Faithby George Michael

Bass by Deon Estus

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TRANSCRIPTION to FAITH by GEORGE MICHAEL, bass by DEON ES-TUS

This transcription is the George Michael classic Faith.

The bass player on this tune - as with a lot of George Mi-chael’s earlier pop work with Wham! - is a guy called Deon Estus.

Deon Estus was a guy who I learned a lot from back in the day from these perfor-mances - his lines on tunes like Wake Me Up Before You

Go Go, Wham Rap, Club Tropicana, Bad Boys and Young Guns are all ex-cellent examples of bass playing. Forget the fact that these songs are all very commercial and very cheesy sounding - in most of these cases it’s the bass lines that Deon Estus plays that helps elevate the song from a forgettable throw away pop song into something that is more enduring.

The lines on Club Tropicana and Young Guns in particular are excellent - and I’ll be looking at these in future columns. Faith is simpler. The song is much sparser, it almost has a country kind of a feel. And you can get through the song by simply combining root notes with the 2 bar rhythm that Deon uses in the song. But it’s instruc-tive to follow through with what he plays and look at the little fills and variations he employs to keep the line bubbling along.

This is a classic pop bass line performance and is definitely worth check-ing out.

Here’s how Faith lays out.:

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Letter A - Guitar Intro - 0.32Letter B - Verse 1 - 0.39Letter C - Pre-Chorus - 0.58Letter D - Chorus - 1.18Letter E - Verse 2 - 1.29Letter F - Pre-Chorus - 1.48Letter G - Chorus - 2.00Letter H - Guitar - 2.00Letter I - Pre-Chorus - 2.39Letter J - Chorus - 3.01

As always, the tab reflects my fingering system, hand size and scale length. If any of these differ for you - the probability of which is high - then feel free to change the tab positions around to suit YOUR playing system, hand size and bass length.

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