It’s Paul from how-to-play-bass.com here. This lesson is going to be a lesson on how you get through Light my Fire by The Doors, classic rock tune, it’s tune I gigged a lot in the 90s and earlier into 2000, almost playing the Rock’n Chair, great tune to play. If you’re not been a fairy, it’s a good application of major and minor triads. If you’re don’t, don’t worry about that. At some stage when you look at theory, you’ll picked that up and you’ll be unable to come back to this, have a look and see how those triads apply through a natural real life bass line.
It’s not too complex or too difficult. So if you’ve been playing for a bit, you should be able to get this on to your fingers without too much difficulty. Don’t forget to head over to the website and sign up for the Ezine. If you’re already subscribed, you get a free—every week there’s an Ezine and there’s a free bass line that goes with it. So let’s get on with the lesson. Let’s start over the intro.
[Music Playing]
Okay, the intro to Light my Fire consists of a series of descending major triads. If you don’t know what a major triad is, don’t worry about. I’ll go through the notes in a second. Play it through with the metronome then we’ll talk about the notes. Bear in mind, the metronome is set slightly slowly.
[Demonstration]
Okay, so that was the intersection, let’s look at the notes. Starts out on G, just here, the 10th fret of the A string. And it’s [Demonstration], and the successive two notes of B, which is the 9th fret of the D string and D which is the 12th fret of the D string. And the rhythm all the way through this section is pretty much [Demonstration] which is a quarter note followed by 2/8 note, so it should be easy to count and work out what that rhythm is.
Okay, so the first one just looked that with G, B and D. Then next triad goes down to the D, which is the 10th fret of the E string and then we’ve got F# and A. They’re on the A string, F# is fretted here, the 9th fretted in the A string and A is here at the 12th fret of the A string. So [Demonstration], that’s the first bar.
The next bar, we’ll go down to F [Demonstration], which is here at the 8th fret of the A string and then we’ve got F, A, and C, and the A and C on the D string at the 7th and 10th fret respectively. And then down to B flat which is the 6th fret of the E string. And those—it’s the second two notes of that triad are D, which is the 5th fret of the A string and F which is the 8th fret of the A string. So the first two bars are [Demonstration].
And the next bar starts in E flat which is the 6th fret of the A string. Those two notes are G, the 5th fret of the D string, B flat, the 8th fret of the D string and it drops down to A flat, just the 4th fret of the E string, and then C and E flat, which are the 3rd frets of the A string and the 6th frets of the A string. So let’s do those opening three bars [Demonstration].
Okay, and a good way of remembering that is the pattern if you notice, it’s the same every time I’m using second finger frets and notes and then the first finger frets, the next note on the string up followed by the fourth finger fretting a note on a string up. So if you just remember the route notes and play that pattern so you go up, G, D, F, B flat, E flat, A flat.
So the next bar, we start off with A. Just so far this is no real variation, we’ve got the quarter note-2/8 note rhythm plus that pattern. But then the second half of that bar [Demonstration]. Okay, so let’s look at the notes. Starts off on A, which is 5th fret of the E string, And C sharp which is 4th fret of the A string and E, which is the 7th fret of the A string. And then that pattern that’s kind of about a sequence is [Demonstration], and those notes are—go up to the D-A which is the 7th fret of the D string and down to E which is the 7th fret of the A string and repeat that.
Now you’ll notice, when I played that [Demonstration] that I bring my third finger to play it rather than try and play it. Personally, when you’re playing a descending fourth, which is basically means the same fret but the string lower down. I found that movement to be a bit clumsy, and you get a better sound by bringing the third finger in this case over and playing it like that. But that just supposed no preference and you must experiment and find your own way what’s the best. Some people I know would borrow that and I’ve got quite some more hands—I mean if I’m 5’8” or 5’9” and I found boring, specially with the fourth fingers is too much of a stretch.
And the last bar of this pattern is identical to the previous bar in A except, instead of [Demonstration] starting out like that it plays two 8th notes instead of a quarter note on the A note, [Demonstration] as opposed to the bar before it [Demonstration]. So that’s the intersection. Next step is the verse.
The verse is fairly straightforward. It’s an eight-bar pattern, or an eight-bar sequence which compose of a two-bar pattern play four times. So play the pattern through couple of times with the metronome.
[Demonstration]
Okay, nothing too frightening there. Again, we’ve got this rhythm running through it which we have in the intro of a quarter note followed by 2/8 note. So it makes counting through this section fairly straightforward. So the first bar which is in A is this [Demonstration]. So the notes are quarter note which is A, 5th fret of the E string. Then [Demonstration] that is G, just the 7th fret of the D string down to C sharp, just the 4th fret of the A string and then the last half of the bar is [Demonstration]. So those notes are E, which again the first one is a quarter note, 7th fret of the A string, back down to the C sharp, 4th fret of the A string, back up to this E which is the 7th fret of the A string [Demonstration].
Okay, so that’s pretty straight forward. You might want is to practice that movement there because that can be quite tricky because you’ve got to get the finger down so that you can get the 7th which is the G. It could play with an open-string. Personally, I like to play with the open-string that much if I can avoid all over the next pattern I use it. [Demonstration] If you find that easy, you can use the open-string instead which is obviously just the open E string. But let’s move on to the next half of the pattern.
This is similar, we goes down to F sharp [Demonstration]. Okay, I’ll talk to you those notes. Again, we’ve got the quarter note followed by 2/8 note rhythm. First note is F sharp, which is the 2nd fret of the E string that we just show you—just slightly in the other camera—there we go. So F sharp and then you’ve got E, just the 7th fret of the D string, A which I’m playing the open A string and then you’ve got C sharp which is the 4th fret of the A string back to the open A, back to the C sharp in this kind of rhythm [Demonstration].
Okay, so that’s pretty straightforward and put together it’s [Demonstration].Okay, you just play that two-bar pattern four times and you’ve done the verse. Okay, next section we’ll look at is the chorus.
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