Dean Town Cover (Vulfpeck)

Here’s my playthrough of Vulfpeck’s Dean Town (https://youtu.be/le0BLAEO93g for the original). I’ve been practicing this for a while now – I’d love to gig this and do know musicians who love the Vulf.

The track is a real Tower of Power style exercise in consistent 16th note playing and feel. It includes plenty of nuance too – if you listen to the original, you can make out the variations in emphasis of 16th note volume in the intro where just drums and bass are playing – on the 1 and 3 of the first bar, then 1, 3 and 4 of the second bar.

The breakdown (after a couple of turnarounds of the main theme) is amazing for bass – excellent Darting around, so to speak!

Where did I get the backing tracks?

The recording was done with the stems (individual tracks) from the original recording, which are available from Vulpeck’s BandCamp over at https://vulfstems.bandcamp.com  – this is an excellent way to practice the track. The only bit of work I had to do on the stems was mix down some Joe Dart brilliance which had leaked into the drum track. As a result of that, my version has slightly mid-light drums. Still good though!

Did I use a score?

Yep – I found a really accurate score to work from to get the breakdown section right: Joe goes to town there with 16ths wandering all over the shop.  The score is available from http://davesperanza.com/blog/2016/10/19/bass-transcription-joe-dart-on-vulfpecks-dean-town – well worth a visit, he’s got some other great transcriptions too.

Cheers!