That’s what I believe. But everyone rows his/her own canoe. It’s all relative and YMMV.
1 Like
Mine’s a paddle board 
1 Like
Shine on, you 
You row a boat, raft etc but you paddle a canoe 
#sorrynotsorry
6 Likes
Being able to read sheet music is good when tabs aren’t available or sketchy but there’s sheet music of the song(s) you want/need to learn… As long as the bass clef’s on it as well otherwise you need to figure out the G clef and translate that to bass which can be a pain to do.
2 Likes
Being able to read sheet music is useful for many other instruments, but it is really rare to find sheet music, even if it has a bass clef, of the actual bass guitar bassline of a song. For many genres anyway; I’m sure extremely popular music and classics are all covered fine. There’s money in that.
Usually, if you’re lucky, you’ll find a piano arrangement, but then the bass part is rarely if ever the bassline; it’s usually just the left hand accompanying part of the piano arrangement.
Another really strange thing is that I find the quality of online sheet music to be worse than that of tabs, which is saying a lot when you think about it. I think this is because a lot more bass players can read tablature, and so it has more eyes on it to correct it.
5 Likes
Not so. Here is a resource for bass line transcriptions with note-for-note music notation and tab.
There are also free bass transcription resources. Here is one.
A Google search turns up several other resources.
3 Likes
Well sure, if there’s existing tablature, there’s lots of ways to get sheet music from it. Existing transcriptions as you noted, or an even more direct method is to simply download the MIDI file from Songsterr and load it in either notation software (or, really, most DAWs) and turn on the music notation view.
But in those cases tablature exists already.
Almost all of the free online sheet music only resources I have tried also had very spotty quality.
2 Likes
Scribd is a subscription service for music notation transcriptions that looks interesting.
It offers sheet music of the complete orchestration of songs, including a detailed bass line.
This is a preview page from the Beatles’ All You Need is Love.
1 Like
Yeah, Scribd - did you know that they had Carol Kaye’s copyrighted instruction books (in music notation, and which she sells on her own website) on that site, and would not remove them without a lot of hassle for her? I’m sure she’s not the only one whose works have been basically given away for free like that. I don’t even know if someone has uploaded them again, after she had them removed.
I am NOT posting the above to direct people to look for and obtain her stuff for free on Scribd (so please, don’t do it)! Just venting about the policies there.
1 Like
Scribd is not a free service. A paid subscription is required to download material.
I know it’s not free, but the point is there is a certain amount of material available on Scribd which is violating copyright.
1 Like
I didn’t know that. I don’t have a Scribd subscription.
Sean Parker won’t be happy.
Tomplay looks to be another for-pay resource for bass music notation sheet music that does things a little differently: it provides a backing track, at least for the tunes I checked out. For example, Queen’s Another One Bites the Dust comes with an MP3 by a cover band. It might not be Freddy and the boys, but it’s in tune and at tempo.
Thanks for putting this out there! I’m being kind of on this quest to read, will be looking into it!!
Not quite sure why I’m wanting to do it, if just not to help me be a better all around player, maybe!
Thanks again
Phil
3 Likes
It’s a good skill to have for sure.
2 Likes
Silly question: Does any happen to know if the sheet music to “My Girl” is available ? Start starting out on these adventures!
2 Likes
Are you doing the B2B course? There is sheet music for the bass line in the 50 First Songs Pack.
1 Like