banging it out loudly as you walked in, and straight out again.

[BigRedX]

[quote name='dood' timestamp='1439398017' post='2842486']
Let's have a list of (at least) 50 'must know' bass lines to learn.
[/quote]

I really can't see the point of learning something you don't have any need to actually play it.

I'd sooner be writing some of my own. Far more interesting and productive.

[lojo]

[quote name='lowdown' timestamp='1440503409' post='2851294']
It's actually making me feel sick posting this....but...
'Sunshine Of Your Love'.
[/quote]

I think there are a lot of gigging middle aged self taught musicians who's first knowledge of playing came through playing riffs like that.

[lowdown]

[quote name='lojo' timestamp='1440520799' post='2851531']
I think there are a lot of gigging middle aged self taught musicians who's first knowledge of playing came through playing riffs like that.
[/quote]

No doubt about it.

[Left Foot]

Great thread! As a self taught player of some 14 odd years I think my techniques are 'ok' but my music theory is awful. Plus I only know a few songs that ive bothered to learn by ear... Im deffinitely at the point where I wouldnt see learning others lines as a waste of time and this thread will head me in right direction.

suggestion: Could people stipulate the tuning for each song too as I would like go go back to the 'normal' tuning of E,A,D,G so would choose songs in that set up. Just a thought.

Edited August 26, 2015 by Left Foot

[Chezz55]

Very interesting reading - sorry I can't advise modes (?) but my 'Must Know Bass Lines' would include.


The Pilgrim - Wishbone Ash (Martin Turner)

FUBB -Wishbone Ash (Martin Turner)

School Days - Stanley Clarke

Had To Cry Today - Joe Bonnamassa (Eric Czar)

Let It Roll - Little Feat (Kenny Gradney)

Cadillac Hotel - Little Feat (Kenny Gradney)

Enjoy

[Dood]

[quote name='BigRedX' timestamp='1440505433' post='2851317']
I really can't see the point of learning something you don't have any need to actually play it.

I'd sooner be writing some of my own. Far more interesting and productive.
[/quote]

Maybe I can help you then! - Take yourself back to when you first started learning to play the instrument. What did you do? You mimicked the songs you loved - you started learning those first riffs and mastered the first few notes around the bass neck. Using riffs is a great help for students. The reason I also suggested making a note of what scale or for example mode a riff is in or uses is very helpful. A student can begin to understand what a particular scale sounds like or indeed looks like on the bass neck.

To put it another way - and I do like a good analogy... When you were born, how did you learn to speak? Yes, you mimicked those around you - learned words, phrases, facial expressions from those who already 'had that down'. You only learned to read and write after that.

Using that knowledge you have an even greater understanding that will enable you to create your own bass lines.

For me, saying that there's no need to learn something (a riff) if you don't need to use it, is a bit like saying "I don't need to know what all those other words mean, I only use these ones." Doesn't that strike you as a strange thing to say?

Edited August 26, 2015 by dood

[BigRedX]

[quote name='dood' timestamp='1440582003' post='2852069']
Maybe I can help you then! - Take yourself back to when you first started learning to play the instrument. What did you do? You mimicked the songs you loved - you started learning those first riffs and mastered the first few notes around the bass neck. Using riffs is a great help for students. The reason I also suggested making a note of what scale or for example mode a riff is in or uses is very helpful. A student can begin to understand what a particular scale sounds like or indeed looks like on the bass neck.[/quote]

Well it's over 40 years since I first started learning to play the guitar and so my memories of the time are a little hazy...

But what I do remember is that my main goal for learning to play was so I could write my own songs and preform them in a band. Obviously I learnt the guitar by playing other people's songs but not in the way I see described here - painstakingly picking out the relevant musical lines and reproducing them. I had the sheet music and songbooks for some bands that I liked, and had learnt how to strum my way through the chord progressions for the songs that I knew. A school friend showed me the blues pentatonic scale and as far a I was concerned that was pretty much everything I needed to start writing my own songs.

Occasionally when I was working on an idea I might find myself playing something that sounded like another song and sometimes I would take a 5-10 minute detour to work out a bit more from what I remembered, but it was never anything more than a distraction, and often when I compared what I had come up with against the "original" the two only had the most basic bits in common.

At the time when I started playing there was a big debate in the music press about the merits of popular bands who didn't write their own songs and how they were in some way inferior, which made me and the school friends I formed my first band with all the more determined that we were only going to play and record songs that we had written ourselves.

Also it was very difficult to sound like your heroes when your instrument was a cheap acoustic guitar fitted with a pickup going through a home-made fuzz box into a transistor amp, and not a Strat or Les Paul into a Marshall stack, so on the few occasions when I did copy someone else's riff, the results sounded so different that my band quickly made up our own musical vocabulary the suit the instruments and equipment we had at or disposal.

By the time I had managed to acquire some proper gear and my first bass it was well into the post-punk era when literally anything went and my unconventional techniques for playing and writing were most definitely an advantage when it came to the bands I was in getting noticed. Listening back to those early recordings I can barely hear the influences of the music I was listening to in the music I was playing. For me there has always been a disconnect between the two, although there have been times when the two have been closer together than they were when I was first starting out.

The other thing was that for the first 20 years of being in bands I nearly always played with people who had learnt in very much the same way that I had, so it wasn't until I started spending time on forums like this one that I realised that my musical development appeared to have followed a quite different path to that of most musicians.