10
November Ezine Little Miss Honky Tonk
November EzineLittle Miss Honky Tonk
2 | Free How To Play Bass Ezine | November 2016 | www.how-to-play-bass.com
LITTLE MISS HONKY TONK by BROOKS AND DUNN
Our free tutorial this month touches on something we’ve been doing in First Bass And Beyond recently...and that’s exploring classic country and what is ubiquitously known as ‘new country.’
This tutorial is a look at a tune by some of the stars of ‘new country’ - Brooks And Dunn. And the tune we’re looking at - Little Miss Honky Tonk - is a
straight 8th note rocker.
When we check out how to program this in Band In A Box you’ll see the affiliation this has to the blues. Though it’s not strictly a blues progres-sion, the 16 bar verse progression could easily be lifted and turned into a blues.
Let’s get started. There is a big ‘intro’ lots of held chords and the like. For the bass we’re just playing the root note of the tune - which is Bb. The tutorial really gets started with the first verse. The verse doesn’t come in until Bar 3:
3 | Free How To Play Bass Ezine | November 2016 | www.how-to-play-bass.com
Verse 2 - which is up next - is very similar but the bass is present throughout in this verse. And there’s a transition to the bridge at the end too which makes it different:
4 | Free How To Play Bass Ezine | November 2016 | www.how-to-play-bass.com
The 8 bar bridge looks like this:
5 | Free How To Play Bass Ezine | November 2016 | www.how-to-play-bass.com
Next up is the solo. This is done on the same chord progression as the verse - with some mi-nor differences in the chords and the bass line:
6 | Free How To Play Bass Ezine | November 2016 | www.how-to-play-bass.com
After the solo we’ve got Verse 3. This is for all intents and purposes iden-tical to Verse 2 - so repeat Verse 2 for this verse.
7 | Free How To Play Bass Ezine | November 2016 | www.how-to-play-bass.com
This leads to the second bridge. This is almost identical to the first bridge - but the last two bars are subtly different.
So here’s what Bridge 2 looks like:
Bridge 2 cleverly transitions directly to the outro - and that looks like this:
8 | Free How To Play Bass Ezine | November 2016 | www.how-to-play-bass.com
9 | Free How To Play Bass Ezine | November 2016 | www.how-to-play-bass.com
How To Program The Sections In Band In A Box
If you want to isolate the sections in Band In A box so that you’ve got some chordal backing or a chordal metronome to practice with, here’s what you need to do:
1. Set key to Bb
2. Aim for performance tempo to be around 150 BPM.
3. Choose a style for practice. For a band style I used the Rockabilly 165 BPM band with soloist and then muted the soloist.
4. Make sure the bass is muted!
There are three main sections to program. The first section is the verse:
This progression is also used for Verse 2 and the solo with minor differ-ences. For Verse 2 (and Verse 3) the chord that the verse leads towards is an Eb chord. And for the solo the bass line doesn’t imply the Bb6/D chord in Bar 10 so you could just keep that as a Bb6 chord.
The 8 bar bridge looks like this when programmed:
10 | Free How To Play Bass Ezine | November 2016 | www.how-to-play-bass.com
And the 16 bar outro is the only other section to program:
