this may be a stupid question, but chords?

You may find this site useful, go into the guitar room advanced, it will show you where the notes lie on the neck.

http://www.looknohands.com/chordhouse/

 

Moved to general instruction.

 

Not sure where I got it, but "Ron Greene's Bass Guitar Dial" came with some Bass Lesson Book I bought recently. With a Wheel based on the "Circle of Fifths" it gives the I, IV, V, VIm, IIm, IIIm, flatted III and flatted 7arpeggio fingerings for every key and its relative minor. On the back are a series of useful topics like "How to play great sounding bass lines", Common Chord Arpeggios, Arpeggios for Chord Extensions, How to Transpose, Arpeggio Fingerings, chord extensions in each Key and a 19 fret chart of notes on the neck.
What to do between guitar chord changes, it tells you, is play the arpeggio of the chord. (Ex: if the Chord is C - play C-E-G-C)

Tab would look like:

--- --- --- -4-
-1 --- --- -4-
--- -2 --- ---

where your 2nd (or middle finger) plays the root note and the rest of the arpeggio falls into place on the 2 next higher strings.

If this is too basic, I apologize. I'm pretty much of a beginner, myself, and this stuff is helping me.

Also, you can play the bottom note on the piano music, and to add some variety, write out & play the melody in bass clef, or just play it from the music if you can read treble.

 

If you are askin' for bass chords go HERE they have every chord on bass

 

if youve got about $15 that you can spare, I highly recomend buying Ed Friedlands, building walking bass lines method book.

He basically teaches you how to walk thru the changes, but the true beauty of this book is that, he gives you all the information you need to know about the chord motion your trying to outline, what goes into them, their intervals etc. You wont have to necessarily walk thru the changes, but you will definatly obtain the knowledge you are seeking to be able to fill in those blanks.