Chords for Guitar Center Sessions: Billy Sheehan - Become a Better Bass Player

Learning a lot of songs can really help your songwriting.
Sometimes I just sit down and learn, put a record on that I love and learn the whole darn thing.
Learning Sgt.
Pepper's, front to back, guitar, bass and drums and anything else you can figure out.
It's gonna make you a better player, better songwriter, give you better ears,
better sense of melody and [Cm] taste and a brilliant record like that.
Or choose any of [F#] hundreds and hundreds of [D#m] brilliant records
or a record that you love to sit down and work it out and listen what the bass player is doing
and work out and get it exactly right.
Learn [Em] an Iron Maiden song.
_ _ [G#] _ _ [F#] _ _ _
_ _ [G#] _ _ [C#] It _ _
_ _ _ [C#] _ _ [G#] _ _ [B] _
_ [E] _ _ [C#] _ _ _ _ [F#] _
_ _ _ [E] _ _ _ _ _
[B] _ _ _ [F#] _ _ _ _ [F#m]
just gives you an idea melody-wise to how that fits in with the vocals
and it starts to make all kinds of [G#] sense.
So a lot of people disdain and look down at the idea of a copy band.
We're gonna be all original.
Great!
If you can launch and be all original band and be huge and awesome and amazing
and write great songs, man, I'm your [F#] biggest fan from the beginning.
But [Am] I don't think it hurts at all to learn a bunch of songs and [G] play it in a band.
You really get an idea of what do I do on bass here?
What did he do on that song?
A lot of times when we were writing Eat Him a Smile down at David Lee [E] Roth's basement,
down at me, [D#m] Steve and Greg, we'd be down there jamming away
and Dave would go, yeah, a little more like ZZ Top in this section.
Okay, a little bit more Deep [N] Purple.
Yeah, okay, that's kind of like Led Zeppelin meets, you remember that song by so-and-so?
Oh, yeah, we just would communicate.
There was no written music or a theory or anything like that.
We just communicate by saying, you know, talking about songs we knew and loved
and the parts and pieces of them that just did something for us
that we wanted to include and incorporate in what we were doing.
As far as a bass part in a song, if you understand what other players play,
great players, that whistlejack, Bruce, or whatever you consider to be great.
In [E] my opinion, it matters not.
[N] It's what you love and what you consider to be great.
Listen to those guys, see what they do.
_ [F] By mimicking, that's how we learn to speak.
You imitate your mom and [F#] dad, brothers and sisters and friends,
and eventually you learn how to speak, and eventually you get your own voice
and your own statements and your own ideas and your own thoughts.
But it comes initially, a little mimicry at first doesn't hurt.
Then again, it's only one man, one [E] man's opinion.
Like I said, if you can write original stuff [G] right off the line, [F] it'd be awesome.
Man, I'm impressed, and [F#] you're a better man than I, that's for sure.
But _ all of us tend to look for something else to be the problem.
_ I guess I need a more expensive bass or a bigger amp, or I need more pedals.
How about if you see people [C] change, change the strings,
I'll try different pickups, let me try a different neck on the bass,
let me try adjusting the neck, let me try different frets.
Stop and start getting to work.
Just practice.
[Em] Just sit down and pound the thing.
And that's really the only way.
And I refer to those as kind of a flinch.
People, they're playing away and something's not working.
They look to something else as the answer.
It ain't the gear, it ain't the pickups, it ain't, you know.
Though setting up a bass is an important thing, of course.
Gear is important, but you understand the real thing that everything is based on
is right here.
It's right there, right with your hands.
And once you get that working, everything else falls in place.
A couple of important things is to play the same instrument a lot.
You really get used to where it is.
I've played pretty much the same instrument for 25, 20 years or so.
So I know right away where everything is, I know where the volume knobs are.
I don't even have to look.
It's just there automatically for me.
But the thing I've got the most comment from all over the world
is setting your strap length the same length it is
when you sit down and practice as when you stand up.
[G#] Of all the stuff I've told and shown in all my [F#] videos,
or millions of notes and [F] crazy things,
the thing [Em] I get commented on the most is strap length.
So mine is bolted on, does not move, cannot come off or ever can't come off.
_ [D] I do that with complete, utter confidence.
It will never come off there.
The bolts go way deep into the body, these big lag bolts holding it in.
And this belt, you can't get this anymore,
but it was made by a [G] company called Buffalo Belt and Weaving way [A#] back in the 70s.
And I got a roll of it, and they were the company that were making the belts
to catch [F#] the F-14s landing on the aircraft carrier.
So it's pretty strong.
It isn't the same belt, it isn't the same material,
but it's cotton and it doesn't stretch.
I had leather [G#] straps for a long time,
and I'd get soaking wet playing in a bar late at night,
and I'd be pushing to me_
[D#] _
_ [F#] _anything_
Unknown to me, the strap was incrementally getting longer and longer and longer,
and I was getting sucking and sucking more and sucking more and sucking more,
and I finally realized, ah, the strap is stretching.
So I'd punch another hole in it, move it up a little bit.
So when I finally did the cotton, non-stretchable strap,
_ things started to settle in.
So here's what I have as a result.
This space is here all the [B] time.
It's right in this spot.
So for me to remember and recall where I am becomes easier. _