2 | How To Play Bass Monthly Ezine| August 2012 | www.how-to-play-bass.com

TRANSCRIPTION to LAYLA by DEREK AND THE DOMINOES, bass by CARL RADLE

Over the last few months I’ve been listening to a lot of classic blues rock - you know the kind of stuff, Cream, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, The Yardbirds, Derek and The Dominoes, and so on.

This has been part of the prepara-tion work for the column on Blues Bass that’s current running in First Bass And Beyond (see the next section for more on this).

For August’s free ezine I thought I’d do a tutorial on the main two sec-tions of Layla - which are the Verse and the Chorus. Now you can play variations on these two sections if you were playing with a live band - but these two sections will get you through the tune in an authentic manner.

The first section of the tune you need to look at is the chorus format - this is used in the intro too:

3 | How To Play Bass Monthly Ezine| August 2012 | www.how-to-play-bass.com

Some things to note in this section - the bass line is fairly simple, going from D to Bb, to C, and back to D. This section is all about the guitar riff - the bass just provides the rhythmic foundation. You don’t want to get too busy in this section and get in the way of the guitar.

The other section we need to look at is the Verse format - the bass line in this section is much more melodic and really has room to be more dy-namic. This is the kind of line that Carl Radle originally played:

Notice that this section is in a different key - and the last four bars in particular spans from the low E to the F# at the 11th fret. So a good song for making sure you know your fretboard!

These two parts pretty much make up the song....the original has got a weird piano section on it that lasts three minutes or so. Unless you’re in a Clapton and/or Derek and The Dominoes tribute band you are never going to be called on to play those.

So I’ve left the tutorial at these two parts. Feel free to experiment with some minor variations of rhythm and notes - but you’ll find that the parts as written are hard to get too far away from without distracting from the song!

4 | Free How To Play Bass Monthly Ezine | August 2012 | how-to-play-bass.com

BASS FOR BEGINNERS COURSE

The Bass For Beginners Course

I used to teach an interactive series of lessons for beginners - but I got full up pretty quickly. So I started a waiting list. That got full up too. And I hated emailing people and telling them that I was full. So I de-cided to revamp my course and turn it into a series of lessons that a be-ginner could follow and go from just picking up the bass to being able to play though a bunch of songs, to have a simple yet robust left and right hand technique, and be aiming to ramp up to a low intermediate stan-dard by the end of the course.

There are 30 lessons in this course - you can get more details by clicking this link:

http://www.how-to-play-bass.com/bass-for-beginners.html

Now if you took 30 lessons with a bass instructor you’d be looking at pay-ing anything from $30 to $50 or more per lesson. If you do the maths on that - and then factor in the opportunity cost of travelling to and from lessons....you’ll soon realize that those 30 lessons would cost you a truckload of money.

By comparison my 30 lesson course costs just over $3 a lesson: http://www.how-to-play-bass.com/bass-for-beginners.html

(Please note - for even better value see First Bass And Beyond below - the beginners course is a BONUS for subscribing to First Bass And Be-yond).

5 | Free How To Play Bass Monthly Ezine | August 2012 | how-to-play-bass.com

FIRST BASS AND BEYOND

As well as the free monthly ezine, I also publish a weekly magazine called FIRST BASS AND BEYOND.

First Bass And Beyond is published every Friday, usually weighs in at around 50 to 55 pages and follows this format:

1. Main Transcription: The main transcription each week is featured in notation, and then in notation and tab. Recent transcriptions have included basslines like Get It On (Power Station), The Love You Save (Jackson 5), Nightfly (Donald Fagin), The Logical Song (Supertramp) and Original Fire (Audioslave).

2. Beginners Corner: The beginners corner is a bass line/lesson that is suitable for beginners/intermediate players to play. The beginners cor-ner lesson is also turned into a video - a basic version goes on YouTube, and a High Def version is available for the members to download. (This version features extra content including playalongs to the original re-cording at normal speed and also slowed down). Recently we’ce covered songs like Badge and White Room by Cream the Beginners Corner, Co-caine by Eric Clapton, China Grove (The Doobie Brothers) and more.

3. The Two Tone Bass Zone This is a guest column by a guy called Gor-don Clayton and is scheduled to run for around 15 columns. And it will draw heavily on Gordon’s recent experience where he had to cover a friend in a ska band at short notice - and had to learn a ton of Ska/2 Tone type songs (Specials, Madness, The Beat, and so on). Each column will feature at least one bass line along with Gordon’s commentary on when you can step away from the original line and build on it, and when you have to stay faithful to the original line.

4. Blues Bass For Beginners

This is a new column for beginners in the weekly magazine that will build on the 30 Module bass for beginners course that’s available to allannual subscribers. There will be a song tutorial in every column.

6 | Free How To Play Bass Monthly Ezine | August 2012 | how-to-play-bass.com

5. Bass Book/DVD Review There is a detailed bass book or bass DVD review in each ezine too - recently I’ve been reviewing books from other musical instruments and disciplines that we can use to create interest-ing new exercises for the bass.

6. Monthly Ezine Archive Annual Subscribers will also get access to the archive of all previous monthly ezines. (So far that’s 20 Video/PDF les-sons)

7. Bass For Beginners Course Annual Subscribers also get access to the 30 Module Bass For Beginners Course that’s been running over the last 7 onths in First Bass And Beyond. There’s a detailed overview below.

Here’s the First Bass And Beyond page- for more information if you’re interested in joining:

http://www.how-to-play-bass.com/first-bass-and-beyond.html

Contact

If you’ve got any other questions don’t hesitate to email me via the con-tact form on the website - or leave a comment on my Facebook Wall.

Have a great month, and enjoy.

Paul