In this lesson we’re looking at the classic Chris Wolstenholme bass riff from the song Hysteria by Muse. This bass line is notorious for the debates that rage on bass forums regarding the effects pedals in use.
Effects
Before you get into the actual bassline, it’s worth making a quick note on the effects pedals used by Chris Wolstenholme on this track. It’s a combination of the unaffected signal, an Animato distortion, Big Muff distortion and finally doubled up with a Roland JP8000 synth. So now you know! For this video I’ve used a much simpler set up to approximate the effect.
The Bassline…
This is a long fluid line that isn’t entirely scalar so it’s a matter of simply learning the piece as a block. Notice how open strings are used to establish tonality and provide a real gutsiness to the riff. Everything is revealed in the tab – but you do have some choices of fingering and I’d recommend using whichever seems most comfortable to you.
OH BABY! Was just thinking I need to learn this
This looks enjoyably hard work, cheers Mark.
Mark .Thank you so much for this lesson , I was the one bugging you every time to play this riff. I had no interest in learning bass but the when I saw your videos on YouTube, you gave me the inspiration. Cheers
Big fan of muse so I loved it
Butterflies and Hurricanes ?
Can we get some theme songs? Like pirates of the Caribbean or Harry Potter ?
Absolutely brilliant for pedalling. Much rather play bass than cycle. No really. Cool bass riff. Shame about getting the exact sound but Mark has pretty much nailed it for 100 quid.
As ususal, Awesome to learn to play bass in band!! your pedagocial approach is the best i ever seen. carry on!!!
The SoundCloud links are either broken or your SoundCloud is empty, im on mobile. Thanks for all the awesome lessons tho!
No the Soundcloud is fine. A few people have had problems with Soundcloud embeds. It’s either a browser or browser extension issue. The Soundcloud account is set to private so you won’t see anything there. But you should not be sent to the Soundcloud page from the embed on this site. It should just play on the page. If it doesn’t then you have the browser issue I mentioned.
Great lesson as always!! If I’m not mistaken, it looks like there are two rakes with the index finger in the second bar, not just the one shown at 11:04 raking onto the open E. If there were only one rake (or plucking with the same finger twice consecutively), the third bar would start on the first finger, not the second. I watched the video many times, and it looks like Mark rakes again on the first two notes of the 4th beat, using the index finger to rake from the G to the E. Then for the “and a” 16th notes, he’s using middle then index, so he can start the 3rd measure with the second finger. Does anyone else see this the same, or am I missing something?
Hi. Do you use the bass Big Muff or the regular Big Muff? Does it matter? Thank you!!