This week I received news from our friend Simon Gilman, who contributed 9 years ago (tempus fugit!) with his own bass transcriptions of Yes and Chris’ songs, in which I had played the (audio) bassline.
This time, Simon has written another set of transcriptions using my videos as reference, and was kind enough to share them again with us, this time in pdf format! So, without further ado, here they are!
Scottish musician Steve Glasgow has made incredible bass transcriptions from several artists, including YES.
Besides downloading the scores and tabs, you can read Steve’s in-depth analysis of the basslines, which are very interesting and show the dedication and valuable work of this fine musician.
This clip includes the same audio that I recorded in 2008. The bass audio production was improved and slightly over-mixed to make it more audible. Youtube’s audio compression is much better than 2 years ago and that largely improved the results. Thank you very much Simon Gilman for another excellent contribution with the transcription!
This is the first contribution from Simon Gilman, who made his bass transcription of Astral Traveller.
I added the same audio of my original audio bassline from 2008, with a slightly louder bass in the mix.
Hopefully it will sound a bit better (along with the apparently better audio encoding of YouTube) .
November is the Fragile month! This was my first attempt to transcribe and play Heart of the Sunrise back in 2003. Apart from the Rickenbacker 4001CS connected to the Sansamp DI, I used a Boss TR-2 Tremolo pedal.
I’ve been very busy for the past weeks working on my Music, also working with a few other live projects. On the top of that my regular job also requested more time, so I haven’t had the chance to upload something new. In exchange, I am uploading something old :). This is from 2002 (if I am not mislead by the files dates) when I joined efforts with Frenchman Lionel Gibaudan, working together on a set of transcriptions of Chris’ basslines, to which I added an mp3 audio file with bass only. This happened after an invitation from Chris’ former site webmaster. Eventually I was told that Chris himself suggested him to include the mp3 files along with the transcriptions online. I was really overwhelmed with that gesture of kindness from Chris. I am sure he must be an incredible person, beyond the little I know, and before the musician he is.
So, I am making a video out of the transcription really… no special effects this time :) But I will put the transcription soon available for you at miguelbass.com. The bass used was my Fiesta Red Fender Jazz – originally, Chris didn’t use the Rickenbacker, he played the song on his white MPC Electra which had the Flanger effect incorporated on the bass itself. I used my old Boss ME-6B multi-effect pedal-board. IIRC, the bass was plugged into the ME-6B, onto the Sansamp. The strings were Rotosounds and they were new – that was good cause the tone has got plenty of harmonics and it makes the Flanger shine as it should.
The transcription – Again, it’s impossible to transcribe everything – it never is enough to replace the actual hearing of the bassline, but I still think it’s the notation that works best for me. I understand a lot of you may prefer tablature. This is just me playing the bass and no original recording at all. I can try to upload the song mixed-in later, if you think it’s a good idea! I haven’t re-checked the notes all these years later, so maybe I would hear (and play) something else, so there you go… I tried to adapt the bass pedal notation using the notation for piano pedals. I know that this, formally, doesn’t exist. This with other “improvisations” doesn’t make this transcription absolutely compliant with the standard notation, so please bare with it :)
My friends, I hope you enjoy the material, that’s what I came up with for now. As I said, I’ve been busy somewhere else and you know how the title of the song says…
