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Bass Transcription by Lucas Pickford – John McLaughlin Guitar Solo on Tones For Elvin Jones
Bass Transcription – John McLaughlin Guitar Solo on Tones For Elvin Jones
This month I decided to really give everyone a challenge. This is a guitar solo transcription of an absolutely killing solo by guitar wizard John McLaughlin. The song is called ‘Tones For Elvin Jones’ and it’s in 5/4. It is a repeating 8 bar chord progression in C minor. What I’ve done is something you should start doing yourself whenever you’re doing a transcription of your own, or just looking at somebody else’s work, and that is writing the chord scale degree above each note. In other words look at the chord symbol, then above each note in that bar write what degree of the appropriate chord scale is being played. This requires that you really know your chord scales. I’ve written out the correct chord scales for you so you’ll be able to see exactly WHAT notes McLaughlin plays and more importantly WHY he plays the notes he does. So in our transcription here if you look at bar #1 the chord symbol is C min 7 and the first note is an Eb. Remember we are in TREBLE CLEF! The Eb is the -3rd degree of a C Dorian Scale. The 2nd note is a D note, that is the 9th degree of a C Dorian Scale and so on. When the chord changes to Ab13(#11) that takes an Ab Lydian Dominant Scale. I’ve written the corresponding scale degree over every single note in the entire solo. The reason you want to do this is so that you can take the licks that you like and be able to transpose them into any key. What good is learning a killer lick from this solo but only being able to play it in one key or against only one chord? None really. You want to be fluent and have that killer lick you learned available to you in all 12 keys!
Click on the images below to download the transcription
Listen to John McLaughlin’s guitar solo on a tune called Tones For Elvin Jones
Does this take time? Hell yeah it does but it’s worth it. Come on guys, the bass guitar is a symmetrical instrument. That means yeah you can just move the ‘shape’ of a lick up or down into whatever key you want and that’s great but you don’t just want to learn licks by their shape, you want to know what the notes are. I further break down the notes into 3 types.
1) Chord Tones = R, 3rd, 5th, or 7th
2) Tensions = 9, 11, 13
3) Passing Tones/Chromatics = Any note that is not a Chord Tone or a Tension
This will really make you dive into your technique (or lack thereof) , your knowledge of Chord Scales, playing in odd meters, and getting your Harmony/Theory chops together. That is a lot. Dig in.
-Pick
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Photo: Self-portrait by Melissa Auf Der Maur
Melissa Auf Der Maur is a Canadian bassist who played with Tinker, Hole, and The Smashing Pumpkins. She released her own work and is a photographer with photos published in Nylon, Bust, and National Geographic. She released her ‘90s Rock Memoir “Even The Good Girls Will Cry” on 17 March 2026.
KB: Did you always want to be a singer-musician growing up?
I’ve played music my whole life. In school, I played trumpet and sang in a children’s choir, so music was always within me. My mother was the first female disc jockey on the Montreal airwaves; her record collection played a huge role in my inspiration and love of music.
KB: When did you start playing bass, and why this instrument?
When I was 19, the early 90s music explosion began to percolate in tiny clubs around the world. I was lucky to be a ticket girl at Montreal’s underground music club. In one year, I saw Hole, Sonic Youth, Smashing Pumpkins, White Zombie, and The Breeders – all had female bass players. That’s when the seed was planted. By the age of 22, I was the bass player of Hole.
KB: Which brands of basses have you used in your career, and which one are you using now?
The first bass that I learned on was a vintage Squier Precision. Hole was sponsored by Fender guitars, so I upgraded to Fender Custom Shop Precisions. That is all I play, but I have a cool vintage 8-string Greco that I use on recordings to thicken up guitar parts.
KB: What equipment do you use or have you used with your basses?
Ampeg SVT amps and cabinets, a couple of Sans-Amp pedals, and that is it.
KB: How did you become a member of Hole, and what is your fondest memory of that time?
Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins was helping scout a replacement for (RIP) Kristen Pfaff, Hole’s bass player. My band, Tinker, opened for them on the Siamese Dream tour, so Billy had seen me play and could vouch for me. Courtney trusted her talented friend, and that was it. I initially said “no thank you” due to my commitment to my photographic studies and the drama and chaos surrounding the band during the “Live Through This” album release. Courtney took it as a good sign that I said no, so convinced me to reconsider, and soon after, I accepted their invitation, in the name of helping put females in the male-dominated landscape of rock music. My fondest memory is every show we played as a mostly female band, symbolizing what a woman could do in a rock band. Every show had a purpose: get more women to play music.
KB: You are a photographer as well. What makes a great picture? Do you shoot in color or b/w?
I started shooting photographs at age 15. Initially only shot black & white and worked in the art school darkroom. In university, I took a color photography course, and shifted mostly and forever to that, because it was easier to process film on the road when I joined a rock band. I experimented with many cameras, point and shoots, manual, polaroids, medium format, and vintage finds. The trick to a good photograph is to shoot many and all the time – the magic is in the edit and selection process.
KB: Are there artists you would love to collaborate with or wish you had?
??I’ve been lucky to collaborate with some of my favorite musicians in my career. I would still love to collaborate with a new generation heavy electronic artist on an analog bass, heavy electronic drums, and synths collaboration project. Take me out of my usual zone, merging the past and future: my love of 80s dark new wave and new artists exploring that genre. It was very futuristic back then, and we are now, after all, living in the future. I am in the mood to play bass to heavy beats I want to dance to.
KB: What are your 7 favorite bass lines in music across all genres? And why these 7?
“Mountain Song” – Jane’s Addiction (love a rambling, rolling bass line – feels like the ocean waves)
“Black Top – Helmet” (was the first bass line I taught myself)
“Gold Dust Woman” – Hole from “The Crow 2” Soundtrack (it was my first bass line contribution to the band)
“Get Ready” – The Temptations (Motown just feels so good, because of the bass)
“Lucretia My Reflection” – Sisters of Mercy (makes me want to hit the dance floor and play bass simultaneously)
“Be My Druidess” – Type O Negative (full chord bass playing at its best by iconic, demonic, Peter Steele, RIP)
“Romantic Rights” – Death from Above (1979 – unique distorted overdriven tone, combined dance rhythm and melodic intelligence, all in one shot – also! Shout out to a bass & drum only band, which is awesome, and we should have more of, but the bass player needs to be a killer to fill that role.
KB: What are you currently up to?
Releasing my ‘90s Rock Memoir “EVEN THE GOOD GIRLS WILL CRY”. Visceral healing process, it was to get it out of me and write it, but I suspect the real magic will begin by putting it into the world and reflecting with others on what the magic of the ‘90s was all about. Powerful music decade that carried us into what is now a brave new world of digital corporate weirdness – may the past shed a light on our future. That’s my hope for this book release and tour.
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