Hi, this is Paul Wolf of how-to-play-bass.com, this is the first of the new series of video lessons I’m doing where we’re gonna take songs, songs that are suitable for beginners to play, people who have been playing for a few months, starting to get some tunes under their belt. Sometimes we’re gonna simplify them slightly and I’m gonna show you how to play through this tunes. At some stage there will be PDF’s available, but you have to subscribe to my escene to get those, if you check my website again, it’s how-to-play-bass.com, don’t forget all the hyphens, you find some info on that. So there will be a PDF that goes with this at some stage, but if you have a good look through this lesson, it should give you a good idea of how to play through the first tune, which today is gonna be I Can’t Stand Losing You by The Police. And I’m gonna use, partly coz of youtube are now doing a lot of audio content matching, so if you play along through originals, they’re not letting you post them. So I’ve got a midi file which I’ve cut up into various pieces to give us a bit of musical accompaniment so I can play the sections and you can relate that back to the originals. When you’ve learnt the bits and pieces that I’m gonna teach you, the verses, the pre chorus, etcetera, etcetera, put it all together, play along with the Police’s version. Try out some variations on your own as well. Don’t just play the bits and pieces that I teach, there is, there is more to the song than just playing it straight. You can try throwing in a bit of rhythm variety in certain sections. Anyway, let’s get on with the lesson, we’re gonna start with the intro. Okay, first part we’re gonna look at in this song is the intro. And, which is a five note pattern, and a couple of sort of variations. This pattern also crops up at the end of the choruses as well. So, you’ll need to put it in there too. Okay, the, the basic pattern goes like this… and those notes are D, which is 5th fret of the A string, F, which is the 8th fret of the A string, A, which is the 7th fret of the D string, G, 5th fret of the G string, sorry, the D string, G, 5th fret of the D string, and back to A at the 7th fret of the D string, and the rhythm is… now the next bar is very similar but the last two notes, instead of going up to the A, and playing those twice, the last two notes are E, that’s the 7th fret of the A string, and back to D, the starting note, the 5th fret of the A string. So, I’ll play the first two bars. Okay, the next two bars are the same, except, in the fourth bar the G, at the 5th fret of the D string is played twice rather than just once. So, it sounds like this, the next two bars. You heard that extra G in. Also you’ll note, when you get to the choruses, and you have a listen, have a look of what I do, both the full speed one and the slowed down one, that, there is some slight variations there in the choruses, but that be something for you to work on on your own. Have a listen to what Sting plays, and work out some variations for yourself. Okay, the verse and the pre chorus are pretty simple. There’s not much notes involved, there’s not much rhythm involved, and the thing that you gotta really watch and to know is Sting’s use of, sort of the reggae kind of rhythm in the verse. Now, verse is mainly, is made up of a two bar pattern, which is played four times. There is only two notes involved, which is D, which is the 5th fret of the A string, and G, which is the 3rd fret of the E string. But here’s the rhythm, so, I’m gonna count it, so it’ll be 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4, 1and 2-3-4, 1and 2-3-4, 1and 2-3-4, 1and 2-3-4. Now if you have a good listen to the original, or the slowed down version or the speeded up version of the verse and the pre chorus that I’ve done. You should be able to get that rhythm, but when you first starting out doing, doing those kind of drop rhythms, they can be quite hard to know, so, you just think when you can’t, you go 1-2-3-4, 1and 2-3-4, 1and 2-3-4, 1and 2-3-4, 1and 2-3-4, and it repeats that again to make up the verse pattern. Now the pre chorus is a bit under the lyric of I guess you call it Cowerdance or Suicide, which ever pre chorus you’re in. Again this is pretty straight forward, haven’t got many notes to look at. It starts in B flat, 1st fret of the A string, then it goes down to F, and then up to C, which is the 3rd fret of the A string, to G, which is the 3rd fret of the E string, back to C, and then to A. Now, I played the pattern through and then I just quickly talk about the rhythm. Okay, so you can hear that kind of rhythm that’s being played. Again, it mirrors the kind of the guitar chords that going on, and if you haven’t listened to the original, you, you’ll picked up that rhythm up, as with all the parts in this lesson. I’ve done the full speed version with some midi for accompaniment and also a slowed down version, so you should get them. Okay, the chorus is fairly straight forward. It’s made up of two distinct sections. The first section is played with an 8th note kind of rocky rhythm. Starts of on B flat, which I’m playing at the 6th fret of the E string, plays that for two bars, and it goes down to G, 3rd fret of the E string, to A, all these are for two bars. A was played at the 5th fret of the E string by the way. And then after that, it goes into the riff that you should know from the intro. It plays that riffs twice before then going back to the verse. Now in the second chorus, it plays the 8th note section twice through before you get into that section. But if you have a good listen to the original, you’ll work out that, that particular variation.
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