“Rather Be” helped to propel Clean Bandit’s blend of electronic and classical music into the mainstream, gaining the group considerable international chart success and earning them multiple awards, including a Grammy.

Forgive me for sounding jaded, but most successful dance-pop crossover hits feature dull, repetitive bass parts that – once the song becomes a regular feature of your wedding band’s set list – becomes deeply tedious to perform. Not so with “Rather Be”; I’m not claiming it’s my favourite song, but I get to use a pick and an octave pedal in order to steal everything that I can from the synth part on the recording:

Clean Bandit – “Rather Be” bass transcription PDF

The high point for me is the second verse synth line – here, I opt for a 50/50 mix of wet/dry signal combined with a pick and palm muting to get close to the tone and articulation of the original part.

As much as I strive not to be that guy who evangelises about certain items of equipment, I do find that the 3 Leaf Audio Octabvre’s ability to switch between two octave sounds without any knob-twiddling a very useful feature when I have to gig songs such as “Rather Be” and “Runaway Baby” which benefit from having two different settings.