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The Ballad Of John And Yoko

The Ballad Of John And Yoko was recorded in 1969 and is one of Mc-Cartney’s easier bass lines. Espe-cially when taking into account the developments in his bass playing from the Rubber Soul/Revolver period onwards.

Essentially the bass line consists of a standard blues type R-3-5-6 bass line that’s transposed to the different chords of the song - and those chords are also simply blues

chords.

The song starts out with a two bar intro that introduces the bass line pat-tern:

This pattern is then applied to the verse which is simply a one chord sec-tion - so if you’ve learned the intro you’ve already learned the verse! You just need to play it for six more bars! Here’s the verse in its entirety:

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The verse leads to the chorus - and this is another 8 bar figure that uses the basic pattern but moves it around different chords:

The chorus then goes back to the verse and this cycle repeats for Verse 2 and Verse 3 with choruses. After Verse 3 we’ve got a bridge. That looks like this:

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After the bridge we’ve got two more verse/chorus repeats before a 4 bar outro closes out the tune:

How To Program The Sections In Band In A Box

1. Set key to E2. Aim for a performance tempo fo around 135 BPM.3. Choose a band style for practice - I chose the Brit Invasion with 2 Electric Guitars and Piano Real tracks. It’s a little on the heavy side, but it’s Ok. Or you can use the chordal metronome. 4. Mute the bass!

Here’s what the basic verse looks like when programmed:

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Here’s what the chorus looks like:

Here’s what the bridge looks like:

And finally, here’s the 4 bar outro: