Another excellent job, @Lanny . . . well played 
Great to get together and work on old songs with old friends, too!
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Yes! Most people’s idea of “beginner songs” is way gnarlier than what I would teach to beginners, including the authors of that book. I’ve heard too many people faking their way through things because they don’t have the foundation to understanding the notes and rhythms (and articulation, and dynamics, etc…) they’re supposed to be playing.
Great covers everybody! And great idea @PeteP, I’ll put that badge together shortly. 
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From M9:L6, and the 50 songs book, “Roxanne”, by The Police. Some versions show palm muting/ghost notes for the intro and verse, so +1 for wanting to learn what that is. I like these syncopated notes a lot, they add some flavor to bass lines, but seem to be 5x harder to pinpoint. Played this one with a pick, it helped on the very fast chorus - speed still kicks my a$$, but in the real world, I guess there’s no gear icon to put things at 50% speed 
Here is the whole song with the bass removed, in case anyone else wants to give it a shot:
Cool backstory for this song, it was the first hit for The Police when they were still an unknown band.
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great @Vik , it’s not the easiest song as the track is pretty void sometimes, only you and the drum 
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Thanks for providing that jam track! Very cool.
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Some heavy grunge straight from the 90’s
Silverchair - Leave Me Out
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So, I don’t have much to share at the moment, but I was just reminded of this thread, and in a way, I actually did some covers today. And, I thought I need to share that at least
I had been on the road this week and not being able to play/practice for five days, and had in the meantime made contact to a drummer and a guitar player who I might get to jam with. They sent me some videos of their songs, which were recorded in the rehearsal room (and then they added some keyboard overdubs). You could practically not hear the bass in the recording, but that was just great as that meant I didn’t have to remove it using filters and EQs. So, in essence, these were great play-alongs!
And since they didn’t send me any chords or sheet music, the recordings were all I had to work with. Now, luckily it is melodious rock and the chord changes are not happening in a frenetic pace. I started with finding the roots and from those I deduced the key of the song, which then told me (hoping for diatonic relations) whether the roots belonged to a major, minor, dominant or half-diminished chord. Then, I mapped the structure of the songs, and then started to play along - first only roots and then starting to play more and more to get a feel for what fits, mostly using chord notes, but also trying scales here and there… That was a lot of fun, actually. Apart from playing the “right” notes, it becomes quite evident that you good bassline also leads from one chord to the next - very good learning experience!
So, I learned two new songs today, and developed my own basslines for them. (Again, those were not funk basslines, but slower melodic rock lines, but still…) Will be interesting to see what the guys say when I get to jam with them!!
And… if you are still here - thanks for reading
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Now, you know you’re not allowed to say things like this without (eventually) posting the covers?! 
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You are, of course, right @Vik Two things, though: a) I haven’t recorded what I came up with yet (it’s not an audition tape - I hope to jam with them in person), and b) I would need the OK from these guys to post their compositions…
Didn’t mean to be a tease - was on a high perhaps that I could spend some serious time today on music 
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yeah it would be cool to share those tracks 
if the guys from the band are ok of course
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As we say in Anglais “That’s my cup of tea…” 
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Hey fellow bassbuzzians ! here is my new cover, of an old song from the well-known Highway To Hell album. Back in the early 90’s, AC/DC has been the band that made me fall in love with music, so I have some particular attachement to this band.
Of course the video has been flagged in 1 second by Youtube but I believe I managed to find another way to share it. Not sure at all it will work with every computer/browser, please let me know ! Here it is :
AC/DC - Shot Down In Flames
One take, pure rock’n’roll style (even if it’s not perfect)
I think this bassline is very interesting for those who would like to learn and practice pick playing :
- It’s a pretty typical rock bass line, pure punchy chugging on 8th notes, no tricky or weird part
- It’s relatively fast for all-downstroke playing (which is the way Cliff Williams plays, and the way I played my cover) but nothing extreme, probably a good exercise
- It’s not fast at all for down-up playing, good exercise to learn and get familiar with this technique, very unique to pick playing
- The bassline is very simple, but leaves a lot of room for variations and all kind of personnal flavor
In its easiest version, the bassline can be summarized by those two patterns :
G-------------------------------------
D-------------------------------------
A-------------------5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5---
E---5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-------------------
and
G-----------------------------
D-----------------------------
A---------------5-5-3-3-3-3---
E---5-5-3-3-3-3---------------
Also if you’re interested, you might want to know that the album track’s pitch is a bit of, because of the 70’s recording methods, so I had to correct the pitch to make the song playable with standard tuning. If somebody would like to record a cover of this song (and of course in this case I would love to ear it 
), I realeased the backing track with this correction and the bass “removed” (or at least lowered as much as possible) ; you can download it here :
http://laurentberta.com/client/cover-basse/ACDC-ShotDownInFlames-bt-320.zip
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believe it or not but I don’t like at all cover bands I might do this if it’s a way to make money by playing music (because why not, after all - I have one good friend who do this for a living, that’s not the worst job !) but that’s not what I really want to do when playing with people.
About all my little covers, what I like is that it doesn’t take much time, it’s a fun and easy way to relax after a working day. Also it’s a way to practice the instrument by constantly changing from one song to another. and also it’s a way to practice recording and studio stuff, which I love.
But when I’ll decide to join/start a band again, we will have to do original songs for sure.
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Nice! Also how did you embed the audio player here? Or is that just a link to your site?
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yes it’s just an external link to an mp3 file, the forum embeds the player by itself. exact same thing for the video with an mp4 file !
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