“Bass Solo Take One” – The spoken intro familiar to anybody that has listened to this distortion-drenched bass solo from the legendary original Metallica bassist, Cliff Burton. During my mid to late teens in the late 80’s and early 90’s, this was THE bass solo to learn if you wanted to earn respect from the other teenage rock bands. So I got the obligatory distortion pedal and CryBaby wah-wah pedal, and practiced my way into local teenage rock bass popularity. Back then I played a recognizable version of the song, but years later I would pull the tune back out for fun and be much more precise about the rhythms and multiple time signature changes. Now I use it (for interested parties) in the lessons I teach, as it is a fantastic counting exercise to keep track of the steady eighth note pulse throughout all of the time signature changes.
With my students, I stress the importance of setting up practice loops of small sections of the pieces they are currently studying. The video above is an example of such a practice loop, where a 10-measure section of the song (measures 38 – 47) is practiced on repeat. The metronome is set to eighth note = 200 bpm, which is slower than the original tempo for purposes of practicing with precision at a slower tempo and eventually speeding it up to the actual performance tempo. An entire song can be practiced in such a way, section by section practiced in a repeated loop, until each section just flows naturally from your fingers. Then all the sections can be put together and practiced as a whole until the entire piece is performed smoothly and accurately.
There are at least a couple versions of official sheet music available for “(Anesthesia) Pulling Teeth”, but the familiar version to me is the one that I learned from all those years ago, available from Sheet Music Plus at the following link:
https://www.sheetmusicplus.com/title/anesthesia-pulling-teeth-digital-sheet-music/19566949