Bass Nation

Happy New Year everybody! I was looking for something a little more interesting to post about today, but since it is New Years Day and all, how about New Years Day by U2? U2 are not a band who are known for incredible bass. I don’t think a lot of casual listeners could even name their bass player (it’s Larry Mullen Adam Clayton) though I knew this girl in high school who had the biggest crush on him and if I was a little bit smarter with the ladies back then I would have whipped out a little With or Without You serenade and worked it. But anyway, while Adam doesn’t do the kind of bass gymnastics of a Claypool or a Clarke or a Levin, he is incredibly solid and gives The Edge plenty of space to get nuts with the guitar. On With or Without You, it’s mostly bass, and it’s all just quarter notes on the root note of the four chord progression over and over again. Not an exciting bassline to play at all, but its simplicity makes the song.

So New Years Day as you can imagine is not an intricate song to play. There are exactly 9 notes in the whole song. But don’t let the simplicity fool you. This one is all about keeping an interesting rhythm. Here’s the tab and here’s the song on YouTube without any video distraction.

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