How To Play "Light My Fire" on a Bass Guitar - Part 2

The chorus is an eight-bar section. It uses a lot of the elements we’ve already looked at, major triads, quarter note plus two eighth notes as the basic rhythm. I’ll play it through with the metronome and then we’ll talk through the notes, okay. [Demonstration] Okay, so it starts out on G. [Demonstration] Those notes are G, 3rd fret of the E string. [Demonstration] And again, you got this major triad shape. And the other two notes are B, 2nd fret of the A string and D, 5th fret of the A string. So it’s G, then A. Now this time, I’m playing it so I can stay on position like this. [Demonstration] So it’s still the major triad. Let’s just play it slightly differently, so I’m playing A with the fourth finger. A is the 5th fret of the E string. C sharp at the 4th fret of the A string with my third finger and then A is played at the 2nd fret of D string. So that bar starts on G. [Demonstration] It’s played like that and it enables you—you’re back in position because the next notes are [Demonstration], which are D, which is the 5th fret of the A string, then [Demonstration] which is F# at the 2nd fret of the E string and A, which is the 5th fret of the E string. And then you play the A again, 5th fret of the E string and then the F# and back to the A again. So that second bar looks like this. [Demonstration] And the next bar is the third bar. It’s a repeat of the first bar, so you got G and A. So those notes are the same as the first bar. Then the fourth bar goes like this. [Demonstration] So there’s a slight variation there, just start off with D. Again, 5th fret of the A string and you got those two notes which we have before, which were F# and A. F# at the 2nd fret of the E string, A in the 5th fret of the E string. And you have to shift slightly. Move your second finger down to B, which is the 2nd fret of the A string. We’ll play a B major triad which is B. [Demonstration] Okay, and those other two notes of the triad are D sharp, which I’m playing at the 6th fret of the D string and F# which is played at the 4th fret of the D string. Then we go back and we play the G major triad and then D, which is D, F# and A. And then the final two bars are the same and they’re like this. [Demonstration] And those notes are E, opening string, G# and B, which G# is the 4th fret of the E string, B is the 2nd fret of the A string. E, 2nd fret of the D string. And then back down to B, which is the 2nd fret of the A string back up to E, which is the 2nd fret of the D string. [Demonstration] Okay, and that’s the chorus section. Okay, solo section of the tune. Now, this is pretty straightforward. If you’ve got the original our release of the tune, it’s about six minutes long. There’s a long keyboard solo, a long organ solo, and then a long guitar solo with some interesting stuff that we’ll talk about in a second. But the basic pattern is very straightforward. Again, it uses the quarter note followed by two eighth note rhythms. I’ll play it through a couple of times with the metronome. [Demonstration] That’s a pretty straightforward pattern. The notes are—this time, it’s an A minor triad. So the A minor triad is A, which is a quarter note. And then two eighth note, so C, which is the eight fret of the E string and E, the 7th fret of the A string. [Demonstration] And then it moves up to B. And you’ve got B, which is the 7th fret of the E string. And then you got D sharp, 6th fret of the A string. F sharp, 9th fret of the A string. So you go— [Demonstration] So it’s pretty straightforward. And that plays right through the solos. Now, the interesting thing to note, there’s a section and if you’ll have to go to the original, have a listen to this, but there’s a section where the guitar, the keyboards and the drums all start playing a triplet rhythm, so they’re playing [Sound Demo], that kind of rhythm while the bass is still playing [Demonstration]. Now it’s really important, if you’re going to stick with the 8th note rhythm, which is what it does on the record, to make sure you’ve got that absolutely nailed because it will be very easy in a live scenario with all that happening for you to get pulled out of time slightly. The other option is if you’re playing live, and sometimes this can actually work quite well, is to double that triplet rhythm. So rather than playing [Demonstration], you might switch to this. [Demonstration] We’d go back to your rhythm. [Demonstration] It’s a very subtle difference but it’s something—if you have a listen to the record, you’ll what I’m talking about. I would practice it both ways and then if you are in a live environment, go with what you feel at that time. Speak to your bandmates, see what they think would work well, what sounds nice. Both ways sound nice. The only other thing that I would do in this section, especially in a live context, is I would take the [Demonstration] that rhythm and replace it with something that’s just a bit more drivy and replace that first quarter note with two eighth note, so you’d play [Demonstration]. Now if you play that in a live environment or a live scenario, that would be a lot more driving than [Demonstration], which is to me sounds like quite a dated rhythm. It is what’s played on the record but if you are playing it at a gig now, you’d perhaps want to freshen up and give it a bit more energy and replacing that first quarter note especially in this solo section with two eighth note as a way of doing that. Okay, so that was Light my Fire. I hope that helps you get through the song, make sure you download the original from iTunes, somewhere like that, or Amazon and have a play through with it as well. There is no substitute for playing through with an original. And also a good tip, when you are playing through a song, once you think you’ve got it down, try and play through from the start to the end. If you make a couple of mistakes along the way, try not to worry about them and just keep playing. It’s a good discipline for when you get into playing with a band, whether it’s in rehearsal or in a gig situation. If you make a mistake, no one is going to stop and go back to the beginning. So it’s a good thing to start ingraining in your brain now. And the way you do that is once you think you’ve got it, if you make a mistake, try and just pick up and ignore it and carry on through to the end. So I hope you enjoyed that, there will be more soon. Don’t forget to check out my website as well. I’ll see you in the next lesson.