How would you fret this bassline (Jet Ninjin)?

Technique
1

Hello everyone,
I’m practicing the bassline from GO!GO!7188’s song Jet Ninjin (literarily “rocket carrot”) :carrot:

A long long when I first started the course I searched around and found some ascii tab and also tried to tab out the rest of the song myself. The main riff from that tabbing attempt ended up like this:

Screenshot 2023-12-25 at 15.13.59
Screenshot 2023-12-25 at 15.13.592402×412 86.2 KB

I recently stumbled upon a great Japanaese fellow whom you can request to tab songs, and I’m hanging out on his Patreon ever since, and playing along.

Today I decided to get back to Jet Ninjin, and was surprised he’s playing the main riff differently than I would expect, i.e. as follows:

Screenshot 2023-12-25 at 15.16.31
Screenshot 2023-12-25 at 15.16.312456×378 82.6 KB

So the difference between the two is that he plays the A on the E string’s 5th fret, and what I was imagining and playing so far was using the open A on the A string. Specifically e.g. the 4th and 7th notes from the line I pasted, for example.

I was wondering, since I now want to play this song nice and clean and work my way up to the right temp… which fingering/fretting would you recommend to stick with?

Perhaps avoiding the open strings makes muting easier now that I think of it? I think I’m realizing now that the 5th fret A makes it such that there’s less movement and it is a bit more typical walking down from 5th, 3rd to 2nd… So probably that’s a better way to play it, right?

Here’s the song with Hironobu-san’s tab:

2

Nothing wrong with using the open string if you want, but I think you sort of answered your own question with your post. The initial run on the E string of 0-0-3-5 is probably the way I would play it though. If you have a hard time reaching the 2nd fret from the 5th then I’d go for the open string approach.

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Thanks for chiming in! Yeah the jump from 5 to 2 took some getting used to at tempo but I think I’ll manage it :slight_smile:

Thanks for confirming that they’re both valid! I’ll go with avoiding the open string and practice that way from now on :slight_smile:

4

@ktoso Middle finger on the E string on the 3rd fret, pointer finger on the 2nd fret of the A string. No jumping needed, just a lil micro shiftin.

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5

+1 to that!
Getting used to playing those notes on the fretboard instead of open is a very good habit.

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6

I always think of TAB as suggestions (based on the personal preferences of whoever wrote the TAB) or a starting point for further study. It is actually fun and quite educational to explore alternate ways to play/fret a certain line or motif (as you are finding out yourself).
You might prefer another way to play it because of better accuracy, easier reach, more control (muting) or preferred tone/timbre (e.g., open string A and fretted A have the same pitch, but don’t sound the same).

So, yes, always a good idea to question TAB and explore for yourself as well.

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That makes a ton of sense – thanks for the advice everyone :slight_smile:

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