"Fly Me to the Moon" bass tab.

KohanMike

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The group for which I play bass uke, The CC Strummers lead by Cali Rose, is doing an annual holiday show for the Culver City Senior Center. Included in the hour set is Sinatra's song "Fly Me to the Moon" in commemoration of his 100th birthday. It's my first encounter with walking bass so I decided to make up a tab sheet to follow rather than use our ukulele lead sheets Cali makes up. Please feel free to use it. Click once below to view it, right click to download it.

http://www.kohanmike.com/uploads/Fly me base Tab3.pdf

The show is at the Culver City, CA Senior Center, Tuesday, December 22, 2015 at 1:00 PM, open to all.
 
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Thanks for posting this Mike. I'm going to take a look and see if I can play it as well. :)

Last Sunday when I was listening to Jonathan Schwartz's show on NPR (WNYC 93.9FM in NJ) "Sunday with Sinatra' and he mentioned that his birthday is on Dec 15th. You might be able to stream it here (http://www.wnyc.org/shows/jonathan-schwartz/) but I cant find the direct link to that days audio stream just yet...

I saw Sinatra, one and only time, in the FINAL NYC concert just before he died. Francis Albert will always be one of my heroes.

:shaka:
 
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Thanks for a bass tab. My wife bought a bass - a red Fender Squire p-bass - for cheap but she hasn't really taken to it. So now it sits in the corner. This is one of my favorite songs so good choice!
 
Glad you guys can use it. His birthday is actually Dec. 12. When I was 18 in 1968, my friend and I on spring break from UCLA, went to Palm Springs to stay in his uncle's house. The first night we drove over to the El Mirador Hotel and as we walked from the parking lot to the main entrance, we passed the back of the auditorium. A door was half open and music was coming out. We walked over and stuck in our heads to see the packed room, and Sinatra singing. Holly #$%@ we said. We stood there and watched the last 1/2 hour of his show, no one bothered us.

I'm going to use my custom fretless bass uke for the gig, and we're going to lead into "Fly Me" with Neil Armstrong's "one small step" speech that I put on my iPhone to play through my amp.
 
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is there any way to make the tab usable in one position? Unless there are slides I prefer moving between strings instead of up and down the fretboard.
 
Glad you guys can use it. His birthday is actually Dec. 12.

I must have remembered it wrong, thanks for the correction. :)

When I was 18 in 1968, my friend and I on spring break from UCLA, went to Palm Springs to stay in his uncle's house. The first night we drove over to the El Mirador Hotel and as we walked from the parking lot to the main entrance, we passed the back of the auditorium. A door was half open and music was coming out. We walked over and stuck in our heads to see the packed room, and Sinatra singing. Holly #$%@ we said. We stood there and watched the last 1/2 hour of his show, no one bothered us.

That's a cool story. You must have been on a cloud after that! Thanks for sharing.

I'm going to use my custom fretless bass uke for the gig, and we're going to lead into it with Neil Armstrong's "one small step" speech that I put on my iPhone to play through my amp.

OMG - that's going to be one awsome start to the show. I'm very happy and excited for you and wish I could be there (to watch). Maybe some video will be taken that you can share with us later?

Sounds like that's going to be a great gig for you! :music:
 
is there any way to make the tab usable in one position? Unless there are slides I prefer moving between strings instead of up and down the fretboard.

This was a lot of work for me, notice it's version 13. I did it this way so that all the patterns, major and minor up and down, would be consistent. If you want to change it to suite yourself, please feel free.

I also re-uploaded it in 8.5x11, the first one I made for my 13.3" tablet.
 
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not discounting the work you did. thanks. Just having the bass clef with chords with or without the tabs would be most helpful.
 
I know so little about music, I don't know what having the bass clef means, but my sheet does have all the chords. I'm just glad I got the finger positions after so many trials and errors. My bass teacher, Denny Croy, showed me the patterns for major and minor chords up and down, which helped me tremendously, but theory so far is something I still have to grasp.
 
The only advice I will give you is that half of the walking bassline is the FEEL of it, over the notes. It has to swing, whether you're accenting the 2 and 4, or the 1 and 3. You can have a walking line be exceptional if the feel is right but you're only playing the root for three beats and then a passing tone (listen to some of the 30s/40s bassists, as they played a lot of simple lines like this). Conversely, you can outline all of the chords really well but if the feel isn't there, it won't work.
 
Thanks Jon. I think I'm pretty good with feel, I'm already giving some of the down beat notes a double up, and after rehearsal yesterday, our leader Cali Rose said I did great with it.

I've had a good amount of listening to jazz bass playing, in the early 70s I was a production assistant for the Johnny Mann Singers TV show and also became their road manager. The band in the studio was made up of some of the best payers in Hollywood, including a few of the Wrecking Crew, and the bass player was Ray Brown, what can I say, a master.

In recent years, I've been the staff photographer for the Los Angeles Lawyers Philharmonic and Big Band of Barristers. Since I started playing bass about a year ago, I've been bending the ear of the Big Band bass player, Eric Schaefer. He's an exceptional bass player and I always pay attention to his style during a show.

Maybe I'm opening up myself for criticism, but here's a quick sample of how I'm doing (I'm using my Gold Tone GT MicroBass with Road Toad Pahoehoe black strings through an iRig HD into Garage Band. I recorded the rehearsal track last week with my iPhone and a Fostex AR-4i):

http://www.kohanmike.com/uploads/Fly Me bass.mp3
 
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