How to Play Bass Lines to Let's Dance by David Bowie
Hi, it’s Paul Wolf from how-to-play-bass.com here, with the third in my series of lessons, looking at simple bass lines for beginners. In this lesson, we’ll gonna look at Let’s Dance by David Bowie. It’s pretty easy tune, it’s only really got two sections. It’s got a verse and it’s got a chorus and the last four bars of chorus also serve as the intro. So, I’ll start with the verse, and then we’ll look at the chorus, and then when I’ve done the chorus, you’ll see the full bars that are needed, that you need to do for the intro. It’s actually, stick on the record and play along from the beginning. It’s a pretty easy tune, there’s gonna be PDF, as with all the songs in this series. The PDF will only be available to you if you head over to my website though. That’s how-to-play-bass.com, it’s notated on the side bar here on the youtube, or any of the other video sites that I’ve be posting this to. There’s a sign up form in every page of my website, go there, put your email in, you get some free goodies anyway, and you’ll also get PDF of Let’s Dance when it is available. Okay, the verse, pretty straight forward pattern, it’s an 8 bar pattern. Now, it’s in B flat, I’ll begin to play it here, which is the 6th fret of the E string. So the first bar starts like this, and that bar is B flat, 6th fret of the A, E string, sorry, A flat, 4th fret of the E string, G, 3rd fret of the E string. And F, which is the 1st fret of the E string. Okay, that’s the second bar, now those notes are B flat, you play that twice, which is again 6th fret of the E string. And then you’ve got, you go down to A flat, which is the 4th fret of the E string. Play A, 5th fret of the E string. And then back on your B flat, which is the 6th fret of the E string. And then the third bar plays the same again, and then it goes up the fourth bar of the pattern, it goes up to E flat, which is the 6th fret of the A string. Okay and there’s another walk down similar to the, the early one, It’s E flat, which we done, 6th flat, 6th fret of the E string, A flat, which is the 4th fret of the A string, C, which is the 3rd fret of the A string. Then the last note of that little pattern is B flat, again 6th fret of the E string. Now, when you go to the fifth bar, you can drop in from time to time as you’re playing to this song, some slides from the B flat down. And so you go… okay. So there’s next two bars, doing G flat, which is the 2nd fret of the E string. The pattern is this… so it’s all just G flat. And then at the first bar, there’s a little pick up at the end of it which you can hammer, which, and the notes are C to D flat, C is the 3rd fret of the A string. D flat is the 4th fret of the A string. And then it’s back to the ri… the walking pattern, which was the, the first, the first pattern that we looked at, first bar. Okay, and that’s the 8 bar pattern, so it’s, it’s pretty straight forward. It’s notated out fully in the PDF. As you’re playing through, don’t be afraid to try to throw in few variations, bit of rhythm, especially it has it’s got kind of a walking bass feel, so you can play around with a triplet rhythm, and some slides work really well as well. Okay, we’ll look at the notes in the chorus now, but before we do, don’t forget that the last four bars of the chorus also make the intro. So when you’re playing this with the record, and looking for the, the music notation or the tab in the PDF that comes with this, the last four bars of this section also for the intro. Okay, the first note of the chorus is A flat, you’ve notice the little play along bit I did with the midi file that is a lot more space in the chorus in terms of the bass line. Anyway, first note is A flat which is the 4th fret of the E string, and that note’s held for six beats, and then there’s a two beat pause. Then we go up to D flat, which is the 4th fret of the A string. And then we go up to E flat, which is the 6th fret of the A string. Now those notes are held for two beats each. So, those bars are… and the second bar of that pattern. And before you get back to the A flat, is just a little fill, which is D flat, which is the 4th fret of the A string again and B flat, 6th fret of the E string. Then you’re back to the A flat, and just repeat that four bar pattern, so I play the whole pattern, two, three, four… then you’re back into that pattern again. Okay, when you play through that pattern twice, you get it back to A flat, so again the 4th fret of the E string, then you play a little fill, where the notes are B flat and C. Play B flat here, which is 6th fret of the E string and C, the 3rd fret of the A string, and then that leads into two bars of just whole notes. The first one of which is F, which is held for four beats, second one of which is D flat. F was the 1st fret of the E string by the way. And D flat is the 4th fret of the A string. And then the final four bars and these are the four bars that are the same as the intro. They’re basically E flat, which is the 6th fret of the A string, and they’re played in 8 notes. So if you’re counting, one, two, three, four, this is the last bar, and that’s just I hold the last two beats of the last bar, are quarter notes, and it holds the first one in this E flat, still which is the 6th fret of the A string. The second one is D flat, which is the 4th fret of the A string, and then you’re back into the… okay, so that was Let’s Dance by David Bowie. It’s pretty easy tune, nice and fun to play through. Remember there’s a PDF that would go with this, but to get it you do need to head over to my website and subscribe to my escene and then you get the location of it when it’s available. Look out for the next one, I think it’s gonna Moondance by Van Morrison, I’ll see you next time.