Beginner’s Songs – Parisienne Walkway (members only tutorial)

Parisienne Walkway by Gary Moore – with Phil Lynot on bass and vocals) is another relatively easy song for beginers and a good introduction for beginners to songs in 12:8. There are 5 parts to learn

I class this as a Level 4 bass line (mainly because of the 12:8th note feel in the line). (The scale I use is 1 to 10 – a Level 1 bass line might be a predominantly half note ballad kind of line like Imagine and a Level 10 line would be an uptempo 8th note based line like I Saw Her Standing There or Shake A Tailfeather).

The easiest way to learn this rhythm is to use the ‘mental representations’ method – without going into great detail follow the notation with the bass line, imagine the bass line is a melody (it is pretty melodic) and hum it to yourself. When you can hum the rhythm then learn the note locations on your bass out of tempo.Then put those note locations into the ‘melody’ that you created from humming the bass line. (Side Note: this is exactly how they get 4 and 5 year old kids started with the Suzuki Method).

Parisienne Walkway starts with an 8 bar intro, the bass comes in for only the last two bars of this section.? Then there are repeating sections of chorus and verse:

1. Intro