Tabs?!?!?!?

I'm gonna have to say "easy".

Each line is a string, and each # is a fret on that string. Some people use a system of letters, or something, below those lines to indicate note length. E for eighth note, S for sixteenth, Q for quarter, etc... Other than that, just listen to the song and note it yourself.

[/feedtroll]

 

Im gonna guess probably on that one.

 

This is the best post ever.

 

I do it all the time. If something is in EADGBE or something, its pretty easy. Regular 6 string bass tuning would put it into EADGCF, so just take all the numbers on the B and high E string and subtract 2 (number of semitones you've "tuned up"). After that, just move the #s around (add 5 when moving to the next lower string, subtract 5 when going the other way) until you get it into 4 or 5 or however many strings you have on the bass.

Say you move everything so its all on the strings EADG and C, theres your 5 string. If you play it it will be down an octave (or if you tune BEADG, an octave and a 5th [not sure on the 5th part]).

Personally I love taking early Sabbath riffs and transposing them so that I can play them and use my open 5th string as the lowest note.

 

Has this person got a six string bass though? If theyve tnever played any instrument that has frets then i think there going to be confused by what you wrote

 

No offense, but if you're used to sax and piano, you're presumably used to reading music (both treble clef and bass clef), right? So why even bother with tab? Why not just use standard notation?

 

Tabs are not really important IMO, so your time would be better spent working on your ear and brushing up on bass clef. Seriously. Tab is not a skill a bass player really needs. It is not an important component of bass playing that every well-rounded bassist needs to be on top of. You will virtually never be in a serious or even semiserious situation where you will be expected to read tabs. You're not missing anything of true importance by not spending time on tab.

There currently is a big thread on this on the first or second page of this forum.

I'm not saying tab can't ever be useful anywhere at any time to anybody. At one level, anything that ever helps anybody at all is good to an extent. But as an aid to your development as a bass player, it's effectively a dead end. It might take you a little ways down the road, but not that far, and not for that long. In terms of focusing on what will do you the most good down the line, assuming you want to keep playing and get better, tab should really not be a high priority. If you're not where you want to be with bass clef, working to get better on that (without, of course, neglecting your ear and physical technique and all that) is likely to benefit you far, FAR more than spending time trying to get fluent on tab. THAT's probably what you would get more out of working on, whether its value seems apparent or not.

But if you want to do tab, it's not that hard. It's just a visual representation of the strings and where you put your fingers. Look, it's no skin off my nose or anyone else's if you want to spend time on tab, and it won't harm you just to know it, but the best advice I can give you, as someone who's been doing this for a while, is that your efforts are better focused elsewhere. Just my $0.02.

 

...but on the contrary, you can be just as good or even better as the people who don't learn TABs and write it off. Key word being "can be".

 

If you are, it's unlikely to be because of tabs. Besides, the point is not to compete against other people--who knows what their thing is? It doesn't really matter much if A uses tabs and is slightly better than B who doesn't; B could be totally talentless or unmotivated. The point is, what approach is going to allow A to progress best? The idea is to assess what you yourself could do with one approach versus what you yourself could do with another one. If there's any competition, you're competing with yourself.

That is, would I, as a bassist and a musician, progress more and do better relying on tabs, or would I progress more and do better if I work on reading traditional notation and developing my ear? If I can read standard and have a decent ear, how likely is it that tab might add much knowledge to what I've got? (Not very.) If I can only read tabs, is being able to read standard notation gonna add much knowledge to what I've got? (Yes, though seemingly not everybody needs or wants that added knowledge.)

 

get off my website

 

Nothing wrong with learning tab especially cause it only takes all of 10 minutes to be proficient at reading them....

It does have it uses.... If your ears aren't all that developed and you need to learn a cover for practice tomorrow you'll be able to find a tab...but finding sheet music without purchasing a whole book will likely be impossible. Of course if your good enough you can look up the chords and then try to transcribe the line (or just transcribe it from scratch) if you are looking to learn something from it.

The reason tab gets a bad rap around here is cause its the "easy way" you can learn a song in all of 20 minutes without understanding what you are playing (because tab doesn't show rhythm and it doesn't so pitch in an easy to comprehend way), also as long as you rely on the tab your ears don't get better (and you could argue they even get worse from playing bad tabs).

The veterans around here don't understand why you would want to do such a thing (since they grew up without tabs and had to use their ears) and the youngsters don't want to sacrifice convince and speed when it comes to learning material.

 

i found tabs useful when i started, mainly because it gave me a chance of just getting used to moving fingers around and to play along to my favourite songs theres nothing better than when uve first got a new instrument you cant play and then you learn a part of a song. i found it inspired me to carry on. after i did that i started to look at what notes i was playing and started to learn scales, i found it much more fun that way than just been given a scale or some sheet music and as far as im concerned i play bass to have fun im not really bothered if im the best or not

 

I don't...complete waste of time.
I find it easy to do, but have never seen it "in the real world".

 

There seems to be a bunch of good sites:

http://www.google.ca/search?q=how+to+read+tab

Note that with bass tabs you usually only see 4 or 5 lines, and the tuning will be listed somewhere. If its not it will be EADG or BEADG usually.

 

I don't. I prefer traditional music notation. Sorry, can't help you on this one. Please try to learn traditional notation, instead. Just my two cents...