Easy songs to noodle and/or playalong with?

Hi!

Right at the moment I am having a ton of fun playing to Kool & the Gang’s “Get Down On It” because it has a very easy bass line through the whole song and a lot of room to try things out.

Any ideas for other “monotonous” songs like this?

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Quite a bit of ZZ Top’s stuff is very basic

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the end of Robin Trower’s Too Rolling Stoned, James Dewar plays a C for 4.5 minutes but it is not a steady C drone and I remembered our bass player used to do some amazing fills that would always come back to C without upsetting the groove or taking away from what the guitar was playing. When I play this I follow suit, great for seeing what works and what doesn’t. Just come back to C and maintain the groove. Robin Trower - Bridge Of Sighs - 05 - Too Rolling Stoned - YouTube

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“Tainted Love” as performed by Marilyn Manson is very easy. The chorus moves pretty fast and has a few slides, but it’s entirely on the E-string (iirc).

You can see a Rocksmith run through here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtSLpR2BnCU

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I think you need to tell us what kind of music you like?

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That’s kind of a problem because my taste is really widespread.
Pink Floyd, Tool, Police, Foo Fighrers, Frank Zappa, Blink 182, Hans Zimmer, Faith No More, New Model Army, Beach Boys, Dashboard Confessional, Ben Folds, Motörhead, Punk, Swing, Funk etc. I can go on and on :wink:
I even have fun with some of Max Martin’s chart songs.
There was a time when I answered: “Every band that starts with ‘P’”

The suggestions here were already great - e.g. I had totally forgotton about the bass line of Tainted Love - I prefer the Soft Cell version.

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That’s my favorite version too, but Coil also kind of hits it out of the park with theirs and its cultural history from the AIDS crisis.

Complete with a perfectly staged Marc Almond (Soft Cell) cameo.

The original isn’t bad either :slight_smile:

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I thought the Soft Cell version was the original…the things you learn…thanks Howard

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I learned that pretty late myself. Turns out they covered lots of good stuff. Another notable example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgyZk4PJqFc

versus

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbW6ekaTaUs

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Now this one I knew but Tainted Love was a real surprise…looking into Gloria Jones her being with Marc Bolan then back to Motown she really had an interesting career. Looks like she sang with a ton of heavy weights.

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Yet another case of Motown artists not getting nearly the credit they deserved, yeah.

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Me too. :exploding_head:

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Back in the day I used to say the same thing. Primus, Pearl Jam and Pantera!!!

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Police, Pink Floyd, Prodigy, Phil Collins, PFaith No More, PFury in the Slaughterhouse

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I found that a lot of Gorillaz songs have pretty simple bass lines that are also a lot of fun to play along with

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Stand by me, and there is one AC/DC song that is A string 2nd fret thru the whole thing. I have discovered that many Bass lines are repetitive.

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“Black Magic” by the Magic Wands is a box shape:

'--------------------------------------
'--------------------------------------
'--------------------9-9-9-9-6-6-6-6
'6-6-6-6-9-9-9-9--------------------
(repeat to infinity)

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If you like blues (or at least can tolerate it), simply do a YouTube search for “12 bar blues bass backing track” and you will find a huge number of tracks, allowing you to choose whatever key and tempo you prefer.

Some of these are over 30 minutes long, so you can noodle for hours on end.

If you’d prefer to own your tracks, go to Amazon Digital Music and do the same search. You can buy individual tracks or complete albums.

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The other night I watched a documentary about the Cocteau Twins on YouTube. Inspired by that, I picked up my bass and gave “Lorelai” and “Cherry Coloured Funk” a try. Straight up 8th note chugging with a couple of minor twists here and there, all at a pretty mellow tempo. Unless you’re allergic to 80s dream pop, give it a go!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28tcms00Dno
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQpKtnLUduE

TABS:
Cocteau Twins - Lorelei
Cocteau Twins - Cherry Coloured Funk

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Awesome! Super good. Simon Raymonde is one of my favorite bassists.

My favorite bassline of theirs is probably Wax And Wane:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGPIFCTAugk

a bit tougher though. Will Heggie recorded that but obviously Raymonde ended up playing it live.

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