How To Play Bass to Cover Me By Bruce Springsteen

Hi, it's Paul from howtoplaybass.com here, a quick lesson for you on how to play the bass line to Cover Me by Bruce Springsteen. A nice easy bass line for beginners played by Gary Talent who has an act of producing these very effortless yet simple sounding bass lines that fit all of Springsteen’s songs. Go check out his work on the river if you want a master class in great rock bass lines in a big rock band concert. And the band at that time had drums, keyboards, two keyboards, two or three guitars, sax, layers of backing vocals and yet Gary Talent was able to fit into all that drive for tunes along placing creative stuff, some great tunes on that. And a quick word before we get started, if you are a beginner, the best way for you to make a quick and good forward progresses to take lessons. If you can't find a teacher near you, I do run a series of online bass lessons. They will be a link just to the left of this box on the video. I can guarantee that you’re watching this on. Head over there, have a look if it's something that might fit your particular needs, and then drop me an email and we will talk from there. Anyway, let’s go on with the lesson. I'm going to look at the first part of the lesson. The first part of the song is going to be the intro and the verse. [Demonstration] Okay so you just saw this little play through along with the original. I'm just going to play the intro first. We will do that. This is kind of a basic feel of the whole song. [Demonstration] Stop the metronome. So it's a fairly simple pattern but tat forms the basis of the verse figure. On that rhythm actually also forms the basis of what the kind of the bridge figure. So, the intro is just four bars in B minor— [Demonstration] And the notes are B, 2nd fret of the A string, A 5th fret of the E string, D 5th fret of the A string, back to A 5th fret of the A string again— [Demonstration] That’s pretty simple but it's as I say that rhythm— [Demonstration] Forms the basis of what comes next. We will go to the first, that’s the kind of the verse, I've learned the verse and the chorus section comes together so you get a longer pattern. Here it is. [Demonstration] Okay and you’ve heard in that pattern or in that section— [Demonstration] That bar features predominant lay there, the pattern we looked at from the intro. And the first time it varies from that is in the 4th bar of the verse. So we got three bars playing— [Demonstration] The 4th bar goes— [Demonstration] So it's— [Demonstration] What you’ve got instead of going back to the A for the last quarter note of the bar, you go back to the As in 8th note and then string back to the D so you hit—approach note to the next chord which is an E chord— [Demonstration] So tat’s again A and D 5th frets of the E string and the A string respectively. The next two bars— [Demonstration] Just a simple variation of the pattern but this time in E. E is the 7th fret of the A string— [Demonstration] Down to B 7th fret of the E string— [Demonstration] D 5th fret of the A string— [Demonstration] Two bars of that— [Demonstration] And back down to the bar in B again— [Demonstration] Okay in that bar leading into what you could consider the chorus where the lyric is da, da, da cover me— [Demonstration] B— A— [Demonstration] D— [Demonstration] A— [Demonstration] D— [Demonstration] E— [Demonstration] All those notes we’ve done before but B 7th fret of the E string— [Demonstration] A 5th fret of the E string— [Demonstration] D 5th fret of the A string— [Demonstration] Back to A 5th fret of the E string— [Demonstration] Back to D 5th fret of the A string— [Demonstration] Up to E 7th fret of the A string— [Demonstration] So that pattern— [Demonstration] Then you’ve got a bar on G— [Demonstration] Which is the 5th fret of the D string then up to 7th fret of the S string A— [Demonstration] Down to the octave below, 5th fret of the E string and then back to a basic pattern— [Demonstration] That’s quite a long section there. But if you rewind the tape, rewind the video you'll be able to work it through section by section. It's pretty straight forward. After that verse, there is another verse and then we go to the bridge— [Demonstration] Okay the bridge is the section on the lyrics outside the rain, the driving snow. Here is how it sounds with the metronome slightly slowed down— [Demonstration] Okay, let’s look at those notes. First two bars— [Demonstration] And unless we’re using very similar rhythmic pattern as well, again kind of like axis of theme through the song. And notes, we’re using an E 7th fret of the A string— [Demonstration] B 7th fret of the E string— [Demonstration] And D again 5th fret of the A string— [Demonstration] So it's E— [Demonstration] E— [Demonstration] B— [Demonstration] D— [Demonstration] B— [Demonstration] E— [Demonstration] E— [Demonstration] B— [Demonstration] D— [Demonstration] Then you need to shift down— [Demonstration] And those two bars are B 2nd fret of the A string— [Demonstration] B— [Demonstration] F# 2nd fret of the E string— [Demonstration] Open A— [Demonstration] B— Open A— [Demonstration] Open A— [Demonstration] B— [Demonstration] So I'll just play them again— [Demonstration] You go back to E— [Demonstration] Beat like that— [Demonstration] And then you’ve got a bar of F# at the 4th fret of the D string— [Demonstration] And you drop down to the octave below that 2nd fret of the E string— [Demonstration] And then you’ve got a little— [Demonstration] Lead back to the verse which is F# which is 2nd fret of the E string— [Demonstration] Open E— [Demonstration] F#-- [Demonstration] A 5th fret of the E string— So just play those last four bars again— [Demonstration] Okay and that’s the bridge.