Welcome to Part 5 of the Bass Essentials Series. In this section, were going to tackle sheet music and reading music. Not only are we going to look at learning to read standard notation and sheet music on bass guitar, but we’re going to cover tablature reading as well. While on the topic of each, we’ll look at some of the pros and cons of learning both and explore some of the challenges that might come with learning how to read tab and standard notation.
Now that you have bought your bass, bought your amp, tuned your bass guitar up properlyand have some knowledge on the basic anatomy of your bass guitar’s neck and fretboard, now let’s explore learning to read tab and learning to read bass guitar standard notation and sheet music
Different musicians have different levels of competency when it comes to reading music – tab or standard. Much of the inclination to learn comes from where you want to be as a musician and how far you want to take learning this skill.
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Many bass players who hope to learn a new instrument and some songs to play for friends and family might find more value in just learning tab than the musician aspiring to play high paying gigs and do extensive session work.
This post is designed to give you the reader a bare-bones fundamental approach to reading bass guitar music. At the end of this post, you should:
If you’ve ever wanted to learn a song on bass, there’s a good chance you typed the name of the song into Google and the first thing that came up was a result that looked like this:
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Tablatures (or tab for short) is music represented by where the note is on the fretboard, not by the note itself. Put another way, if you go to the A string and press the 3rd fret, you’re playing a C – only the C is not represented like this:
Tab music is considerably easier to learn than standard notation. The logic is very intuitive: go to that string, press that fret and the not comes out.
The use of numbers as they correspond to frets is a very beginner-musician-friendly approach to learning song. Pretty much anyone brand new to an instrument can pick the instrument up, look up what fret corresponds to what position on the neck and play.
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However, let me ask you this question: what’s the rhythm of that tabbed passage above? We know the notes, but how do you actually play it?
Here in lies the glaring problem with tab: it’s considerably limited in that it doesn’t (easily) show any of the details of the music. 16th note or 8th note? Loud or soft? Staccatto or lagato? These essential questions are usually not answered on a piece of tablature. Sometimes its even up to the listener to figure out these important details of the bass line as the tab does not explicitly reveal them.
In this excerpt, you can now see that we have a rhythm to follow in addition to the notes of the song. But one thing you might notice right now is that it can be pretty difficult to read. There is a lot going on on this page. Lots of numbers, letters of varying sizes and capitalization and dashes. Speaking personally for a moment, as useful as I’ve found these detailed tabs, I’ve found them just as difficult to read.
The Basics Of Reading Music For Bass Guitar
Learningto read bass guitar sheet music is a considerable undertaking that can take years to master. That being said, it’s the application that takes considerable time to master, but the fundamentals are rather straightforward.
You’re probably wondering what the deal is with the D and the E string being so close to one another. Well, in this representation, the notes are all on the staff. The circled E here is the octave of the low, open E string.
Understanding how these notes are used and arranged is where the challenge of understanding standard notation music comes from. Moreover, being able to sight read these symbols in real time and perform them is the biggest challenge you’re likely to face. But that skill comes with time, patience and practice.
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Like I mentioned before, how much you want to learn to read music is directly hinged upon what kind of bass player you want to be. If you’re looking to entertain friends and family, maybe rigorous sheet music reading exercises wouldn’t benefit you as much as learning some Beatles songs and performing them at family gatherings with some friends. Additionally, if you’re looking to make music your professional career – the one you depend on for income – then maybe learning to read sheet music and training yourself in that particular skill would be more to your interests. Finally, if you’re someone who prefers to learn with their ears and improvise on the spot, maybe learning to read music period wouldn’t be the best use of time and energy – at least not at first.
There are many different avenues and they depend strongly on what kind of player you want to be. I’m not going to write that you MUST learn XYZ things to be a good musician, I’m simply laying this out in practical light. What you want to do with these particular skills is up to you as a player – like just about everything else in the fine arts.
Mike Emiliani is the founder of Smart Bass Guitar. When he's not writing, he can be found playing bass, producing music, studying business and watching basketball.Bass TAB (or Bass Tablature) is a simple way of reading music for bass that uses numbers and symbols instead of notes on a staff.
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In this guide, I’ll explain how to read Bass TAB so you can start learning songs from TAB from websites such as Ultimate Guitar (check out the best TAB websites here). Most sites that offer Guitar TAB also include Bass TAB.
There are a few different types of Bass TAB you may find online. While the types of Bass TAB may look slightly different from each other, they all follow the same basic ideas.
This is the oldest type of Bass TAB that was first shared online. Some sites still cling on to text-based TAB instead of using a modern version, so it’s useful to know how to read it.
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This type of TAB can tell you where to play each note and any techniques used, but it usually doesn’t include any rhythm notation.
Sometimes you will see TAB with numbers underneath (eg: 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 +) to help explain the rhythm. But if you want TAB with decent rhythm notation, check out the other TAB formats.
The font Courier New is the most popular font for writing this type of TAB. Notepad in Windows has quite a few other fonts that work well with TAB.
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Websites like Songsterr use an interactive type of TAB that not only packs in far more information such as proper rhythm notation, but you can play along with the TAB.
As you can see, the above TAB looks similar to the text-based Bass TAB from earlier, but is easier to read and uses different symbols.
Most interactive TAB will include all instruments for a song, so you can play along to the TAB while listening to the drums, guitar, and any other instruments in the background.
How To Read Bass Guitar Music
If you buy a TAB book, you will likely see this format. The basic idea here is that you get both the TAB version as well as the Standard Notation version at the same time.
It’s important to keep in mind that you don’t need to know how to read Standard Notation to use this format. Simply ignore the top staff and read the TAB as normal.
Guitar Pro 8 gives you everything you need to edit and create your own TAB as well as download and playback/edit TAB for other songs. A nice advantage of this software is the range of tools you can use such as:
I Just Want To Read Sheet Music.
Bass TAB has four horizontal lines to represent the four strings on bass. Bass TAB written for 5-string bass will use five horizontal lines.
The number of lines always matches the number of strings. This means if you see a part with six lines, it may be meant for guitar.
As you can see in the diagram below, the four lines match up to the four bass strings from lowest pitch to highest pitch:
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Looking at Bass TAB is like looking down at your bass in your hands. The bottom line in Bass TAB matches the lowest pitch string (eg: E for 4-string bass and B for 5-string bass in Standard Tuning) on your bass.
This is handy when a song uses an alternate tuning. If you don’t see the string names next to each line, look elsewhere to make sure the tuning is in Standard.
Each line on Bass TAB represents a string on your bass. Whenever you see a number on a line in Bass TAB, that number is telling you to play a specific note on that string.
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The numbers on
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