How to Play Bass to "Smells like Teen Spirit" By Nirvana

How to Play Bass to "Smells like Teen Spirit" By Nirvana Hi, it's Paul from how-to-play-bass.com here, another beginners’ video lesson. The tune in this lesson is Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit, a pretty good tune for beginners to start working on and some stuff that will exercise how fast you can play. Also, there are only four or five notes with the hand. So, it's a pretty easy combination. So, let's go to the first part of the lesson and let's get started. Okay, let's start out with the basic riff. I'll play along with the metronome. The metronome is set to 100— [Demonstration] Okay, so, that pattern which is the hardest part of the tune because of the sort of the 16th note rhythm in the second half of each bar. Note wise, it's very straight forward. Let's do the notes first and then we’ll come to the rhythm. First note is F, first fret of the E string— [Demonstration] Then B flat, first fret of the A string— [Demonstration] Then A flat, fourth fret of the E string— [Demonstration] And D flat, fourth fret of the A string. And the rhythm is kind of this— [Demonstration] So, what you're doing is you're playing the—first note of the pattern is two quarter notes. Then the second part of each bar is you have your 16th note rest on the third quarter note and you got three 16th notes and a quarter note. So, if you're counting, it would be— [Demonstration] If you haven’t done much on counting and specifically counting 16th note and counting 16th notes is an issue, think. Rather than thinking in those terms, have a listen to the original and think of the patterns. So, it's— [Demonstration] Excuse my bad singing but that will give you the rhythmic pattern that you’ve got to play— [Demonstration] And that’s the intro, the first beat that you have. The bass comes to the drum feel and also, that’s the line you can use in the chorus. So, let's have a look of the verse which is the next part of the tune. Okay, the verse is really straight forward. It uses the same notes as the riff we’ve just done, just a slightly different way. So— [Demonstration] Okay, so that’s pretty straight forward. It's just solid 8th notes. Again going from F, it's play four 8th notes on the F— [Demonstration] Four on the B flat, those are the first frets of the E and A strings respectively and then Second bar is four 8th notes on the A flat which is the fourth fret of the E string and then four on the D flat which is the fourth fret of the A string— [Demonstration] F— [Demonstration] B flat— [Demonstration] A flat— [Demonstration] D flat— [Demonstration] So, very straight forward that section. Then, after the verse, you’ve got the chorus. At the end of the chorus, you’ve got a riff, can double with the guitar which we need to go and look at. So, let's have a look at that. Okay, the last part of the tune for us to look at is the riff. I'll play it through the metronome. You’ll recognize it. [Demonstration] So, that takes you straight back here into the verse or the guitar solo. I'm sure you recognize that riff from the sound of it. That’s played as you come out of the choruses of the tune. So, let's look at the first. Basically, this is a two-bar riff that’s repeated twice. So the first part is simply this— [Demonstration] So, the next you’ve got two 8th notes on F. Again, first fret of the E string— [Demonstration] Then the open E string— [Demonstration] Then back to F— [Demonstration] And then two notes on the G flat which is the second fret of the E string— [Demonstration] Okay, and then the second bar, it was always like answer bar. The first four notes are identical as the first bar which is— [Demonstration] F-F— [Demonstration] Open E— [Demonstration] F— [Demonstration] And then the second four notes are just B flat, two B flats— [Demonstration] And two A flats— [Demonstration] So very slowly, the two-bar pattern is— [Demonstration] And it just continues. Okay, so that Smells Like Teen Spirit, it's a pretty straight forward song to pickup. There were really only those parts to the tune. If you have a listen to the tune, you’ll hear where they all should go or should come in when you play along to the original recording. If you're a member of my membership, Ezin, then you’ll find the notation and the notation with tab in last Friday’s Ezin which was dated the 9th of April. If you're not a member, maybe you should head over to my website, how-to-play-bass.com. Don’t forget all the hyphens and go check out what the membership Ezin is about. You’ll get 52 actually Ezins a year, each one has got a beginner’s column there. Each one will have a video lesson like this and members get to download the high-definition version of this video. So, it's worth checking out. If you got any questions or comments, head over to my website and use the comments form and send me an email, okay? I'll catch you in the next lesson.