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Hello everyone. My name is Kevin Greene and I am currently in the midst of
a project to revamp BlocParty.net’s “tab” section. For anyone who doesn’t
know, tablature is a method of transcribing music for an instrument (most
commonly guitar and bass) using fret and string numbers rather than
notes. Many of the tabs for Bloc Party’s songs under the “tab” section of the
website are links to outside tab sites with generic names like “ultimate
guitar”. I frankly find these sites to be terribly unreliable, especially for
music as complex as Bloc Party’s.
I am a bass player by nature so my first goal is to get versions up of all the
bass parts for Bloc Party’s songs, most likely including unreleased and
old songs. The guitar aspect will be quite a bit more difficult and some
songs I may just not be able to do at all, due to various effects on the
guitars and the mix in general on Bloc Party’s album that often puts the
guitar work in the background.
Bloc Party’s bassist goes by the name of Gordon Moakes. I’ve noted a
couple things about Gordon’s style of playing that might be important to
you if you think replication is the most sincere form of flattery. First of all,
Gordon plays a 4-string Fender bass, most likely a P-bass. Gordon tends
to play in the middle of the fret board, so as to get the meatiest tones out of
his bass. Therefore, when a note can be played in multiple places on the
neck I’ll usually put it in the middle. In the same vein, the upper G string is
often avoided in my tablature as it presents a brighter tone that often does
not match with Gordon’s dirty bassy sound. Basically there will be
occasions where the tab might have you moving around more than you
think is necessary but this is in order to keep to the trueness of the music.
Anyway, Gordon also plays entirely with his fingers. I didn’t believe this until
I saw it on the video of Bloc Party playing at Coachella. This is most
surprising because he gets such a steady consistent stroke that it sounds
like he’s playing with a pick. But he’s not. So get ready for some pain,
especially on 'Luno'. In terms of effects, he mostly just uses a straight
bass tone, but he occasionally uses what sounds like a very light bass
octavizer ('Positive Tension') and a compression/sustain pedal (tracks like
'Blue Light' and 'So Here We Are').
A very important note to make about my method of tabbing is that I use
subdivision. This is a method of breaking down a measure beyond the
quarter note pulse into either an 8th note or 16th note pulse. So instead of
counting "1 2 3 4", you would count "1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and", and count
each twice as fast. Get it? Subdivision is an extremely important and useful
part of music. It is especially useful if figuring out syncopated rhythms
(rhythms that take place off the beat) which are frequent in Bloc Party’s
style of post-punk. In my tablature I will generally have a certain number of
dashes per measure. This number more often than not will be 16 - in other
words each dash equals a 16th note/rest. So if you’re playing an 8th note
passage on any one string it would look something like this:
|8-8-8-8-8-8-8-8-|
Where the note is being played on "1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and".
This approach may seem complicated right now, but once you get the
hang of it, it will help you learn to play syncopated rhythms without
struggling to hear them on the recording (because that’s my job!). So keep
your eyes open for new accurate Bloc Party tabs.
a project to revamp BlocParty.net’s “tab” section. For anyone who doesn’t
know, tablature is a method of transcribing music for an instrument (most
commonly guitar and bass) using fret and string numbers rather than
notes. Many of the tabs for Bloc Party’s songs under the “tab” section of the
website are links to outside tab sites with generic names like “ultimate
guitar”. I frankly find these sites to be terribly unreliable, especially for
music as complex as Bloc Party’s.
I am a bass player by nature so my first goal is to get versions up of all the
bass parts for Bloc Party’s songs, most likely including unreleased and
old songs. The guitar aspect will be quite a bit more difficult and some
songs I may just not be able to do at all, due to various effects on the
guitars and the mix in general on Bloc Party’s album that often puts the
guitar work in the background.
Bloc Party’s bassist goes by the name of Gordon Moakes. I’ve noted a
couple things about Gordon’s style of playing that might be important to
you if you think replication is the most sincere form of flattery. First of all,
Gordon plays a 4-string Fender bass, most likely a P-bass. Gordon tends
to play in the middle of the fret board, so as to get the meatiest tones out of
his bass. Therefore, when a note can be played in multiple places on the
neck I’ll usually put it in the middle. In the same vein, the upper G string is
often avoided in my tablature as it presents a brighter tone that often does
not match with Gordon’s dirty bassy sound. Basically there will be
occasions where the tab might have you moving around more than you
think is necessary but this is in order to keep to the trueness of the music.
Anyway, Gordon also plays entirely with his fingers. I didn’t believe this until
I saw it on the video of Bloc Party playing at Coachella. This is most
surprising because he gets such a steady consistent stroke that it sounds
like he’s playing with a pick. But he’s not. So get ready for some pain,
especially on 'Luno'. In terms of effects, he mostly just uses a straight
bass tone, but he occasionally uses what sounds like a very light bass
octavizer ('Positive Tension') and a compression/sustain pedal (tracks like
'Blue Light' and 'So Here We Are').
A very important note to make about my method of tabbing is that I use
subdivision. This is a method of breaking down a measure beyond the
quarter note pulse into either an 8th note or 16th note pulse. So instead of
counting "1 2 3 4", you would count "1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and", and count
each twice as fast. Get it? Subdivision is an extremely important and useful
part of music. It is especially useful if figuring out syncopated rhythms
(rhythms that take place off the beat) which are frequent in Bloc Party’s
style of post-punk. In my tablature I will generally have a certain number of
dashes per measure. This number more often than not will be 16 - in other
words each dash equals a 16th note/rest. So if you’re playing an 8th note
passage on any one string it would look something like this:
|8-8-8-8-8-8-8-8-|
Where the note is being played on "1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and".
This approach may seem complicated right now, but once you get the
hang of it, it will help you learn to play syncopated rhythms without
struggling to hear them on the recording (because that’s my job!). So keep
your eyes open for new accurate Bloc Party tabs.
