My second bass guitar has been sitting lonely in the corner not getting much playing recently. It's a white Squire P-Bass I bought second-hand in 2010 from a Games shop. I fitted it right away with a silky smooth and fat, new "Jamerson set" of LaBella 0760M .052-.110 Stainless Stell Flat Wounds (a wonderful birthday present from my son Bill). Trouble was these flatwounds on this bass were tight as hell and though the action is fairly low - as someone said (I think it was about Jamerson's very high action) you'd need a friend to play a B♭! The bass was pretty unplayable. sadly, so it sat on it's stand looking unloved and I felt guilty not playing it. Now and again I'd pick it up to see if I could play some simple Motown (Jamerson) line and after a few mins it was pretty impossible so I would put it back down, *sigh*.....
.....until, I was rooting around for extra stuff on Move Me No Mountain (Chaka Khan, Naughty album from 1980, with Anthony "AJ" Jackson on bass) and found this very cool jam by fjord76 on YouTube. There he talks about flatwounds and AJ detuned his bass down from standard E/A/D/G to C/F/B♭/E♭. I gave it a go and - wow! - the relaxed strings suddenly became easy to play and they sounded great! Even better was that because they are new and therefore unstretched, they're not loose in detuned mode (at least for these 4 semi-tones down) and so there is no discernable fret buzz.
Not only do I get to play my P-bass now, but also get to play MMNM without having to resort to getting a 5-string! Maybe I can get by with this setup for other songs too that need deep notes? I'll see. Will be pretty cool to play gigs with my standard E/A/D/G Jazz bass (it's copy by AXL) and my C/F/B♭/E♭ P-bass. Any enough talk, back to learn the tune! Incidentally thanks to Stevie Glasgow for his great transcription and analysis of Anthony Jackson's bassline on Move Me No Mountain, it's been a really great help. Stevie is a pro with a strong music background, neither of which I am or have, but he and others who share their transcriptions are inspiring me to write my own transcriptions at some point soon (Aretha Franklin's "Say a Little Prayer" is one I can't find a transcription for but have pretty much worked out how to play and doesn't look hard to write). Also I'm going to write down the songs I've learned the basslines of, as I go along, to help me remember and for folks to see e.g. depping cover bands, jamming or whatever - but that's for another post ;-)
.....until, I was rooting around for extra stuff on Move Me No Mountain (Chaka Khan, Naughty album from 1980, with Anthony "AJ" Jackson on bass) and found this very cool jam by fjord76 on YouTube. There he talks about flatwounds and AJ detuned his bass down from standard E/A/D/G to C/F/B♭/E♭. I gave it a go and - wow! - the relaxed strings suddenly became easy to play and they sounded great! Even better was that because they are new and therefore unstretched, they're not loose in detuned mode (at least for these 4 semi-tones down) and so there is no discernable fret buzz.
Not only do I get to play my P-bass now, but also get to play MMNM without having to resort to getting a 5-string! Maybe I can get by with this setup for other songs too that need deep notes? I'll see. Will be pretty cool to play gigs with my standard E/A/D/G Jazz bass (it's copy by AXL) and my C/F/B♭/E♭ P-bass. Any enough talk, back to learn the tune! Incidentally thanks to Stevie Glasgow for his great transcription and analysis of Anthony Jackson's bassline on Move Me No Mountain, it's been a really great help. Stevie is a pro with a strong music background, neither of which I am or have, but he and others who share their transcriptions are inspiring me to write my own transcriptions at some point soon (Aretha Franklin's "Say a Little Prayer" is one I can't find a transcription for but have pretty much worked out how to play and doesn't look hard to write). Also I'm going to write down the songs I've learned the basslines of, as I go along, to help me remember and for folks to see e.g. depping cover bands, jamming or whatever - but that's for another post ;-)
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Kiat