Andy West – Bass

Another crippling part from the great Andy West, this is tough to read and tough to play (and, dare I say it, tough to transcribe). I tried transcribing the 7:4 sections as 7:4 but it was unreadable so I plumped for the alternating 4:4/3:4 which does make it a little easier but it is still one that you are probably going to need to slow down dramatically to get it under your fingers (for the record, there are sections where I had to use Transcribe! software to slow the tune down to 20% of it’s actual speed in order to get the notes right. The trouble with doing that is that you lose all sense of groove so you have to keep going back and forth to reference where you think you are. There are some tough charts on here and the bars 88 and 112 are some of the toughest bars on here.

This is the Andy West bass part for the tune ‘Patchwork’ from the 1979 album ‘Night Of The Living Dregs’. It is worthy of note that this track is one of the live tunes on the album and what you hear is what they do and not a construct of overdubs and re-takes.