Motown, R&B song written and produced by Smokey Robinson and Ronald White. Here’s my take on My Girl. My F and G where low on recording just noticed it.
I noticed some distortion on the low notes, like the gain was too high or it was a phone mic, but they didn’t sound out of place to me. I don’t have the perfect ear though.
Just want to mention that there are 2 backing tracks available for this song. Since the bass is the intro, the normal “bassless” version may be hard to sync the start, so @John_E (IIRC) added a count-in. Both versions are available - use whichever one you’re comfortable with…
Yes.
Here is a video that can help.
A ghost note can be plucked, slapped, popped, multiple fingers being forced onto the string over the pick up, with a slight delay before plucking the next note, and or with the fretting hand even (probably other ways, like a pick, where you pick the dead string before, after or in between notes), and they can be very tricky to play.
Sometimes, you may be playing only ghost notes, with no fretted notes at all.
On tabs, they are usually written as an “x” on the string to play it on, before, after, or between two fret numbers.
I.e.:
x 7 9 or x x 7
7 9 x or 9 x x
7 x 9 or 7 x x 9
They can also be on a different string then the fretted note(s).
(Josh shows how to do this on a slap bass line in his tutorial on his personal YouTube channel for RATM “Take the Power Back”, if interested you can find it pretty easily)
One from SBL. There is a part two, possibly more you will see when watching this one.
@T_dub yeah I am working Mark’s drills, my issue is the ghost notes down on frets 1-3, especially on my CS P with the super heavy La Bellas. Getting the muting just right is quite difficult down there and the bigger strings don’t help, they tend to ring anyway. And since on this song, most of the ‘correct muting’ is on fret 1 of of the E and 3 of the A strings, it’s a challenge. Muting up higher on the strings seems easier as you can stop the string voicing a lot easier.
Rocco Prestia of Tower of Power was the king of ghost notes. I have a songbook of their songs (mostly impossible to play at this point, but a goal none the less) and there are ghost notes everywhere.
This is one of those ‘hey live instructor, help me with this’ things on my list (see my other post/rant about live instruction).strong text
Do you use multiple fingers across the strings when you play the ghost notes?
Playing with a single finger, especially near frets, makes it more likely to play the harmonic instead of a deadened ghost note, this is why many players, if not most will use all 4 fingers (or more then one finger) for ghost notes of many types.
I am taking your description of “ String Voicing” to mean “Harmonic”, is the reason I bring this up.
Well it’s been a little over 7 months since I first picked up the Bass and started the B2B course. Both decisions were (if I may be so immodest) excellent ones. Thanks again to @JT for organizing this challenge.
By far the biggest improvement in my playing has been forcing myself to learn a new song every 2 weeks. Hands down the best, for my style of learning. For anyone who’s one the fence about this; give it a go. You might even like it!