How to Play Bass Line for Moondance Part 1/2
Hi, it’s Paul from how-to-play-bass.com here, with the fourth lesson of my series of lessons looking at songs for beginners to play. Now today, we’re gonna look at the bass line to Moondance by Van Morrison. Now what we’re gonna look at today isn’t the exact bass line on the record, although some of the bits fit in nicely on what was played in the original, but the original, if you ever listened to it, was approached in a really jazzy kind of flavor, and it’s got walky bass line all the way through. And for beginners, that might be something that’s maybe a bit beyond you, or not sure of the concept of how to put a walking bass line together. But the other thing is, and the only reason I’m showing you the lines that I’m showing you today, is when you play in a live situation, I, we’ve got you’re at wedding or a corporate gig or whatever, you got people dancing, the actual bass line is played on the record can be a bit airy and not move enough air. So, what I’ve done is I’ve moved it down an octave and play it. Instead of playing the 7th fret of the D string, we’re playing it the 5th fret of the E string is the basic sort of note. And that shifts a lot more air when you’re playing on a live situation, it gives the song a bit more bottom and something a bit more for the, the audience to grab hold of when they’re dancing, keep the rhythm going etcetera, etcetera. Don’t forget there is a sketchpedia that would go with this but to get it, you need to subscribe to my escene which you could find at my website how-to-play-bass.com, don’t forget all the hyphens, and then in the next escene you get a link telling you where it’s, where it can be found and downloaded. So let’s get on with the lesson, let’s start with the intro. Okay, the intro, I always play the intro the same way, it kinda marks the opening of the tune. For me, gives the vocalist somewhat that they note coming in there’s a little pattern that they always recognize, I play it like this. Okay, obviously that was played slowly, now, first bar is… and those notes are A at the 7th fret of the D string, should play twice, up to B, which is the 9th fret of the D string, then down to E, 7th fret of the A string. The second bar is a variation on that which is A-E-B-E, and those fret numbers are the same as in the first bar. And the third bar you play, which is A, 7th fret again, B flat, which is the 8th fret of the D string, B, which is the 9th fret of the D string, you have to play the B twice. Then the last bar you start with C, 10th fret of the D string, so you play C, 10th fret, B twice, 9th fret, and then E, at the 7th fret of the A string. And, and that’s the intro. Okay, the verse is a 16 bar sequence, what can make it now tricky but, something that you gonna just watch out for, is it’s composed of bars of, with the same chords all the way through, which is a…A minor to a B minor chord. So what I, what I’m trying to do when I approach it live is I split it into four, four bar pattern, and I make those four bar patterns up by making sure that the, the first three bars of the four note pattern are fairly similar and that the last bar of the four note pattern is very discernibly different and it gives me something to count on, so I, every time I play through it, okay that’s one, that’s two. So I’ll give you a simple four bar pattern to start with. Okay, so, the first three bars, are just repeats of this bar which is… and those notes are A, 5th fret of the E string, B, 7th fret of the E string, and then there’s an open E string in there, and the rhythm is this. And the walk down on the fourth bar is… okay, and those notes are, you start with A again which is again 5th fret of the E string, then G, which is the 3rd fret of the E string, then F sharp, which is the 2nd fret of the E string. And then an open E, an open E finishes the pattern. Now, with all of the lines in Moondance, you can, because it got this triplet sort of jazzy rhythm, you can very make variety by adding sort of little rhythmic skips, which you can either do by either pulling off of, playing the open E string, whatever opens, depending on the way or whatever open string, or you can do it by throwing in a muted note, and that get, that also, this goes for the, exert yourself. There’s a lots of rhythmic variety you can do to, to break up the monotony of the line. Okay, the second four bar pattern, all of these four bar pattern by the way have the same walk down as the fourth pattern, but it’s the preceding bars that are different, and, and what you can do when you’re playing this in a live context, is you can mixed them up and you can give them rhythm, rhythmic variety, you can start experimenting and giving a bit of play. But this will give you some basic lines to get to the tune. Okay, so the second four bar pattern is this… which is pretty much identical to the first one, except, first one’s got a rest in it, the second one has got two notes on the A string, on the open A note, sorry, not open A, on the A note, 5th fret of the E string, before it goes up to the B. So, here’s the first pattern again, here’s the second one, okay, here’s another one… and I’m gonna do the walk down again, finish the pattern. Okay, that, that pattern is simply A, the 5th of the E string, open E, B, 7th fret of the E string, open E again. Okay, and the last of the four bar pattern I’m gonna show you… again, it’s got the same climb down at the end, except there’s a tiny variation at the end to lead you to the pre chorus, shall show you in a sec, but it’s this… okay, what we’re doing there is we’re doing a chromatic walk up to the B, and chromatic just means one fret at a time. Just start on A again, 5th fret of the E string, B flat, which is the 6th fret of the E string, B, which is the 7th fret of the E string, and then the open E string again. This pattern works really well under solos as well. Is that chromatic, no, just gives it a jazzier flavor. And then the other thing I did in the walk up, so when… same note as before, A-G-F#-E, and then I just came, move my hand up, and just get a little hit on the octave of the E, just the 7th fret of the A string, and then the pre chorus, we shall see in the second starts in D. So that gives you a nice lead into the, it connects the open E with that D there without it sounding such a big jump, and the, the jump that you do make from the open E to the octave E is continent to the ears because it’s the octave. So, okay, let’s move on to the pre chorus.