Reading bass tabs is probably one of the easiest things you can do on the four-string instrument that will help you learn and play songs much faster.
Ideally, learning to read and write musical notation is a great idea but not everybody has the time and money to invest in that skill. Also, it takes many years to be good at sight-reading- and that’s really not viable for every bassist out there.
The tablature, or tab as it’s more commonly referred to provides an easy way to communicate melodies and arrangements in the community. Guitarists, mandolin and banjo players, and even violinists use tabs when they need to learn something new, so it’s certainly something that will carry over to a different instrument as well.
This post will help you get started with everything you need to know about tabs, and how you can use them to your benefit. Let’s get started!
Table of Contents
Making Sense Of Modern Tablature- Tabs For Dummies!
To make it easier to explain, I’ve broken down this section into a few parts- just make sure that you grasp the concept mentioned in each part before moving on to the next part.
Time-signatures
If you are new to music in general, you may be super confused when musicians say 1 2 3 4 before playing anything. You may have seen drummers do this, and many bands do this when playing live as well. The reason for this is fairly simple- all the instruments need to be playing in the same pocket, and if any instrument is ahead of, or lagging behind the beat, that means the band’s overall sound is going to suffer.
Being able to know what time signature a certain piece of music is in, will help open many doors for you regardless of whether you’re just a beginner or at an advanced level of playing (I doubt you don’t know about time signatures).
The most common time signature you will notice- and that has dominated the popular songs of this generation- is 4/4. You will find 4/4 being written at the left of tabs and music notations but what does it really mean?
It just means that there are four beats in a bar- and if you look closely, you will also see if the note is a quarter note or has any other time value. This is not seen in tabs but staff will show you many things.
I think you should learn to hear the common time signatures like 4/4, 3/4, 6/8, and 7/8 at the very least. Knowing what these mean and how you can play them will also make polyrhythms easier when you finally decide to learn them.
It’s super easy to figure out how many notes go into a 4/4 time. You can either play 4 quarter notes or 8 eighth notes or 64 sixteenth notes.
Tempo
In music, the tempo is just how fast or slow you are playing a song. It’s usually written at the top left with a digit- usually between 60 – 150; the higher the tempo, the faster it is, and harder to play on the bass.
Sometimes, slow parts can also be equally different. I think the difficulty in playing songs is not just because of the technical difficulties involved but also because you need to play every note loud and clear. This will automatically translate into higher speed and accuracy with lots of practice.
It’s also common to omit tempo markers in tabs these days, so you likely won’t see them but in case you do, that’s what it means.
In the following video, you can see how easy it is to play along with a metronome.
Playing with a metronome is a skill that every bassist should master. Learning to control your tempo can be a valuable asset when playing with others or improvising. Nobody likes a bassist who can’t play in time, so invest some time in developing your own feelings of time and lock in with the drummer.
On that note, most drummers have a fantastic sense of time and if you ask them how you can lock in with the groove, they will help you. You just need to be able to ask for advice and keep an open mind, and you can learn a lot of things in a very short span of time.
Key signatures
Key signatures are a bunch of sharp or flat symbols on the staff placed towards the left. The key signature is what notes fit an arrangement, and which scales can be played over it.
These are the keys you should be familiar with- there are 12 of them and you will see some more often than others- but it’s a fantastic idea to practice all 12 keys. This not only helps you to get familiar with the bass fretboard but also helps gain dexterity and technicality in all keys.
The circle of fifths is a handy tool that shows you the relative minors of each key – the inner circle is for the minor keys and the outer circle is for the corresponding major keys. For example, the A major scale has a relative minor – F#m, the C# major key has a relative minor- Bbm and so on.
The way you can practice is pretty easy- just pick a key- I am picking C for example. Just play the I IV V vi chords in that key. In the key of C, that would be C F G Am- then, repeat this process for each of the keys corresponding to where you started till you arrive at the start.
This exercise helped me drill the chords that exist in diatonic major scales, and it has translated well when I need to write some parts for the bass or keyboard.
The major scales depicted above are:
C major: C D E F G A B
G major: G A B C D E F#
D major: D E F# G A B C#
A major: A B C# D E F# G#
E major: E F# G# A B C# D#
B major: B, C♯, D♯, E, F♯, G♯, A♯
F# major: F# G# A# B C# D# E#
C# major: C♯ D♯ E♯ F♯ G♯ A♯ B♯
Ab major: A♭ B♭ C D♭ E♭ F G
Eb major: E♭ F G A♭ B♭ C D
Bb major: B♭ C D E♭ F G A
F major: F G A B♭ C D E
Horizontal String Lines
The string lines are the most important part of tablatures- guitar tabs and bass tabs both have horizontal string lines but guitars have six. Some basses do have five or even six strings, but those are quite rare and we are not going to talk about those here. However, the underlying principle is the same.
The problem with tabs is that while you know what frets you are supposed to say, there’s not nearly information to figure out how you are supposed to play the notes. It doesn’t say whether the notes are played as triplets or sixteenth or just quarter notes- and this can be super confusing.
In this example, you’ve got four strings in standard – that’s something, and the strings you are supposed to play on are the E, A, D, and G from thickest to thinnest.
Rhythm Notation
If you’re new to reading tabs, you will very easily get used to the lines and the numbers on the tabs but the rhythm part might tip you- and it’s the same for most players of any skill level, really.
