Those 3 times Flea went Beast Mode

michael peter bulzari born october 16 1962 and obviously commonly known as flea a founding member and base player of the massively popular red chili peppers has been one of the most notable bass players of the last three decades he's played and collaborated with artists such as jane's addiction the mars vaulter alanis morissette and johnny cash just to name a few and is famous for really incorporating elements of funk slap punk and rock into his bass lines in this video you're going to be checking out the three times that flea went beast mode [Music] hey it's scotty van here from scottsbasslessons.com helping you take your bass playing to the next level and on this channel we focus on one thing and one thing only we focus on [Music] we do youtube tutorials we talk about bass gear and everything in between so if you are new here go ahead and slap that subscribe button down below and i will send you some virtual base love or something something [Music] so first of all i want to show you the first ever video clip i saw of flea when i was a kid i think i was maybe like 14 or 15 years old at the time and up until that point i was busy listening to i don't know like never mind or in utero or something like that when suddenly a friend of mine played me this and my mind was blown [Applause] [Music] so [Music] so good now instead of breaking all of that down because flea's kind of he's just jamming there there's nothing he's not it's not something he's specifically learned what i thought i'd do is create a cool little exercise for you guys so you can get the exercise down and it will give you the ability to play that kind of thing before we even get into the exercise the key here is to get that seesaw in together it's so much of that [Music] it's thumb on the down and when the thumb comes back up it actually pulls the actual you know that's where the pop hacking happens and it's that seesaw in motion like that right it's all it's all coming from here as well a lot of it comes from the forearm almost like grabbing a doorknob and turning it like that so you get this so you've got to get that down to be able to get that kind of snappiness happening now let me play this cool little riff that i've worked out and then i'll break it down a little more so you can get it into your playing oh and we've got the tab and notation for you on the bottom of the screen and we've also created a download as well which you can find in the description so you don't need to keep on rewinding the video so you don't need to keep on rewinding the video and trying to see you know the the tab or the notation or anything like that so grab that download as well [Music] okay so that sounds quite frenetic and it's not all that bad again get that seesaw motion down before need to get that down and then there's just a few other little elements that you need to get down one would be this that hammer on there that's when you play one note and hammer on the neck so [Music] you can hear it all the way through so let me play that little riff just a reduced tempo so you can see in all the nooks and crannies two three four [Music] [Music] okay so next up is a clip taken from flea's base tutorial video that was filmed back in 1993 for starlix can anybody remember starlix give me a shout in the comments if you guys can remember starlix on back in the old days of vhs right okay now without further ado let's do it [Music] oh now this this uh let's just focus on the slap bit to start with right so the whole thing flees tuned down half a step so his low e string is e flat his a string is a flat so let's just re jig everything back to standard tuning decay that slap riff that was playing [Music] it's really great because it's the opposite of what he was doing earlier it's the opposite of that you know it's just that's why i really love it so and all the way it's really not using that much thumb either it's all pop [Music] check it out [Music] now the other bit where's going it's over it's over like an e flat seven so let's just bring it up to concert again or to your standard tuning okay now what's really interesting here is it flea's using this kind of like blues i suppose like a blues trick as it were tricks probably the wrong terminology but what you do is when you get a a dominant chord like this okay but generally you can play a minor pentatonic over there that thing that everybody does right but the cool thing is if you rock back and forward between the major third and the minor third it gives it even more blues [Music] super cool now last but certainly not least is this really fantastic live clip of flea just breaking out and doing some cool stuff it's actually the intro to a track it's obviously live as well and there's one particular bit in this that i really really love but we'll get into that once you've checked it out let me uh let me play this for you [Applause] [Music] so all of this is really cool because for me like i think that like a lot of the rock guys which flea is you know he's a funk but he's a rock guy as well they use a lot of pentatonic we're in the key of e here so generally these guys will go for [Music] that kind of blue skull when they're when they're you know improvising but what flea's doing here is he's actually using a natural minor scale which gives it a completely different [Music] okay gives it a completely different feel so if a natural might even if you don't know natural minor it's just root second minor third fourth fifth flat six flat seven and then that octave okay [Music] cool now there's another bit that he does it here that's really wicked just check it out [Applause] now that for me is the best but one of the best bits of this solo isn't [Music] so if we're in this e minor here okay it's just that's where he starts there and he's using these shapes to move throughout over the fingerboard it's almost just like guitar chords but because it's not this it just sounds really cool mixed in obviously with that natural minor as well and then he does this really cool arpeggiated thing as well check this out [Applause] so let's check that out this is just if you know you've got the e here it's just okay so it's just the natural minor again there's the e minor arpeggio but this little bad boy in there the flat six and then that flat seven there [Music] super cool now if you enjoyed the content in this video make sure that you slap that like button down below [Music] and also go check out scottsbasslessons.com as well that's what we do here at scott's bass lessons we've you know got the ultimate online learning platform for players just like you players just like you [Music] and also make sure that you download all the notation for the stuff i've been playing as well we'll put a cool workbook together for this lesson with all of the little bits that you're going to want to see so you'd have to rewind the video back and forward the link for that download will be down in the description below below and with that said take it easy and i will see you in the shed

Channel: Scott's Bass Lessons

Views: 463,379

Keywords: scott devine, bass lessons, bass guitar, soloing, funk, cover, groove, jazz, slap, tuition, masterclass, beginner, beginners, clinic

Id: H8ICawG-dlQ

Length: 11min 13sec (673 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 13 2021