Thursday, September 11, 2008

Stanley Clarke's School Days - Bass Playing History

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The 1976 release of Stanley Clarke's "School Days" album and the title track changed the way people looked at the potential roll of bass players forever. While the main riff is not particularly difficult to play, it was ground breaking in that Stanley took the part of bass player playing bar chords and playing the part of rhythm guitarist while still holding done the bottom. This is a great tune to learn if you are into looping as you can play the complete tune with just a drummer. I have only posted the main riff here but check out a reasonably complete tab at 911 Tabs.

|--9--6--4-4-2-2-4/6\-4-4--2-2-4/6\--4-4-5-2---|
|--7--4--2-2-0-0-------2-2--0-0--------2-2-5-2---|
|------------------------------------------------------|
|------------------------------------------------------|

Here are a couple of different videos of Stanley just killing this. Note that he does put a different twist on this depending on who he plays with. Don't let him fool you standard 4 string players as he usually plays this on his tenor bass tuned A-D-G-C.

This first video is from the David Letterman Show with the Will Lee Band....I mean Paul Schaffer's Band.



Here is a version from the 2007 North Sea Jazz Festival. Check out how he does a different opening giving us a lesson in chord inversions.



And of course the most popular version with well over one million hits on You Tube is this one with Marcus Miller and Victor Wooten. This is where SMV got it's start.

3 comments:

Me said...

Wow....just wow...

Me-Me King said...

Excellent post! Looooove Stanley Clarke's "Lopsy Lu" and "Vulcan Princess."

Anonymous said...

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