Boston’s “More Than A Feeling”
No song epitomizes arena rock better than Boston’s “More Than a Feeling,” still a mainstay of classic-rock radio 30 years after its release. With a chunky chorus and anthemic twin-lead solos, “More Than a Feeling” practically defines righteously indulgent rock guitar—so much so that you might not think about the bass part much. But there’s a lot going on in the song’s simple but effective line, cut by guitarist/multi-instrumentalist Tom Scholz in his home studio and played live by Fran Sheehan.
Consider the verse vamp of Ex. 1a, played beneath drumless guitar fingerpicking. As the drums enter with the mellow verse, the bass part adds varying 16th-note rhythms which move the groove along. To get a sense of the variations, try replacing bar 1 of Ex. 1a with one of the bars in Ex. 1b. The “footballs” in Ex. 1c slow things down dramatically, giving the C and G chords a full bar to themselves.
Now, let the fist pumping begin. Ex. 2 shows the prechorus, and Examples 3a and 3b the chorus, both judiciously employing 16th-note giddy-ups to get the rock rolling. Just because the chorus’s crunchy guitar rhythms are bonehead simple (not that there’s anything wrong with that), doesn’t mean that the bass part has to be, even if it’s essentially mirroring the guitar. Dig how the bass line gooses the groove with a slide into an almost-muted staccato note on beat three of the chorus’s first bar. Then there’s the next bar’s delicious 16th-note twiddles. You won’t hear those in the guitar part. Ex. 3a’s chorus vamp shows variations in the last note before the vocal enters, while the proper chorus in Ex. 3b loops with a deep dive down to F#.
Ex. 4 shows a smooth bass countermelody that evokes the feeling—or perhaps more—of seeing “Marianne walking away.” The walk-down to D in bar 4 gently guides listeners back to the verse key for another go at the verse and chorus. Give the track a spin for a complete look at the tune’s many bass variations, and consider how you can cop them to power up your own rock riffs, arena-style.
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Much of the sheet music that Bass Player publishes is copyrighted material, licensed from the artists to run only in the printed version of the magazine. Bass Player continues to offer the explanatory text of these lessons online, but in order to get the complete song transcriptions and other bits of licensed sheet music, you need to have a copy of the magazine.
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