Bass Transcription: Clean Bandit – ‘Rather Be’

‘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.