Bass Transcription: Clean Bandit – ‘Rather Be’

Every once in a while, the singles charts provide you with a gift like Rather Be: a banal pop/dance hit certain to appear on set lists for at least the next three years that gives bassists licence to let rip and steal everything possible from the synth player (one key to maintaining sanity when repeatedly being required to perform music that is not to your taste is to find the bright spots wherever possible).

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.