Under Pressure By Queen Base Line
Hi, it’s Paul from how-to-play-bass.com here. This is the second of my lessons looking at songs for beginners to play. This song we’ll gonna look at is called Under Pressure and it’s of course Queen tune, another John Deacon bass line, if you look at my website you’ll know by now that I really like John Deacon. My crap claimed fame is that I went to same school as him, although he was there 10 years before me, because his a bit older. Anyway, this lesson like Can’t Stand Losing You, which was the first one, I’m using some midi backing track to give us some musical accompaniments so you can hear how the song goes, in context, so you can take it away, play it with a Queen original, which I halfly recommend that you get hold of the Queen original and play along with. As we’ve cuts I’m Losing You, there are certain sections that I’ve simplified a bit, so that the beginner won’t have a problem playing through the entire song. It’s nothing more frustrating, I know, from experience than learning a tune, and only being able to play two thirds of it because there’s a section and another part which you just not up to playing. That’s been taken away the way I’ve thought it, but please do note that there a couple of sections of the tune where you can apply some variations, and I do recommend that you try having a play, having a play through. Do some experimentation. See if you can get some rhythmic variety going. Listen to what John Deacon does on the record. If you can get hold any of his live recordings or any of Queen’s live recording of Under Pressure, listen to what he does on those, coz he often changes things around a bit. You always get new tricks, new tips and stuff from those recordings. So yeah, so, let’s crack on with the lesson, and let’s going. Okay, the first bit of the song we’ll gonna look at is the riff, and it is played all the way through the song in different bits and pieces and it’s the, somewhat the hook of the song, so something you’ve really, really got to get nailed down. Now, there’s only two notes, it’s D, just played at the 7th fret of the G string, and A, which is played at the 7th fret of the D string, and the rhythm is this. So, it should be fairly straight forward, you should be have to listen to the, the original head, John Deacan play it as well, and really get it nailed down. There is another possibility, you can play it up here, which is the 12th fret playing the D at the 12th fret of the D string, so playing the octave, and again, the A, the 12th fret of the A string. Personally, I prefer to play it down here. It’s just, my hands here, ready for the next section of the tune, it is a bit of the economy of motion thing going on. But just so you know, you can play that there. Anyway, so, it plays through that, and then it goes to the, into the verse, and the first four times in the verse it plays that riff. And then the riff shifts down and it changes slightly and this is what it does. Now if you notice throughout that pattern, that same rhythm, dan dan dan da da dan da is playing all the way through. So the first, the first bar which shifts down, you’re playing D again, but that’s D at the 5th fret of the A string, the last note is E, is A again, which is the open A string. The second bar is exactly the same pattern, but instead at playing D, you play C#. So that’s the 4th fret of the A string. Third bar, exactly the same pattern again, but B, instead of D, or C#. And then the fourth bar, it starts off with the open A string, so that’s… and then… and that’s B at the 2nd fret of the A string, back to the open A string, C#, 4th fret of the A string, back to the open A string. And that sets you up for the second time through playing that again. Okay, the next part is the, I suppose what you called the chorus. You go to G, which is the 5th fret of the D string. And you play sixth bars where you play through those bars, just playing constant 8th notes at the same place. 2 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 3 and etcetera, etcetera for six bars. The seventh bar, then you drop down to F#, which is the 2nd fret of the E string, and then the next bar after that is which notes are G, the 3rd fret of the E string, and A which is the 5th fret of the E string. And then that’s it, you’re back up to the… so I just play through that pattern. Okay, so that’s that first section.