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December The Thrill Is Gone

This document provides instructions for playing the bass line to The Thrill is Gone by B.B. King. It discusses the original bassist, Jerry Jemmott, and transcribes the bass lines for the intro, verses 1 and 2, and outro. It also gives instructions on how to program the different sections into Band in a Box software, including setting the key, tempo, style, and muting the bass.

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Yorik Tenes
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345 views5 pages

December The Thrill Is Gone

This document provides instructions for playing the bass line to The Thrill is Gone by B.B. King. It discusses the original bassist, Jerry Jemmott, and transcribes the bass lines for the intro, verses 1 and 2, and outro. It also gives instructions on how to program the different sections into Band in a Box software, including setting the key, tempo, style, and muting the bass.

Uploaded by

Yorik Tenes
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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THE THRILL IS GONE by B.B.

KING

The next tutorial we’re going


to look at the main parts of the
bass line to The Thrill is Gone by
BB King.

Now the bass was played on this


by Jerry Jemmott and I’ve been
listening to a lot of Jerry’s classic
late 60s and early 70s bass lines.
What you may not know is that
Jerry suffered serious injuries in
a car crash whilst on tour with
Roberta Flack and was never the
same bass player afterwards.
I’m pretty sure that if he hadn’t had those injuries that we’d talk about
him in the way we talk about someone like Rocco Prestia or Chuck Rain-
ey.

Although I’m not a fan of BB King particularly, this album is well worth
getting hold of (as well as the ‘sister’ album Live And Well) to sample
what Jerry was doing with B.B. King.

King’s version of The Thrill Is Gone is a slowish (around 86 BPM) 12 bar


blues in the key of B minor. Jerry’s approach through the different cho-
ruses of the tune is to play essentially the same line with some minor
variations. We’re going to look at the intro chorus, verse 1 and verse 2
and the outro in this tutorial.

If you’re playing this song live with your band then there is definitely
space to add in some more variations - but note the lesson from Jerry’s
bass line that the main rhythm and melodic motif is repeated without
much variation because it creates an almost hypnotic feel in the bass
line.

Here’s the intro 12 bar:

2  |Free How To Play Bass Monthly Ezine | December 2015 | how-to-play-bass.com 


Here’s Verse 1 - note how similar it is to the intro:

3  |Free How To Play Bass Monthly Ezine | December 2015 | how-to-play-bass.com 


Here’s Verse 2:

Finally here’s the outro where the chords just ‘vamp’ on the Bm:

4  |Free How To Play Bass Monthly Ezine | December 2015 | how-to-play-bass.com 


HOW TO PROGRAM THE DIFFERENT SECTIONS IN BAND IN A BOX

1. Set the key to Bm

2. Aim for a performance tempo of 85 BPM

3. Choose a style to play with. For a band style, I used the Slow Even 8th
Blues (85 BPM) real styles. And there’s also the chordal metronome built
into BIAB 2015 and 2016.

4. Mute the bass.

Here’s what the main 12 bar chord cycle looks like when programmed:

You can repeat this as many times as you need. For the outro section
you just need to repeat the Bm chord - again, as many times as you
need!

5  |Free How To Play Bass Monthly Ezine | December 2015 | how-to-play-bass.com 

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