Double Bass transcriptions of standards?

[corinpills]

Hey all my uprighteous brethren. I usually post in the electric bass forums, but I was hoping of you might advise me on this. Could you recommend a source of transcriptions of bass lines for some obvious jazz standards? Things like "It Had To Be You" "The Way You Look Tonight"- the super well- known ones such as played in a wedding band. Thanks in advance.

 

[Sean Riddle]

Two places to start.

 

[Tom Lane]

Try Jamey Aebersold's jazzbooks.com site. I think there's transcriptions of Rufus and John Goldsby, maybe others, and check out Mike Downes book; it has 12 transcriptions of Rhythm Changes bass lines and I think 12 blues too.

 

[DoubleMIDI]

But after you studied things on paper the best way is to try the transcriptions yourself.

There are so many aids for that now like slower playing without pitch differences.
If it is hard to do try to notate the rhythm first and then do the pitches. That needs time but is worth doing.

I'm feeling the written stuff is too much educationally inspired (even during playing the music) to be real.
On the other hand some transcriptions might be closely related to an instrument like the transcriptions at the end of Oscar Stagnaros Latin Bass Book (which is about Cuban-based music, not Brazilian) which were played on a bass guitar and don't work identically on a double bass (but with some reductions they might do).

 

[Ed Fuqua]

What are you going to be using this for?

 

[corinpills]

What are you going to be using this for?

Helping an otherwise strong bass player navigate a few popular standards well enough for a wedding band. Not me, I play guitar in this band.

 

[Ed Fuqua]

The problem with using transcriptions of a specific performance is that everybody else in the band is going to have to play that specific arrangement which, if the band is just calling standards to play head arrangements, isn't gonna happen. It's only going to get him/her so far, so I hope they're doing some other work too...