Kenton Park's video: Jeremy Camp - The Way Bass Cover

The Song: The Way by Jeremy Camp is a song that I've come to love for its elaborate score. I love how the composers didn't settle for typical contemporary music style with a simple piano line, bass, drums, and one or two guitars, but they went all out in orchestrating this song. With an elaborate piano line, full choir, and a string ensemble (although it sounds produced by synths), this song has a much more majestic and timeless sound to it. The Score: The build is incredible, starting out with just piano and drums drums for the intro, then adding pizzicato strings as Jeremy comes in to sing the first verse. The song goes straight into a second verse adding bass and one guitar to build to the pre-chorus, where the second guitar comes in to build into the chorus, but then the bass drops and all instruments fall out for the chorus except the piano, cello, and a large reverb of the choir (but I decided to add some low bass here). The second half of the chorus then takes it another step down dropping the cello and choir to give a very open sound preparing for the drums to lead back into the second verse, full again. In the second verse, the strings are playing higher adding tension to build into the second chorus, where the band is mostly full, with overdriven guitar playing full, but trading off with the bass on beats, to still present some emptiness. Only to build into the bridge, full of bass drops until it builds into the third verse fuller than the song has ever been with the choir full, bass and guitar playing together as it builds to the climax. The outro then relieves the tension of the chorus by calming down to piano, bass, drums, and choir, to then release off the up beat. The Harmony: With how exciting the song is, I was eager to learn it, but it turns out this song is complex in orchestration, but simple in chordal harmony. Most of the song is only three chords (Bm, G, and A). The pre-chorus has the forth chord, an E, creating a secondary dominant. The main change in harmony is rather the fourth bar of each phrase will stay on A or jump to Bm early. The Bassline: Because of this simplicity (and motivation from the epicness that is the score), I decided to give a more elaborate bass line that I feel fits the song well. By adding embellishments, more bass drops, and runs, I feel like I successfully created a compelling bass line that is fun to play, difficult, and still (mostly) serves the music. I do feel like this is my best bass cover to date.