Rio!

Last week, I tried getting through just one bar of a tab for Duran Duran's "Rio".  Before I go any further, indulge me this explanation.

Though Duran Duran is considered a pop or pretty-boy band, the musicianship was considerable - especially with the guitarist (Andy Taylor) and bassist (John Taylor).  It was, in fact, while listening to Duran Duran songs in my youth that I first really noticed the bass guitar and found paying more attention to it.  John Taylor played some seriously funky lines that belied the seeming simplicity of the songs.  The reasons so many of their songs shone so brightly were the bass lines and guitar tracks.

So, now that I'm really making a go of the bass, I want to see if I can play some of those songs and decided to start with "Rio".  Reading the tabs made me fairly ill.  I couldn't figure out what notes went where and how on Earth I could make it sound right.  So I searched online for video lessons of the song.

There were a few.  And watching them was humbling.  I felt quite far from being able to play like that.  All sorts of muting the strings and moving the left hand all over the fret board.  Oy vey.  that was when I decided I needed to learn more about scales and intervals.  I somehow felt like I just needed to practice to create some muscle memory so that moving around the fret board that quickly would be less of a problem.

On to tonight.  Went through several pages of a book dedicated to practicing chord intervals and repeated them over and over for about 30 minutes.  Fairly boring stuff but I saw progress and that kept me going.  But after 30 minutes, I felt like I'd had enough for one night and went back to playing songs.  Got through my usuals and saw a marked improvement in my smoothness playing "I Got You (I Feel Good)" and "Don't Stop Believing".  So I decided to go back to Rio and see what I could make of it and, guess what...I got through the 1st 2 measures.  Then I got through 4 and then a whole verse.  I quit while I was ahead and ended my session without getting into the chorus.

Granted, it wasn't the smoothest playing in the universe, but what a feeling of accomplishment.  I keep seeing progress and it's keeping me going.

Up next:

• More practice with intervals and maybe scales
• Continued improvement with "Rio"
• Trying to come up with a bass line for Skika's song called "Traveling Capo"