Is it Come Together?
That B is my favourite note in the whole song (is that odd?)
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Here you go, with a great example of getting up above the 12th 
He’s more or less the archetype for post-punk bassists, along with a few others like Simon Gallup, Steve Severin, and David J.
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Crazy undermentioned and a really excellent bassist regardless of genre.
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Quincy Jones produced that version 
Trivia, the original from '83 is still the best selling 12" single of all time.
From the comments:
“As a club dj in the eighties, my fondest memory was the moment I could drop this masterpiece into my set. People would freak the fuck out, nearly tearing their clothes in an effort to get to the dance floor. I have never before and rarely since seen dancers experiencing such moments of total kinetic bliss.”
Can verify, have witnessed, and I myself nearly broke in to a DJ booth to find out what this was the first time I heard it, probably ~'84-85.
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It’s “Let’s Go” by stuck in the sound. It’s in the calmer part right after the start, but trying to make it sound calm while one note just sticks out above the rest is tricky. Truly obsessed with playing it anyway.
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Oo I’ve never been there…
I used to have an SR300 and it was sometimes a little wolfy on the 3rd fret of the E string @abozhdaraj … However, the notes are always going to get a little boomy when you’re high up the fretboard. Maybe (1) get some new strings (2) try cutting the bass on the EQ (3) play the note further down the neck on other strings ?
I think it’s time you send us a cover to check
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Is that what you all call post punk? We seemed to categorize it as New Wave. Lot’s of synth and synth bass. Anyway, looks like I may have ruffled some feathers with my poking fun at playing above the 12th fret.
I honestly don’t care how another bassist approaches his craft. There are very few hard fast rules in music and pushing the envelope is what has created some great stuff. My comment was meant more in jest and it was being critical.
It was more on the order of Me; doc my elbow hurts when I do this. Doc; well then don’t do that. It was purely; It sounds weird when I play on these frets. Don’t play on those frets then. There are other options ya’ know.
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No, that’s not post-punk, although the band mostly is. Back in the ‘80s we called this style “Underground Dance”. The kids today would probably call it “Dark Synthwave”.
One of the band’s direct influences for this song was Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love”, which is pure Italodisco.
If there is any single definitive post-punk album, it’s this one:
That’s the band that (among many, many other things) became New Order, after their singer committed suicide - hence New Order also gets pulled in to discussions of post-punk (as a whole lot of their work is too).
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OK, trouble is that at least in this video even with head phones I can’t hear anything he’s playing up there and even through the course of the song I can’t really pick out the bass.
Maybe it’s the recording itself or maybe it’s because in the register he’s playing in the bass just folds itself in with the other instruments. Might be much different on a studio cut.
But as I posted how someone else plays it how they play. It’s their decision how to fit what they do into their music. It’s not that I never play in higher register but normally it’s fills and not the root bass line. I would also tend to use higher register more when playing a fretless and with certain genre more than others.
A bassist I’ve looked up to much of my career is Leland Sklar and he’s very into playing fills and riffs in higher register. But the majority of the stuff I’ve played over the years doesn’t call for as much of that. I’m holding down the bottom end and leaving that space for other instruments to fill. That’s just my style of playing.
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I think maybe what you think is the guitar is actually the bass. This song has no lead guitar in it in this section, just rhythm.
Here’s a studio version (same bass player, in about 1985) at a timecode to this part of the song.
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OK, I get it. First cut only mind you.
The bass is used more to play higher register riffs against a more repetitious guitar line. Maybe that approach is used more in punk or other genre I’ve never been into or ever played. It’s like we are what we eat and we are what we play.
Classic Rock would approach the same song differently as far as structure goes. It would be slower and the guitar would be taking on those higher register parts with riffs of it’s own while the bass would stay in lower register and frame the chord changes because the guitar riff being played isn’t doing it strongly. Different style.
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Yeah that’s a valid take. I think they way I would put it is that post-punk basslines are often (but not always) a driving, more leading part of the song. Often leading over more effected rhythm and soundscapey guitars.
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No, I got it. I can hear what the bass wants to do. If it fits to the style of the genre then it works. I guess that if I was producing it as a trio thing since the guitar isn’t framing the chords changes I would run a second more fundamental bass line in lower register that did. Lacking that the song has no bottom end.
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In this phase New Order was primarily using sequenced synths for the low end.
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Here’s the thing. As a musician I can take pride in believing I can play against most anything as long as I can understand what result is expected and I have. I’ve cut bass lines for someone playing as I was asked to play. It may not have been how I would’ve done it but that’s irrelevant. They wrote the song so I did it their way.
These genre that you and faydout have posted are pretty foreign to me. Even though it may have come from the '80s it’s not at all what I was playing at that time. The bands I played in used a core of Classic Rock and '60s R&B/Soul tunes. Our following were “Boomers” like myself. That’s the dance music they grew up with and preferred and we were above all a club based dance band.
I’ve played a lot of other genre as well including country and country rock, bluegrass, Latin jazz, and even traditional ethnic stuff like Mexican dance music and Polish Polkas. If my career in music required a passport it would be full of stamps from all kinds of genre but it would miss quite a few as well punk and/or post punk, new wave, and all forms of heavy metal included. But that doesn’t mean I couldn’t play them.
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In that case I am really happy to have introduced you to something new!
(even if it is 40 years old )
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As am I. Whether I choose to play in a specific genre or not as a musician that doesn’t mean I lack an understanding of it. My son-in-law plays guitar in an originals band. If their bassist was somehow incapacitated I could pretty easily learn their tunes and step in but it’s nothing I would ever choose to play myself.
It’s all just notes on a page or on the fret board. We know all of them and they ain’t making any more of them we haven’t discovered yet unless we’re talking about micro tonal stuff. As players we should theoretically be able to learn to play anything as long as we can grasp the nature of our part and it’s purpose in that particular tune.
One thing among many I truly appreciate about this forums is that there are so many more players who are into far different genre than I came from. I’ve learned from this and I’ll keep learning. Even if what I learn I may never use in the same way it still contributes to thinking and expanding thought and idea that can be used in other ways. I’m never gonna be too old or set in ways to learn. Music is a journey not a destination.
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I remember when that came out sitting around on my girlfriend’s sofa. both of us with our huge mohawks listening to this excessively cuz she was a big fan. and me giving her the stink eye, what is this shit THIS ISN’T HARDCORE! (yes I was one of those). I hated them, I hated new order more. the only upside is now I get to rediscover things I didn’t appreciate back then. I love hooky’s whole take on bass, nobody sounds like him.
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Yep, except I was a goth so Joy Division was allowed. Somewhere around the mid 90s I ran deeper into the scene, I blame Hot Topic goths for this partially, and became a purist. I dropped all that BS around the mid 00’s and bought a pair of jeans. Started back into some of the stuff I loved before, then branched out from there. I won’t say that I love everything that I missed out on earlier but as an example I love Lauryn Hill and that never would have happened.
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