Help....any suggestions?

[Bass-sic]

I'm a very new bass player and am in need of a little advise from the pro's. Any tips on a good website to get bass tabs that are correct? Or any tips on how I can listen to a song and pick out the bass part clearer? Sometimes it's so hard to know if its the bass drum or the bass guitar. I know with practice it will get easier, but maybe there are a few tips that will help me along?

 

[skabassist13]

www.mxtabs.net - fairly good, generally has a few to choose from for each song, also has a rating system so that you can see which paticular tab is more accurate than the others
www.basstabarchive.com - not bad, not as popular as others, but tottally bass oriented
www.tabcrawler.com - once again, not bad, somewhat popular so there are generally a few different tabs per song

As for how to pick out the bass line for any song you just have to listen and try to focus and find it. It might help if you find a certain spot in a song where you know you can hear the bassline, and then lock onto it and just keep following it. A trick to help you practice and learn basslines is to memorize them. I'm not saying be able to write it down note for note all the way through any song, just familiarize your self enough with it so that when you pick up your bass you can hear it in your head. Practice humming it to yourself. Hum with the song. My bass teacher once told me "If you can't hum it, you can't play it."

 

[hankSRay]

Hey bass-sic, like you said it will become much easier as you practice but in the mean time you might want to look into getting one of those tascam cd players that allow you to boost the bass so you can more clearly hear the parts. They're pretty cool but do cost about $150. As far as tabs go, I'd try to avoid them all together. They're a good way to learn a song just for fun but notation is where its at. But I do suppose you could check out mxtabs.net, they're somewhat decent but you do get those really off tabs sometimes. Hope that helps, keep on keepin on.

 

[tommyindelaware]

I'm a very new bass player and am in need of a little advise from the pro's. Any tips on a good website to get bass tabs that are correct? Or any tips on how I can listen to a song and pick out the bass part clearer? Sometimes it's so hard to know if its the bass drum or the bass guitar. I know with practice it will get easier, but maybe there are a few tips that will help me along?

these things are awesome !!!!!!



http://www.andysmusiconline.com/Tascam_CDBT1MKII_Phrase_Trainer_p/tascam_cdbt1mkii.htm

i can't stress enough how important it is to learn with your ears !!!!!
don't get in the habbit of relying on tab.
always exersize the EARS !!!!!!

 

[TheDirtyMoocher]

according to my bass teacher, who is very wise, tabs were invented buy guitarists (that right there should put you off) who were lazy and wanted to make life easier. in this they succeeded, but what everybody who reads tabs (myself included) loses is the theory and uh...art i guess...behind the songs, and when you learn a song and understand that, you really get something out of learning the song

so my advice is to avoid tabs from the beginning and get a good bass teacher

 

[phatduckk]

honestly ... there's no "accurate" good tab site out there, at least that i know of. If you google <insert song name here> tabs you get a bunch of results but you'll notice that if you check out the page 3/4 of them have the exact same thing as the other. Its a bummer. As far as the accuracy of the tabs ... well, people like me (well, the non-lazy versions) are the people who submit the tabs and most of the time they get something of another wrong.

so none of that's good news ... but lemme see if i can try n make things a bit better.

the Tascam Bass Trainer is a device that you can plug into for practice. Its go a headphone out and all that jazz but for learning material it lets you play and slow down CDs. So that can help you pick stuff out. I think it also has some crazy EQing thinggy that lets you drown out the rest of the mix on the CD and the bass should be heard more prominantly.

Back when I started I was really into Metallica so I went out and bought the bass tabs at the music shop at the mall. Those are right on the money. so if you're into 1 particular album or artist you should be able to find real transcrptions of their stuff.

as far as learning songs tabs are a good way to go till your ear gets "better" and you can pick stuff out. even tho most stuff online is wrong or bad i still find it super usefull b/c the exercise of correcting their mistakes helps you train your ear too.

as far as other practicing stuff goes: part of practicing should be fun and some should be a pain in the ass workout. the proportion you spend for either depends on you and your preference. but as far as "work outs" i mean ... go over things that you have a harder time with. when you get that right, then do it backwards, then lower on the nexk where the frets are further from eachother, then do the same thing without using your index finger etc. grab a scale and coming up with random patterns (they dont have to sound good together either) to work on is good. whatever give you trouble, then do that more

good luck and have fun

 

[Bass-sic]

"If you can't hum it, you can't play it."

Thanks so much for the websites, I will check them out. And thanks for the tip I will definitely try that technique.

 

[shamus63]

i can't stress enough how important it is to learn with your ears !!!!!
don't get in the habbit of relying on tab.
always exersize the EARS !!!!!!

Hear, hear!

 

[Bass-sic]

Thanks everyone, I appreciate the tips. I guess part of the frustration of learning an instrument is learning to hear. I always say to myself "if I could hear the bass, I could at least try to find the notes to practice with"

 

[skabassist13]

I must say that I respectfully disagree with most of you in this thread.

The popular thought here seems to be to learn with your ears. In this mindset I agree. But it's not that easy. Our friend bass-sic says that he is a begginer. I don't know about you, but when I started I had no ear for any music what-so-ever. It took practice. It also took alot of tabs and familiarization with the bass. After a while I am now able to somewhat learn by ear, but not completely. While I advocate learning by ear and learning standard notation, I know that these are fairly complex subjects for a begginer. I'd say for someone just starting off the best thing to do would be to get a tab for you favorite song, grab the c.d. that the song is on and look over the tab as the song is being played. Then apply the bass and follow the tab until you don't need to look at it. THEN familiarize your ear to the note your hand is playing. It might take a while, but the feeling of accomplishment that you get from learning a song will keep you inspired to keep playing. As you progress you will learn to hear the bassline in your head and then you will be able to play it by ear.

A good bass teacher will move the process along as well.


Catch what I'm saying?

 

[phatduckk]

Catch what I'm saying?

i do agree with you. i think everyone should eventually exercise their ear but as a 100% beginner i think that learning how to move your fingers and "getting" the feel/pain of strings is more important.

I think tabs are cool for that because they get you playing and get your fingers used to the board and strings and the "new" movements their gonna have to make. why start off on Mary Had a Little Lamb when you can start off on any Nirvana, Weezer etc song?

 

[skabassist13]

Exactly!!

 

[Psycho Ward]

A great tool I've been using is the Tascam Bass Trainer, slow songs down and still stays in pitch. I love it.

 

[Mobay45]

A great tool I've been using is the Tascam Bass Trainer, slow songs down and still stays in pitch. I love it.

+1

I bought one about 2 months ago and it's come in very handy learning some of the songs that my new band is playing.

As for tabs, I think the person that came up with them should be found, then shot, drawn and quartered and burned. There is a system out there called music notation that has worked for centuries and continues to work. Any of the online tabs that I've found have been totally incorrect. If you learn to read music you will have centuries of compositions at your disposal.
*rant off*