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Wednesday, January 5, 2011

"While My Guitar Gently Weeps" Isolated Bass

Here's the isolated bass part from The Beatles classic "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" off of the their White album. Usually isolated bass parts are somewhat boring but not this one. Listen closely for a number of unconventional techniques from Sir Paul McCartney.

1) The sound of the bass is interesting in that it has a lot of treble and sounds very much like a guitar at times.

2) Likewise, the part is played like a guitar. Listen to the second verse (and beyond) where Paul actually plays chords on the bass.

3) The bass is exactly doubled by a clean guitar in chorus, and it's a somewhat intricate line which is sometimes a little stiff feeling and sometimes very loose.

4) The bass part keeps changing throughout the song. Maybe evolving is a better word. Check out the way Paul plays the last verse and adds the extra notes.

5) There's a clear mistake on the outro at about 4;37, but it's at the end of the fade so you never hear it on the record.



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5 comments:

Brad said...

If you listen closely near the end, around 4:36 you can hear a beeping metronome.

Luciano said...

Thanks for this!

Simon said...

Well, now we know who's reading your blog - EMI's takedown team! ;)

Still I got through Paul's, Ringo's and Eric's parts before they got removed ...

Anonymous said...

EMI took them down? That's aggravating. They were being viewed on this blog for educational purposes.
If you guys want to download youtube vids [ like the kids graduation etc.. ;-)], you can download them as .flv or mp4 files through various websites on the web. Here's one to get you started. http://keepvid.com/

o'bunny said...

Gosh, EMI, if you'd made the individual tracks available, I'd have gladly paid for them...

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