I know this has been discussed to death many times already (a.k.a. tab services like Songsterr) but I was just comparing Turning Japanese by The Vapors transcribed both by Songsterr and by Constantine Isslamow (on YouTube). They are not just somewhat different, but totally different.
This got me thinking back to my going to a rock concert a week days and sometimes noting the bass line played live was almost totally different than the recording. This got me thinking they will sometimes play a simplified version live to avoid making mistakes (or maybe a more skilled session musician played the bass line in the studio version).
Possibly. Could be all sorts of reasons. Sometimes stuff in the studio is difficult to replicate live and even the definitive version of a song wouldn’t have been the first take. Maybe keeping it simple if revisiting something from a large back catalogue, tired or maybe mixing it up a bit to avoid boredom from continued playing etc
Oh my lord.
The Songsterr tab on this is the most wrong thing I’ve seen on internet tabs in a long time.
It has nothing to do with the song.
Your ears told you right - this tab is 100% wrong in an almost hilarious way.
The YouTube vid you mentioned is right.
That’s the one to learn!
My god. Karmic retribution is my only solace for gross and serious bass offenses like that. So sorry you had to encounter it out in the wild.
There can be lots of reasons for songs being played differently live than on a record. Keeping it simple could certainly be one of them. But it could also be that the bands approach to the song has evolved or that the studio recording used multiple tracks or other techniques to get to the final version.
With guitar players, it is quite common to change the solo parts, as the solo that got on the record might have been a one-shot take
Musicians play things differently live sometimes because they are sick of playing it the exact same way over and over, or, they are simply musicians being musicians.
Learning a bass line, studying it, etc. however is different than playing it. You are learning not only a song, but a bassline, and maybe a wee bit of theory seeps in, and structure, etc. There are reasons for learning songs or lines note for note, then there are artistic expressions of the same song. Both are valid.
Jazz folks spend countless hours learning recorded solos from greats that have never played that solo the same way ever ever ever again. To me they are two different things with different purposes and outcomes.
And that’s a pretty high bar to cross…