Second this!
I loooooooove Motown bass playing. This was my most recent Jamerson transcription:
And welcome to the forum @Jessica, I recognize you from the Youtube comments! Feel free to Introduce Yourself! (2018-2022) when you get a chance!
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Josh, SWEET!
Welcome aboard @Jessica!
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Both Standing In The Shadows Of Motown and Soul Fingers (about Duck Dunn) are on my reading list.
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Priorities @PeteP,… Priorities…
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Good luck! As someone who has had two surgeries on each shoulder (though none in the last four years), don’t ever stop doing the rehab exercises. Other than playing the bass, those will be the most valuable 15-20 minutes of your day.
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That @gipsj is exactly why I’m healing quite well. I learned years ago when I went through knee surgery… playing my bass is more of a “mental” exercise for me and helps to keep my spirits high and my head clear…
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@Lanny Funny about the timing of this thread…
Today, I tuned to AXS TV to see what was on. If you’re not familiar with AXS TV, it’s a station that is dedicated to music. Most of the time you can find a concert or a documentary about a band. Today when I tuned in, there was a concert by Phil Collins in which he dedicated an hour performance to nothing but MoTown. He no longer plays the drums due to his health issues, but he’s a great lead singer. Behind him, a full orchestra; with brass, winds, Xphone, keys, percussionists, guitars, a chorus, and a great bass player. They played every MoTown song I can think of, and it was awesome!
Now, I’ve really got that MoTown Jones going! Damn, I’m going to have to find a MoTown cover band to play with!
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I LOVE AXS TV @PamPurrs!! My wife records a lot of it to the Hopper for me since I’m always spending most of my time either outside on our property or inside in my music room. I haven’t seen the Phil Collins documentary yet, but I’ll most definitely have Connie out that one on radar for recording!!
I’m so jazzed that you’ve got the ‘MoTown’ bug! I just know that that ‘Red Rose 5 String’ could thump out some killer Motown groove once you get her all warmed up!! The Motown era was a great time in music history that we both were fortunate enough to live through and (see/hear) first hand… It kinda made us all who we are today…
Keep on Thumpin’!
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YES!! Look what got delivered today… Once I finish up a couple covers I’m currently working on, it’ll be time to regroup and thump out some Motown tunes!
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Yes to this book and movie.
The book was my sight-reading/mind-exploding ritual for a good while. I had panned all of these songs and this whole style because it wasn’t metal (I didn’t have really big ears as a junior high / high school kid, OK?).
These two things (book and movie) showed me what I’d been missing, and now all I want to play are Jamerson bass lines. He’s the best.
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My dad used to take me to a MC flat track. The bar/grill there had a juke box I’d like to have. But it seemed like every time I went in Mr. Big Stuff was always playing…can’t get that out of my head
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Wow! Good memories @rt66az! A great R&B/Southern Soul hit by Jean Knight recorded in Jackson Mississippi under the STAX label out of Memphis Tennessee. Actually, STAX’s main rival in the music label industry during the time was none other than Detroit’s MOTOWN Records.
Mr Big Stuff is known for it’s two beat off beat bass line (Syncopation) that @JoshFossgreen teaches in one if the modules in his B2B course.
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I’ll have to find that module…guess I always got a Syncopatic Reaction to that to that bass line 
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So I started working on another Jamerson tune a couple days ago and realized that the only way that I can come anywhere close to replicating his sound was to modify (raise just a slight amount) the Babitz bridge settings on my passive PJ pickup Yamaha 174. Still had to stuff a thick strip of sponge packing material under the strings though.
I figure that back then, the old bassists really never changed their strings as much as we do now a days (probably couldn’t afford it), and I’m not sure active bass’s were around so raising the action on their old half worn out strings may have been the only way for them to get the amplitude (along with the somewhat dark tones) out of those worn out old strings on an old passive electric bass anyway. (Just a thought??)
Not only did I find that neither my Yamaha TRBX304 or my Ibanez SR500 would come close to not only reproducing the tones I was looking for, but more importantly, neither would allow me to “muffle-strike” notes without resulting in either a nasty buzz or bang/pop when a “muffled note thud” was what I was looking for (raising the string action on my “E” and “A” strings provided the proper result).
The TRBX174 was my very first bass, and although it is considered to be an entry level bass, I’m sure glad that I kept it around and put that Babitz bridge on it!! Sure wish it had a set of old worn out half rusted round-wounds instead of the fairly new round wounds that are on it now…
Keep on Thumpin’!!
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oh yeah, that 174 looks like a studio intrument properly setup for Motown things, I like this 
About the strings, if I remember what I’ve read, Jamerson used heavy gauge Labella flat wound strings and he NEVER changed them. He used a pretty high action, mainly to avoid fret noise, but those kind of setting also has an impact on how we play, I’m pretty sure it’s an important factor of the Motown thing.
I think a passive bass with a P pickup is the most obvious choice, and you can play with the tone control to darken the high end of your probably-not-so-dead strings.
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Exactly what I need to try @terb. I’m thinking I might try doing some test recordings to see how some of the differences actually compare to each other. Think I might try putting a set of half rounds on the 174 to see how they sound with the sponge under them using a high action. I only raised the action on the E and A strings because they were the only ones I needed to get the “muted thump” from on the song I’m learning to play…
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I think you should be able to get a pretty legit Motown tone even with your round wounds : the foam and the tone control together can kill a lot of treble !
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A friend has started sharing Top 10 charts from the 1960’s and it’s got me thinking about all that wonderful Motown. What I started doing with my Peavey when playing soft jazz (OK, just Song for my Father) was plucking at the bottom of the neck. The tone is so different to anywhere else and it (for me) gives a P bass sound. I haven’t played around with sponge muting but was going to do that, along with trying my wife’s scrunchy at the nut end.
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OK, so I spent the morning doing a little comparative tone experiments.
First, I took a small section of the original recording of my last cover where I used my TRBX304 (Active) with D’Addario Half Rounds (100; 80; 65; 45) and my action set fairly low since that’s how I like to play. Here’s a short example of the sounds/tones I was getting with recording equipment set flat, and the 304’s onboard equalizer set flat.
https://go-low.billlanahan.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/SPHBTEST-TRBX304-11020-11.38-AM.mp3
I then (after adjusting my action higher) took my TRBX174 with sponge foam packing placed under the Fender Vintage Round Wounds (105; 85; 65; 45) strings at the bridge end, and a microfiber rag stuffed under the strings at the nut end (photo added below) and then recorded the same short test version using all flat settings on my recording equipment and adjusted sound to be pulled only from the “P” pickup. Here’s an example of that sound/tone.
https://go-low.billlanahan.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/SPHBTEST-TRBX174-11020-11.35-AM.mp3
You can certainly tell the difference in tonal qualities between the two and (personally), I much prefer the 174 hands down over the 304 for any of the Motown tunes that I will play in the future.
Thanks @terb for the suggestion on the muffled bridge mod, and thanks @PeteP for the suggestion of (well, I’m certainly NOT gonna use your wife’s ‘scrunchy’) “something” under the nut end. I will say that I did try that trick by itself and it really didn’t give me all I was looking for until I also used one under the bridge. I actually found that using “both” gave me exactly what I was looking for! However, if you do place anything under the nut end, you might have to (as I had to) retune!
Keep on Thumpin’!
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Yeah, I’d only recently learned what the things were that I saw on some players’ bass necks - reducing accidental ringing notes and some harmonics - but then I saw somebody use it to give a more muted tone, They may have used it in conjunction with a sponge at the bridge end.
Nice tone on both samples, but the second is definitely more muted to my ear. More the tone you’re after.
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