PERFORMANCE NOTES
Vulfpeck
Tips on playing this issue’s three transcribed songs.
OBVIOUSLY INSPIRED BY “Teen Town,” that enduringly popular midSeventies jazz-fusion instrumental composed by legendary fingerstyle electric bassist Jaco Pastorius and famously recorded by Weather Report, this fun, funky tune (a Vupfleck fan favorite that entire audiences scat sing along to at their shows) is similarly built around a nimble and highly syncopated melodic bass line, smoothly and flawlessly performed by bassist Joe Dart. To achieve the crisp articulation in his note attacks and nasal-y tone, Dart picks the strings near the bridge of his Fender Jazz Bass, resting his thumb on the bridge pickup or low E string (for stability and a close tactile point of reference) as he efficiently alternate picks the strings with machine-like precision, using his index and middle fingers and small, economical movements.
Dart kicks the song off by playing steady streams or repeating root notes in a super-tight 16th-note rhythm, which serve as a warm up for the highly contoured melody that commences at section B (bar 14), which incorporates some challenging string crosses and “holes of silence,” via precisely placed eighth and 16th rests. Entering at section C (bar 30), guitarist Cory Wong joins in, octave doubling the Bass Fig. 1 melodic theme in lock-step fashion. Using a clean, “position 4” Strat tone (middle and neck pickups), Wong performs the line with a pick, using alternate picking. And to keep things tight sounding, he employs some palm muting (P.M.), as well as fret-hand muting, for the rests and staccato articulations.
As the arrangement “opens up” at section E (bar 54), Wong proceeds to play his own independent “scratch strum” part, strumming a sequence of high-pitched two-note chords in a funky, Nile Rodgers/Prince-approved rhythm and groove, for which the pick hand stays in a perpetually flowing down-up-down-up strum motion, with a “phantom” upstroke occurring after each eighth-note. The “X” notes are performed by momentarily loosening your fingers’ grip on the strings without letting go of them, keeping them in place above the previously strummed chord.