David Bowie
Do you want or need a Bass Study Guide/Transcription created just for you?
Is there a song you really want to study, learn and understand better? A riff or phrase that you're struggling with? Have you seen or heard something and just thought, "I really NEED to know how to play that..."
Do you have your own Basslines that you would love to have transcribed? Maybe you're auditioning and new player and want to give them the sheets as well as the audio? Maybe you want to sell transcriptions of your own work on your site to your fans.
You can request a custom transcription of a song or piece, designed to help you learn the bass line, understand the groove, a riff and improve your playing.
Each guide is carefully prepared and includes both notation and tablature and comes with a full lyric sheet with Verse/Chorus/Bridge markup that matches the sections in the Guide.
The pdf also contains an interactive Table of Contents with each section of the Guide listed and clickable to take you directly to the part.
In cases where it's needed to help contextualise the Bassline I'll include things like Lyrics, Up/Downstroke markings, Left/Right Hand Fingerings and other bits and pieces.
If you want a simplified version of the piece then I can provide that and if you just want a Structural Outline (see the image) or Nashville Number Chart format, then I can also provide that for you too.
A lot of Transcription sites/Transcribers claim to make their content "100% accurate"; in some cases that can be achieved but if they're using the same tools as me and the same recordings as me, I'm going to be 100% honest and tell you that I'll get as close as I damn well can to 100% accurate but sometimes there may need to be some "educated guesswork" employed.
If I have access to the isolated part (thank you YouTube) or I can isolate a part cleanly using AI tools, then it will be as close to 100% accurate as I can possibly get it.
If I'm having to use the regular recording, pick the line out, EQ and processe it etc, then I'm at the mercy of the Production on the record. Some recordings are incredibly well mixed and the bass is clear and clean and others sound like they were mixed and mastered through a gym sock...
Even using AI tools, there's a limit to their efficiency. Depending on the production quality there can be very little bass information for the AI to isolate leading to chunks of literally nothing; if the production as a lot of extra bass information (guitars, keys, drums etc) then the bass guitar data can get lost in the mix.
In these situations I will employ a certain amount of genre/style informed guesswork to infer what the player may be doing based on things like what they've already done in the piece, their usual style and go to licks and fills etc.
But I strive to ensure that what you get is both as accurate and human playable as possible.
Price is a tough one to quantify. Remember, you're paying for my time and efforts, NOT the Guide.
A rule of thumb is $25.00 per minute of audio.
If all you want/need is less than a minute, then it's a flat $20.00.
If the piece has more than one bass part (think Orion by Metallica) then the total cost will be for however many instruments are involved.
The total cost really all depends on things like the total length of the piece, how complicated it is and how quickly you need it.
The longer and more complex the piece and the sooner you need it, the more expensive it's going to be.
If it's a straight up, 3-4 minute pop/rock song and there's no rush, then that's going to be easier and cheaper to create a Guide for than say a 15 minute Prog Metal monster full of Key/Mode, Time and Tempo shennanigans...
Where possible I will aim to get you the Guide inside 7 - 10 days of receiving payment but I do all this around a day job that has to come first...
Should it look like it's going to take longer because life and my "day job" are getting in the way, I'll reach out and let you know and update you with where I'm currently up to in the creation process (maybe send you a pdf of what I've done so far) and and estimate of how long i think it's going to take to complete.
Request your Guide.
Use the form below to send me the details including links to videos and mp3's of the song or piece; I'll give it a listen as soon as I can, assess it and let you know if I can create a Guide for you and give you a quote for it.
You Pay.
Payment is upfront. Once I have received your payment I'll begin work on it and get it to you as soon as I can.
Payment is via PayPal. I will supply the relevant details when we agree to go ahead. If for any reason I can't deliver after accepting payment I will refund you in full without hesitaiton.
Delivery.
As soon as your Guide is ready I will email it to you. It will have Cover Art (where available), a Cover Sheet with the details of the piece (Title, Album, Writers etc), a Table of Contents with clickable links to the relevant Sections in the Guide, the Guide itself in Notation and Tablature format and a Lyric Sheet, marked up to correspond to the Sections in the Guide.
The whole thing will be Watermarked throughout with the Site Name and your Name and Email Address to ensure that this iteration of the Guide is exclusive to you and to make it easier to work out where it came from if it appears elsewhere online...
After a period of 1 month, the Guide will be made publicly available on the main site for anyone to find and download. When it's made publicly available all of your personal information will be removed from the Watermark to ensure you're privacy.
Ready to go? Got a song or piece of music in mind?
Fill out the form below and I'll get back to you as soon as I can. I'll let you know if I can do it and, if I can I'll give you a quote for it and a time estimate.
All Study Guides (Transcriptions) are provided for personal, educational use only.
You may not share, redistribute, or sell them beyond your personal use.
In most cases, neither the transcriber (me) nor the client (you) owns the rights to the underlying music; in the situation where you are the copyright owner of a piece you've commissioned me to transcribe for you, you will retain all rights in the copyright and it will be added to the Library only with your express permission.
The fee you pay is for the time and effort spent creating the guide, not for the Guide itself.
Any Study Guides (Transcriptions) delivered to you exclusively will include a watermark featuring the words "Just The Riffs Teaching Materials" with your name/email for identification. This helps to ensure that should the Guide show up on another site or platform where it's being shared or passed off as someone else's work, it's clearly got the Site's name on it and YOURS.
After a period of one month, the Study Guide (Transcription) will be released into the Just The Riffs Collection with your personally identifying information removed and only the site watermark in place.
I can't guarantee that I'll be able to do it (and I won't ask for payment until I'm sure I can) and I can't guarantee a super quick turnaround time if I can do it because it may be complicated and other life/work things may get in the way.
Full disclosure: even though I've been playing and transcribing for nearly 40 years, there are some styles of music I don't know well and there are also some techniques I don't know and for which I'm not even sure there's any form of theory markup!
But anything that uses regular plucking, picking, slapping and some tapping I'm good with and, let's face it, that covers about 95-98% of all recorded music, ever!
