Hello Rocksmith fans, and welcome to TRR’s Community Chart Spotlight! This series focuses on the incredible work done by the Rocksmith+ Workshop community and gives a closer look in to why they choose certain songs, how they approach charting, and some tips ‘n tricks for those of you who want to explore creating your own charts.
To kick it off, we have someone who’s submitted so many charts I’m fairly sure he doesn’t sleep: jsdratm!
jsdratm is a regular in our Rocksmith discord and has been a prolific user of the Rocksmith+ Workshop since it launched. Focusing mostly on bass, they’ve added over 600 charts to the game. Today, the spotlight is on Able Bodied Man by Charley Pride. Over to you, jsdratm!
When I first subscribed to Rocksmith+, I was checking out the library and noticed that it had a rather extensive country music collection. I’m not a huge country music fan to be perfectly honest, but I decided to dig into it. In the list, I was surprised to see about 100 country songs from an artist called Charley Pride, who I had never heard of previously, and at that time not a single one had an official or community bass chart. One of the first songs on the list was called Able Bodied Man and I liked the catchy tune, so I decided to give it a shot in the workshop. It is a relatively simple bass chart, like many of Charley’s songs, but this one was a bit more upbeat and had a nice feel to it.
Whenever I chart a song from an artist I don’t know about, I try to read up a bit on them to help me understand their career and music better. Here is a short summary of Charley’s background if you aren’t familiar:
Charley Pride was the first black country music superstar, inducted in the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2000. He has been the recipient of numerous awards, including a 2017 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Grammy Awards and 2020 Lifetime Achievement Award form the Country Music Association. He grew up in poverty in Mississippi, but started learning guitar at the age of fourteen, before joining the Negro American League as a baseball player and serving in the military. He started his music career in Montana as a part-time gig, while playing baseball in Helena. Eventually, he recorded some demos, which were noticed by Chet Atkins and led to Charley being invited to sign at RCA Records.
This song’s lyrics capture a blue collar man calling his wife from a bus station, talking about how he is traveling to find work at a factory in Columbus that is seeking an “Able Bodied Man”. The lyrics make it clear that he had intended for his wife to join him at his last job, but he was unexpectedly let go. He is uncertain, but optimistic that he will find work in Columbus, and he laments not having a better education to support his family, but he will send her a ticket once he gets his next job.
The song is an ode to the struggles of the simple laborer, jumping between cities for work and trying to build a new life for their family. The story could have made a good blues song, but Charley made it an upbeat, optimistic song. I have found that many of Charley’s songs are more upbeat and have an optimistic tone to them, which is also reflected in his personality when giving interviews.
When I start charting a song for RS+, the first thing I check for is existing tablature and tweak it as needed, since it doesn’t make sense to reinvent the wheel. However, for Charley Pride there wasn’t much tablature to be found, so that was a dead end.
I did find just a single video of the song being performed on television, but they don’t show the bass player much at all, so that wasn’t a big help either. Once you get to this point, your only option is to transcribe the song yourself, so I proceeded with this approach.
Here are some things that have helped me trancribe songs by ear in the workshop tool:
* Shift the octave of the entire song up so it is easier to hear the bass notes
* Use the playback tool to play midi notes of your transcription along with the song and ensure the two audibly match
* Play the notes of your transcription yourself along with the song and ensure the two audibly match
* Use the equalizer to filter out higher frequencies and boost the bass
* Filter to left or right channel if the bass is only on one of them
Using these techniques can make it pretty easy to pick out the bass on most country songs like this one and make sure the notes you are transcribing match up. A lot of the time I am doing the whole song while it is shifted an octave upward, even though the high-pitched audio sounds strange and can be annoying.
Some months later, I learned how to use a tool called Melodyne, which can read an MP3 and give a spectral analysis of what notes are being played. On a noisy track it doesn’t perform as well, but for songs like this one, it generally works great. Once I had access to this tool, I was able to load up some of my previously charted work and double-check that the notes were matching up. In some cases, you can transcribe a whole song just by visually reading the Melodyne analysis without even picking up your bass guitar, and then give it a play through as a sanity check.
Able Bodied Man ended up being one of the more popular songs that I transcribed, with 320 plays recorded as of this writing. I still keep coming back to play it myself, since it remains one of my favorite songs in the RS+ catalog, and I’m glad that my work has allowed other bass players to learn to play this fun tune.
