Bass guitar
As of last weekend, I gave in my to my currect obsession/fad, and bought myself a bass guitar. It‘s an acoustic, and it’s beautiful…… and I can‘t play it!
So now starts hours of finger exercises, so they don’t ache after 5 minutes, and trying to learn to read bass clef, and tab. It‘s fun, and damned hard work!
For me, the beauty of playing an instrument lies in playing in groups. Just sitting down and strumming away with Ben is the most perfect feeling.
It’s also got me thinking. The beauty of tab is that it‘s written in plain text, so anyone can view it, meaning there’s loads of stuff available on the internet. It‘s of varied quality, but it’s all free, so that doesn‘t matter so much.
The difficulty is that people only tab difficult songs. For example, take the only song I’ve so far learnt to play. There She Goes by The La‘s. Do a search for Guitar tabs, and you’ll find many. Because the guitar part is intricate, and impressive. Try bass tabs, and there‘s nothing. Because the bass line is simple, quite repetitive, and doesn’t stand out. In the same way, you don‘t get beginner tabs, specifically doing easy songs.
And I think you should. I think you should get both. And maybe I could be the one to bring them together. Bass tabs for cool guitar songs, and vice versa. Nope, I can’t play, and I can’t really write tab either. But you have to give me points for enthusiasm…
P.S. I have since actually written out the bass part for There She Goes. You can find it at The Bass Tab Archive.
March 24th, 2005 at 3:56 pm
Just grab any bass player and get them to teach you some Nirvana riffs — they’re easy enough for drug-addled minds!
March 24th, 2005 at 9:25 pm
One of the enternal problems with Tab on the net is that an awful lot of them just sounded like the song when the author played it to themself. They absence of time and rhythm and general ugliness also doesn‘t help. And there are just tabs which are “Wrong”.
Given your genuine ability to pick out basslines properly, it’s certainly a skill worth learning
March 24th, 2005 at 9:25 pm
virtually all tabs on the internet are, strictly speaking, illegal as well (hence their freeness). beginner’s tabs for popular songs are almost certainly available in hard form if you are prepared to pay for them (along with tabs for finger-exercises, etc.) but sheet music is notoriously expensive :~/