Even if you can play the tab note for note, it won’t sound any good if you can’t nail down the time and feel.
The notation for rhythm tells how you should play the bass and it makes things way easier than it’s to figure out the rhythm by listening to songs being played. If you are new to time signatures and don’t know how to count in 4/4, you won’t get any use of it. So, it’s a good idea to revisit the rhythm basics first before you can move on to learning the rhythm patterns.
This video will help you get familiar with rhythm concepts that you can work on later:
You may have noticed that the most common note durations to pop up were the whole note, half note,
A whole note consists of 4 beats, assuming you are in 4/4 time, this would be the entire measure. A whole note is just a note that takes up four beats – a half note would be played over a duration of two beats- there would only be two of these in a bar, so you can imagine that the shorter the note duration, the more notes you have to play.
For these reasons, it’s a good idea to play whole notes and half notes to speed first before moving on to faster note values like sixteenth and thirty-second notes.
You would count the eighth notes as 1-and-2-and-3-and-4-and. Very similarly, sixteenth notes can be counted as 1-e-&-a 2-e-&-a 3-e-&-a 4-e-&-a.
If you would like to, you can try breaking the divisions into even more subdivisions, but those would be subsequently harder to play.
There are also triplets- which are played three for a single beat- and quintuplets which just means that five notes are played in a beat- it’s not that common in western music but pretty common in Indian classical music.
One thing that trips up most beginner players is the dotted note values- a dotted note is just played for the duration of the regular note plus half of that. For example, if you see a dotted eighth note, it would be played for two sixteenth notes in total plus the half of that which would be one-sixteenth note, so the dotted eighth note would be played for a total of three sixteenth notes. Likewise, a dotted quarter note is played for the same duration as three eighth notes- which is super easy to grasp if you are counting along with your foot and playing on an instrument.
After you’ve gotten a fair amount of practice with the concepts I’ve mentioned here, it’s a good idea to practice writing your own bass lines with musical notations. Even if you don’t have your bass guitar with you, you can grab a surface and just practice tapping along to different rhythms. This is the way most drummers practice when they’re not around a kit and trust me, this can do wonders for your internal rhythm.
Tuning Is Super Important
You will find the bass tuning written in the tab- and it will tell you whether it’s in standard or some weird one. If nothing is written, it’s probably in standard, but checking with your ear is probably a good idea too.
Trust me, the last thing you want to sound like is out of tune. You can put in chromatic notes and play sloppily but that won’t seem as bad as being out of tone would. It leads your overall sound to chaos- so it’s recommended that you always tune up before playing. There are plenty of good tuners on the internet- and you can even get a good bass amp with a built-in tuner if you think you will keep forgetting to bring your tuner to gigs and rehearsals.
You can also experiment with bass tunings- I mostly play in standard, but if you have the time and enthusiasm, trying out tunings like drop D and drop C can be fun to try out.
Common Markings on Bass Tabs
On the forums and on websites online, you will also find different symbols that mean specific things. You should note that these symbols are made up and there’s no standard practice but I’m pretty sure most players would be using these when writing tabs.
You can try figuring out what different symbols mean just by hearing the way it’s played. That’s also a good exercise to improve your listening skills.
On The Strings
You will find markings like / and ^ on the strings sometimes- this is what they mean:
- Forward slash ( / ) means a slide moving higher up the neck- something like 5 / 7 would mean a slide from 5th to the 7th fret.
- Backslash ( \ ) means a slide moving lower down the neck – something like 6 \ 4 would mean a slide from 6th fret down to the 4th fret.
- ^ Caret means a bend- it’s also pretty common to see bendy lines (⤴) used to denote bends. You will also see 1/2 written with the caret or arrow that denotes the bend being a half-step bend.
- (x) means the note shouldn’t be played- or should be muted- ignore these notes if you are a beginner
- (h) means a hammer-on. 5h7 would mean that you should first fret the fifth fret, play it, then play the seventh fret while still holding the previous note.
- (p) means a pull-off. 6p5 would mean that you should first fret the fifth fret and then, pull off the sixth fret so that the fifth fret is now ringing.
Below The Strings
When there are markings below the strings, it usually means that the note should be played a bit differently- with a different technique perhaps.
- S means that the note should be slapped- you do slap with your thumb. You can also do double thumb but it tends to be pretty difficult for a beginenr.
- P means that you pop the note.
- T means that the note is supposed to be tapped- if you are left-handed, you would tap with your left fingers, and if you’re lright-handed, you would tap with your right. It’s not hard but takes some practice to get used to the motions.
Final Thoughts
If you are learning a stringed instrument, you will certainly encounter tabs sooner or later- learning how to read tabs and make sense of the components will give you a head start when learning new things on your instrument. It does take some time to get the hang of it, so the more you practice reading tabs, the easier it will be.
From what we’ve read so far, time signatures, tempo, key signatures, horizontal string lines and the underlying rhythm are the most important parts you should keep in mind when it comes to learning tab notations.
You cannot forego one of these elements in your bass playing, you need to do all of them justice. You also need to be mindful of the time signature and the tempo to ensure that you aren’t butchering the bass line- it’s easier said than done but if you put some time aside to practice bass guitar, you will find that you can improve in very little time.
Reading the tab doesn’t take much time to get fluent at- but the underlying concepts of rhythm and time signatures will probably be confusing when you first start out.