Want to play all of your favorite songs on bass? Learn where to find the bass guitar tabs you need in this guide by San Diego teacher Justine D…
Guitar and bass tablature, or bass tabs, is a kind of musical notation that focuses on fretted finger placement rather than the actual pitches. It can help you sharpen your listening skills, try out new skills and techniques, and — of course — learn your favorite songs’ bass lines! In this blog post, we’ll cover where you can find bass tabs easy for beginners and how to decide which one you want to use.
Tabs have been used for years. In fact, during the Renaissance, tablature was used to help lute players play and write down songs. Let’s check out how you can play them today.
You may also be interested in: How to Play Bass: The Complete Beginner’s Guide
How Do You Play Bass Guitar Tabs?
Many bass tabs are written and shared online by musicians like you who want a way to remember their favorite songs.
Bass guitar tabs feature four horizontal lines, like in the example above, that represent each of your strings. The line at the very bottom represents your low E string, while the line at the top represents your G string. The numbers on the lines represent what fret to play.
How to Read Tabs for Bass Guitar:
Read the tab from left to right, playing only the notes indicated by the numbers. In this example, you would play the 1st fret of your E string six times before moving on to the next measure.
Check out this video on how to read bass tabs for beginners:
Thank you to Howcast for the use of this video!
Where to Find Bass Guitar Tabs Online
You may wonder, are there free bass tabs online?
- Ultimate Guitar: Despite its name, this website does have bass guitar tablature, too! Use their advanced search feature to make sure you only get bass tabs in your results. I like this site because tab submitters can indicate the difficulty of the tab and the genre, making searching easy. There’s quite a range of genres here — anime to electronic to world and rap — but most of the tunes are in the rock genre. On this site you are guaranteed to find “come as you are” bass tabs and “what’s the use” bass tab.
While they aren’t dedicated tab repositories, Bass Musician Magazine and No Treble share tabs from jazz, metal, and other rarer genres of music. You won’t find just any tab here, though. You’re limited to what they’ve chosen to provide to you. Many of the tabs are more intermediate to advanced, though, so it’s a good place to browse and learn more complex music and techniques. You may even pick up a new favorite artist or two!
How Do You Know Which Bass Guitar Tablature to Use?
Anyone can submit bass guitar tabs to any of these websites, and they don’t usually review the tab before it goes online. Because people write tabs by ear, some tabs may have mistakes. Other musicians may upload additional versions of a song’s tab to correct the mistakes they see or share the way they play it.
Many sites use a rating system that allows users to show which tabs they recommend and which they don’t; look for a 4- or 5-star rating next to a tab’s link.
Popular songs may have up to 20 or more tab versions on a site. I typically start with the highest number version (e.g. “Money (version 25)”, versus “Money (version 2)”), assuming that the multiple versions are fixing errors found in versions 1–24.
Lastly, most tabs don’t indicate any kind of rhythm. You have to rely on your ears to help you know how fast or short you play the notes. Some tabbers will try to space the numbers out, but this can still be unclear. If you see a tab that does explicitly state the rhythm, though, try that one first! In this example, the Es at the top indicates the eighth note rhythm of the bass line.
Good luck playing bass guitar tabs! If you come across a resource we haven’t listed here, let us know where it is by leaving a comment below! Interested in working with a professional to learn more bass guitar tabs for beginners? To learn more easy bass tabs work with a professional guitar teacher!
Justine D. teaches guitar, bass guitar, upright bass, and music theory lessons in San Diego, CA, as well as online. She received a double major in in music and psychology at Kalamazoo College, and joined the TakeLessons team in 2011. Learn more about Justine here!
Suzy S.