Basslines

Lesson goal: start to be able to pick out a bassline in a piece of music and choose and familiarize yourself with a transcribing software

As of now we have learnt to transcribe melodies and rhythms. But music so often has so much more to it. Today we will start to learn to transcribe harmony. Harmony can be thought of as melodic content that is different from the melody of a piece of music. In this vein, one of the most important elements of a piece of music is the bassline, the lowest sounding voice/instrument. So we will start from the ground up – starting this week with learning to transcribe a bassline and next week the remaining harmony. 
For many of us one of the most difficult things to do when transcribing a piece of music is isolated listening. It is often difficult to hear anything other than the main melody when actively listening to a piece of music. As isolated listening will be essential from this point forward, if you feel you can’t hear anything but the main melody when you actively listen to music, here are a few ways to

Improve your isolated listening

1. Attend as many concerts as you can – chamber music is great but really any ensemble with a decent mix and good audio quality is fine – choose one instrument (try not to choose the lead instrument/singer, or drums/percussion) and watch and listen to that instrument only for the whole concert. Think about what that instrument is doing – what role does it play? Is it providing accompaniment for the rest of the instruments? Is it playing a rhythmic ostinato? What range is it playing in?
2. Listen to these tracks:Rumba Calzada – Bongo Thing
   Audio 4.1
   

   
   Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra – Symphony No 8, II, Poco Adagio (Mahler)
   Audio 4.2
   

   
   Queen – Under Pressure
   Audio 4.3
   

   
   In each of these tracks, instruments enter one by one. Choose one instrument and follow it from its entrance until the end of the song. Repeat with another instrument. For the symphony it would be useful to also follow along the score. Full recordings in supplement material.

3. Watch youtube videos of concerts and do as in 1. Use the video to try to see what one instrument is doing. Make sure that the video has good audio quality.
4. Practice score following. Choose a piece of classical music (public domain) that you like listening to a lot. Again chamber music with 3-5 instruments is best. Download a score from IMSPL or find a recording on youtube with a (scrolling) score. Choose one instrument and listen to the piece whilst following that instrument in the score.
   Demo 4.1 Score following with: Beaux Arts Trio – Piano Trio No. 1 in D minor(Felix Mendelssohn)

As much as practicing isolated listening helps, picking out the bassline to some pieces of music can still be very difficult. Luckily we have technology to assist us in such cases. The two main tools that we can use to help us are an equalizer and a pitch shifter.

EQ

An equalizer can be useful to filter out unwanted frequencies. Many audio players like Windows Media Player or VLC Media Player have them built in and so does all software mentioned in lesson 1 (some exceptions involving audipo and anytune). First try using the equalizer to cut out high end frequencies. A configuration like this (fig 1) would be a good start. Play with the sliders until you find an eq that works for you. Remember though that each genre and actually each song is different and may require a slightly different treatment.
EQ 1:

Pitch Shifter

If you are still having difficulties hearing the bassline an even more useful tool is a pitch shifter. All software mentioned in Lesson 1 includes a pitch shifter. So try at it with the pitch shifted up first 12 then (if the software supports it) 24 semitones. Aside from having the comic effect of singers sounding funny like these guys basslines will often become much clearer and will be in a range that is easier to pick them out. Make sure that if you shift the pitch you adjust the EQ’s accordingly.  So after a pitch shift up one octave, EQ 1 would be adjusted thus:
EQ 2:


Demo 4.2 EQ, Pitch Shift, Anytune

For this course, although we will avoid such instances, you may come across some pieces of music in which even after transposing up an octave or two and adding eqs the bassline is unclear and hard to hear:

Erykah Badu –  Appletree
Audio 4.4

In this piece it is best to try to play along (in the same octave) to the recording and decide which notes sound best for you. With good headphones/speakers (which I remind you are a must) you will also notice a sub bass that comes every 4 bars. Technically since it is the lowest sounding note it is part of the ‘bassline’ but most people would consider it sound design and not as part of the bassline.

Also the bass instrument may play many fills and variations. At the moment we are not so interested in these fills and variations but more so the bass notes of every chord – which will usually fall on the downbeat of every bar or at the start of every chord change. So it is best to create a reduction of the bass part. To do so start by

transcribing the bassline:


then listen for the harmonic rhythm:

Demo 4.3 Harmonic Rhythm (how often chords change)

and include one bass note for each chord:

Assignment 4.1: For the specified time interval, transcribe the bassline to the following pieces of music: 

1. Herbie Hancock – Chameleon 0.00-0.12 Assignment 4.1.1
2. The Steve Miller Band – The Joker 0.00 – 0.13 Assignment 4.1.2
3. Led Zeppelin- Dazed and Confused 0.00 – 0.18 Assignment 4.1.3
4. The White Stripes – Seven Nation Army 0.00 – 0.10 Assignment 4.1.4
5. D’Angelo – Brown Sugar 0.15 – 0.27 Assignment 4.1.5
6. Oscar Peterson – Surrey With The Fringe On Top 0.00 – 0.28 Assignment 4.1.6 How much harder is it to hear the bassline when the piano comes in? 

Additionally, for The Steve Miller Band – The Joker create a reduction of the bassline.