Bass Lesson – Gunman by Them Crooked Vultures

8 Comments


Here’s my transcription w/ tab:

PDF Version

Or if you can’t view PDFs:

Page 1
Page 2
Page 3
Page 4
Page 5

We first see the main verse groove, the one that I go over, in the 5th bar. The rest of the sections should be labeled fairly clearly.

Oh, and I used Guitar Pro 5 to transcribe the song, which isn’t exactly a great notation program, but it’s the only one I could find that does tabs and standard notation. Anyway, the repeats in GP are kind of weird -- instead of meaning “repeat x times”, they mean “play x times”. For those of you who are new to standard notation, when you usually see repeat bars with a “x 3” after them, that means you play the section once, then repeat it three mores times, and you end up playing the section for four times. GP does it a bit differently, and that “x3” just means “play this section three times”.

I hope you find this helpful!

8 Comments

  1. Thanks, was a really useful lesson. Clearly explained everything and the transcription provided is fantastic.

  2. Glad you liked it!

    Thanks for the feed back 🙂

  3. I’m glad I found this guide. You nailed it, and it helped me quite a bit.. thanks!

  4. You’re welcome 🙂

    John Paul Jones is great and this album has a lot of awesome bass lines. Have you checked out Reptiles? I was half-way done transcribing it, but the file got lost when my harddrive crashed 🙁

  5. Yea, I have the entire album. The line up of members make the band so unique. I managed to get Gunman down, and I’m really digging Bandoliers (although I’ve never been one to transcribe songs by ear, not that talented :P). Reptiles has an awesome bass line too.. JPJ is perfect for the band. Sucks that your HDD crashed, I could’ve done with another transcription 😛

    Thanks again 🙂

  6. Yeah, it’s a bummer that I lost those files. If I ever get around to doing more TCV transcprtions, I’ll be sure to post them.

    I saw in a Dave Grohl interview a year ago that they were planning on putting out a second album at some point. I haven’t heard anything else about it, but it would be awesome to hear what else those guys come up with!

  7. Hey I happened upon this. Love TCV! And you definitely nailed this! If this was cake, I’d get fat off this. Keep up the great work. You’re a king!

  8. Great post however I was wanting to know if you could write a litte more on this topic? I’d be very thankful if you could elaborate a little bit further. Kudos!

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