Song 1 - "Another Brick in the Wall" by Pink Floyd

Song: Another Brick in the Wall
Artist: Pink Floyd
Tuning: DADG

Spotify link

5-String Tab Conversion by @enkhiel is here.

Tips

1: The first note that is a long note plays for 8 beats (2 bars) before muting it.

2: David Gilmour switches from single notes in his solo to chords in the last bar of the 7x repeated section. Listen for this to know when to move past the repeat.

For a backing track with bass removed, please contact @gcancella

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Please remember when you get into this one that it is tuned to DADG, so you will need to drop your E-string (lowest & largest string) down to a D pitch. Don’t worry, there are only 4 songs out of the 50 that you need to change the tuning on. We just happen to be starting with one of them!

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Hi everyone,

Here goes…I had actually already recorded this one. The video is ever so slightly out of sync with the audio, and I was using my webcam so the quality isn’t great, but I’m still pleased with it :slight_smile:

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Sorry everyone, just realised we aren’t starting until March 8th…i jumped the gun a bit :slight_smile:

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That’s awesome Matt! Well done and thanks for sharing. Reminds me how much of a good tune this song is. As a reward, you can now return to EADG tuning. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

BTW, I like the tone you are getting out of that bass/setup.

One thing I’d mention is that I personally like to keep my strap on when I play sitting down. I find that it helps support the neck and frees up my hand from supporting the neck while I play. I also try to maintain the same height when playing or sitting for consistency. However, when you took your left hand off at the end, your bass was still floating in the same position, so it seems to be perfectly balanced. You seem to have a well trained bass! :slight_smile:

Anyway, great job!

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Not a problem at all. In fact, I think it’s good for people to see your video early. It shows them this isn’t as bad as they may think. It shows them the song isn’t super hard and I think it gives people encouragement to record themselves too. I told my guitarist I was playing a Pink Floyd song to start with and he thought it would be really hard. That’s because he’s thinking of the guitar part of Pink Floyd. David Gilmour can be a beast in some of the songs (especially his solos). However, the bass parts tend to sit nicely in a groove on their more popular songs (like this one and Money), though Pink Floyd has a large variety in song styles of course.

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Hi

Thanks for that, it took a few goes to get comfortable with it.

I usually download a backing track minus the bass, then record it in my DAW (Cakwalk), and then play it in the background while I record the video.

You’re right about the strap !! Tbh I do normally put it on, my other bass has some serious neck dive, but forgot on this take…a good reminder to put it on.

Looking forward to seeing everyone else’s efforts on this one and the rest :slight_smile:

Cheers
Matt

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So it sounds like you have a separate audio and video track? If that’s the case and you want to sync it up better for future videos check out my post here. I had a play with the software and it works well for this (and is free). Only do that if it bugs you though. I personally don’t mind people’s videos being a bit out of sync. We’re bassists, not movie makers! :slightly_smiling_face:

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Great to see this kicking off!

Nice job @MattHinchliffe! Noted a few tempo issues here and there but nothing to worry too much. The red light syndrome is a real thing!

What backing track did you use?

Overall, great job!

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Great job @MattHinchliffe! Very relaxed sound.
Looking forward to everyone’s contribution.

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This is so good! I’ll be happy if I can play half as well and look half as cool as you! :sunglasses:

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Thanks for that, yeah I get the tempo issues looking back on it, I’ll keep trying :slight_smile:

I used the custom backing track from www.karaoke-version.co.uk. I’ve downloaded quite a few up to now and they are all pretty good covers.

Cheers
Matthew

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Yeah I have a separate audio and video track, so I try to give myself a cue in the video so I know where to start the sync, I can usually get it quite close, but sometimes its out by a little bit…but as you say I’m aiming to be more Jaco Pastorius than Steven Spielberg haha :slightly_smiling_face:

I’ve been using Open Shot to do my video editing which works pretty well, but I’ll certainly check out Lightworks.

Thanks
Matthew

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alright, to get hyped I just ordered a Behringer UMC404 for recording and transcribed Joshs Tabulator to a 5-string i case anyone is interested. I hope that I got everything correct if not, please let me know.

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Looks good to me… Good luck!

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The hardest thing I’m finding about learning the song is knowing when that 7x repeat section ends… I lose count when I’m thinking about what I’m playing. I’m trying to use audio cues, but I’m not always 100% with them either.

Other than that, the hardest thing (so far) has been figuring out how to record my attempt - I have everything hooked up, but am not getting any input in the DAW. I’m sure it’s simple - I’m just not setting something up right… n00b issues… And I haven’t even tried figuring out the video portion yet. :slight_smile:

I’ve enjoyed learning this song though, as it’s up there in my favorite albums and it was one of the songs that I would hear on the radio and think “I really should learn to play that bass that’s been sitting in my basement for 10 years”. And now I can (mostly) play it - not perfectly, but passable. And I’m not even a badass™ yet! :slight_smile:

Looking forward to seeing everyone’s versions!

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For remembering the 7x section, I think that will be a challenge for all of us. I’m going to try and count each section in my head, but we’ll see how it goes. I know this song very well as Pink Floyd is one of my favorite bands, so I might just feel it. We’ll have to see. But you are right that keeping track of where you are in a song is one of those challenges of learning a full song as opposed to just a riff in a song. Most songs follow a traditional pattern (with some variances here and there) that makes this easier to do, but then you get others like this one that break that a bit more than average.

While we’re on song construction, I’ve just made a separate thread here to talk about that as it will probably help some people with these challenges.

For the DAW issue. This is hard to diagnose. But when I was first connecting mine, I had to do a few things to get it to work. Firstly, I had to change the input to my DAI as it defaulted to my webcam mic. Then it was trying to blend both channels (mic _ bass in my instance) on my DAI together, so I had to tell it to stop doing that. Then when I made a track there was Guitar/Bass, which seemed the logical choice to me, and Amp. Turns out Guitar/Bass is more for like a MIDI thing and not an actual Guitar/Bass, so Amp was the right one in my DAW. Anyway, there are tons of people around here that are great with DAWs and recording. There are many threads on the topic if you want to add to those or make your own. Or, hop on Discord and have a conversation there about it.

I’m sure you’ll nail this song. Keep it going. :slight_smile:

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I decided to just have a dry run of the song (close enough to Monday) :slight_smile:

One thing tripped me up because, because I forgot about music notation (embarrassing since I used to play piano and violin…). The first big section repeats once. On the first section you play the bit that says “1.” and then start at the beginning of the tab again, but on the second time around, you skip that “1.” bit and go straight to the bit that says “2.”. See this section below.

Hope that makes sense. The rest just requires practice for me. It’s quite repetitive, so I think everyone will be able to do this one. I’m very familiar with this song, so luckily I can just sense when the end of the guitar solo is coming (so don’t have to count the 7x repeat). If you get familiar with the guitar solo and when it is about to end, that will help you out.

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For me the bit around / after the slide is most challenging. I just never know where I am. I guess I really need to count this out and write down some clues from the lyrics.

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image

What’s your take on this tied note? I was expecting to have a note representation after the tie. And the whole rest just adds to the confusion

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