Playing a bass cover philosophy

I am choosing to play some bass parts of songs for my own pleasure against the original recordings. I have access to some excellent tutorials that sound perfect. However each pro transcriber/demonstrator chooses to play the same notes in various ways on the neck. I am looking at Lady Madonna right now. Some play it more on the bass most strings and up the neck, while others play more vertically and some combined the two. Are there any principles around choosing how to arrange notes of a cover in general or is it all just personal preference of hand movement. Obviously higher strings will have a lighter timbre, but to my listening I can’t hear any significant difference. Thoughts?

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This depends on the preference of the player and how the playing maps out the fingerboard. Some may like the path up the strings and some may like up the neck playing the same notes.

I was on the camp of no open strings for a very long time because as my mentor put it, notes that you can’t fret you can’t control.

Then my view changed because of so many of my heroes utilized open strings as the transition notes to get up and down the neck seamlessly. I love it and adopted it ever since I learned how to use it.

One of my favorite challenge is to learn new path to my favorite songs. As it can be played differently on 4 strings. Then add several more paths when I pickup 5 strings and 6 strings.

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When learning a song, I will tend to try different things to a) hear how it sounds (as you say, the timbre of the note changes depending on which string you play it) and b) what is the most comfortable way of playing the piece.

I don’t think there are any specific rules - different tabs for the same song may well be written differently, and anyway, who says they are actually right?

My view is play what works for you and enjoy!

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There is no right or wrong here, do what feels best for you.

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All of these comments were very helpful. I can easily get caught up in the practice of “doing it right” which promotes some kind of impossible perfectionism. It will be a good exercise for me to simply pick the moves I like or feel most comfortable to me whether that be up the neck or across the strings. Thanks for the discussion!

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I’m not good enough to transcribe music so I rely on tabs to show me the ropes. After learning that way for a while you start recognizing patterns and what sounds good to you. Using that, I’ll look up (or somehow figure out) the root notes and just go from there.

There’s a few songs I wanted to play and couldn’t find tabs for, so I took the root notes and came up with my own bass lines. One in particular is pretty flamboyant compared to the original recording, and I’m cool with that. The Black Key’s “For the Love Of Money” in particular. Got a carried away with that one, but it’s one my favorites to play and being my own is probably why. Go for it and have fun.

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That’s part of the fun! Of course, there are a few iconic songs where a cover needs to nail the baseline - you can’t really ad-lib over Queen’s Under Pressure or Another One Bites The Dust, but for most songs, the average punter isn’t going to know you’re doing your own thing, providing you keep the groove going and play the root on the 1 :sunglasses:

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That’s true. Ozarks Mountain Daredevils “If You Want To Get To Heaven” has a really cool bassline that would be a shame to ignore.