Paul Wolfe: Hi it is Paul Wolfe from How-To-Play-Bass.com. Lesson here for beginners on how to play the bass line to "Bad" by Micheal Jackson. And a just a quick note before we get started, if you are a beginner, one of the quickest ways for you to learn and progress faster is to take lessons. Depending on your situation you may not have access to teacher near you or you may live out in the sticks and getting to a teacher might be bit of a chore and drive of an hour and more. And if that's the case, an alternative might be my song based online bass lessons.
There will be a link just down there to the left on the YouTube page. So click on that, if you think that might be of interest. Go and have a look at the page. See what you think and if you think it might be a good fit, then drop me an email from the contact form on the website may be we can hook up. Anyway let's move on to "Bad" by Michael Jackson.
Okay let's start by looking at the main riff. Got my metronome on my test com based trainer set to 90. So, it's a bit slow than the actual song which is around the 115 mark. There is the main two bar pattern that repeats through the bulk of the song. Here it is. One, two, three, four. Okay and it's actually pretty simple. It's a A minor pentatonic scale. If you don't know the A minor pentatonic scale, you are about to, but don't worry. So the notes are, A it's the fifth fret of E sting, C the eighth fret of the E sting, B fifth fret of the A string, D sharp sixth fret of the A string, and A seventh fret of the A strings. So you go.
So that rhythmic pattern, you can pick it up from the record from what I am playing. Okay, so that pattern is really important to nail and get down because, its in the bulk of the song and its also kind of a pace with minor variations in the chorus as well, which we will go on and look at look out in just a moment.
Okay, prior to the chorus is a full bar section, a pre chorus and I play it with the 0:04:18.0 top two notes; three, four. Okay, so its starts off and you got a almost a it's kind of a Latin rhythm pattern. And there is note B which is the seventh fret of your E string, D which is the fifth fret of your A string, C sharp which is the fourth fret of your A string. And then plays that pattern three times. Then you've got a fill before you come into the chorus and the fill is, so open E string, open E string, open E string. Then you've got A, there is why you could do this. This was set to bass originally, possibly down on the pitch wave. You could, the notes, I am sorry the notes D, E flat and back to D which is the fifth and sixth frets eighth string. Few ways you could do it, you could hammer in, pull it off. You could bend it up and back or you could do what I choose to do, which is slide up one fret and slide back down one fret. Then it goes to C to complete the phrase which is the eighth fret of the E string.
So the other thing you'll notice I am doing, is when I am playing the open Es, I am then muting them with my left hand to give them to them maximum rather than having them bring out. So, that's the pre chorus and from there obviously it goes into the chorus itself.
Okay, the chorus that I mentioned I am going and I am playing through it. One, two, three, four. Okay, so the first part of the chorus is identical to the first part of the verse riff A, C, G, G sharply. Second bar is like a variation of that. Its starts off the same, but then you have got that patterns. So you got A,C then D and then you are playing D you are playing eighth notes playing D and C. So the second bar is A, C, which are the fifth and the eighth frets of the E string and then you are playing D at the fifth fret of the A string back to C eighth fret of the E string. You are playing that twice. So full bar again. A, C, D, C, D, C.
Okay, the third bar of the chorus is again the pattern you already know. Then we've got another fill on the fourth bar. Okay and that slide fill is identical to the slide you looked to in the pre chorus, but the first note is slightly different and you got A again fifth fret of E string C, eighth fret of E string D,D, E flat back to D, C. So, very slowly A, C, D, D, E flat, D, C.
So that slide will do if you are a beginner will possibly be the hardest thing to get going first. So just practice the bars with the slide. Just practice them slowly until you've got that before you try and build everything together. Okay, that's the first bars of the chorus. The second four bars are pretty straight forward, the fifth and sixth are like the first two. The seventh bar, again identical and then the eighth bar which is the last bar out is A, C and then there is a little anticipated stop on the D note. If you listen to the original, you should be able to work that out.
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