Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

This may have been posted before---sorry in advance if it has. Go to Squire's website and click on Gallery---there are three songs where you can hear the solo bass for the entire tracks, including Heart of the Sunrise, Siberian Khatru and Tempus Fugit. All-time great performances.

Pretty awesome, I must say! Nothing like a Ric, especially played by Squire!

http://chrissquire.com/
Click on "Gallery"

Er, it's not him. It's some guy called Miguel.
He has a site that has solo bass interpretations for a good portion of the Yes back catalogue. Does anyone have the link to his site? I can't remember it.

http://www.johngoodall.com/miguel/default.htm

Miguel is Portuguese. I exchanged a couple of e-mails with him a few months back. He plays a Chris Squire model, and he's quite good.

The best part is that his transcriptions are standard notation and not "tab". He even transcribed the bad notes!

At 16 I've spent most of my practice hours trying to learn Heart Of The Sunrise... When I found out about Miguel's site I gave it a try, and indeed I had some wrong notes. Then I had to iron out my mistakes, not easy after playing it wrong for 26 years... but he's got it right.

Squire's stuff is easy.

Who can play 'YYZ'?

(raising hand)

I can play E, G, A. Does that count?

"Gates of Delirium" baby! there's a bunch of tough ones...for both guys.

Hey, I love 'em both (Chris is my favourite player), but technically I never thought either was really better than the other (although Chris's lines tax my memory more!). And I love them cause they both write amazing lines and have phenomenal bass sounds and play some of the best music I've ever heard; in terms of difficulty I'd be thinking more Jeff Berlin,Wooten, Cairon et al, or Niels Henning Orsted Pedersen on upright! (I always spell his name wrong..); they all leave Chris and Geddy for dead. I'll take C&G every time though (well 95% of the time anyway; Niels really is something else!)

BTW I could play YYZ last time I tried (about 20 years ago!). Does that count?

Playing stuff from Yes' repertoire puts a smile on my face, especially 'On The Silent Wings Of Freedom.'

However, YYZ is one of *THE* few bass tracks that makes the top row of my teeth come over my bottom lip. It's so much FUN to play. I love it.

I spend most of my time writing my own stuff and have for many years, so I don't really get to spend much time learning other people's lines any more. I hate it when people say "play me a line I know..." cause I can't! I can remember about 4 Yes lines and about half a dozen Motorhead/Hawkwind, a couple of Stanley/Jaco, and that's about it. Oh, and some Bow Wow Wow and Jamiroquai. Mind you, sometimes I can't even remember the ones I wrote

yyz is all fast little chops if you can figure them out its easy from there, nobody is realy that tough its just there style of playing.geddy and chris dont have to play our stuff otherwise they might be dumbfounded.its there original stuff we our trying to copy.

"... Squire's stuff is easy. Who can play 'YYZ'?"

LOL... well it wasn't so easy when I was 16 and it was only my 2nd year playing bass!

My basses at the time (let's see... 1978) were a Japanese made J copy that I had strung with heavy gauge flats (Guild brand with G=.050) which resulted in Jamerson-like action, and a Hofner 500/1 with Romanian made strings (two gauges: thin for the G and D, thick for the A and E). I challenge anyone to play Squire (or Geddy) lines with that setup...

I guess I got lucky. I learnt from a very early age. (I think I was around 9.)

My dad's an ex-pro, but he's recently started to play again professionally.

He taught me the basics, and it was up to me from there, I guess. I picked it up as I went along.

The one thing he always said to me that really stuck in my mind:

The Little Finger - Ignore at your peril!

Even when I was really young with small hands, the pain I went through to help get my little finger to gain strength and flexibility... oww.

One mistake a lot of "prog heads" fall into is comparing musicians soley on their technical proficiency. While Jaco and Jeff and Stanley and Victor are all great players who can cram the most notes into a measure, it's the quality and not the quantity of notes being played that make the player and more importantly the song "work". While I can play a lot of Chris,Geddy's and Wetton's stuff, THEY are the ones who actually wrote those lines to go with those songs. Back-engineering something is easy...coming up with it in the first place is the true genius.