The song Ramble On is well known to any John Paul Jones (bassist for Led Zeppelin) fan.
What isn’t well known however is the vibrato John put into his playing for this particular song.
While true you can clearly hear good bass tone in the original studio recording of Ramble On, some of what John played was buried in the mix.
With the isolated bass track below, you’ll hear things you haven’t heard in the song before. Vibrato, thump, ghost notes and so on. The bass takes on a whole new character when you listen to it on its own.
Fantastic! Love JPJ’s tone here, and overall feel. I can hear Jamerson influence all over this track. Brilliant.
Beautiful. However, some of the lower notes in the chorus are distorted – I would never have gotten away with that; sure it adds to the funk (James Jamerson apparently refused to change his strings – despite advice/requests from others), but not in recently clinically/politically-correct times.
I didn’t hear any vibrato?
Listen to the point 2:40 There is plenty of string shaking vibrato there.
Oh yeah, Jonesy is definitely getting his Jamerson on in this track. Sounds almost fretless in spots to me. About half of his parts are hidden under everything else going on in this track , so it was nice to hear everything he did.
Always played this with our drummer who always nailed JB on the drums … I did the best I could emulating JP … came close! Missed a lot too! Awesome to hear everything that was hidden beneath. Not sure I could even come close now.