Yes, I’ve noticed that myself, @PeteP . . . 
Unfortunately this seems to be quite common, so I often check for one or two other online bass tabs for the same song (if available) to see what “consensus” there might be OR if one seems easier or sounds better to use than another.
Cheers, Joe
I had a bit of a breakthrough last night while working on the bass line to a song I’ve been trying to keep up with for some time now - Can’t Stop the Feeling by Justin Timberlake - It is from a cartoon movie I think. Anyway, I can’t keep up with the pace with my left hand. Yesterday I made a big jump in my ability to do just that. I noticed that my mind had begun wondering what my right hand was doing and all of the sudden my left hand was going where it was supposed to go much quicker. It was like my brain had released it’s grasp on the left hand performance and allowed the hand to do what I’d been trying to force it to do all along. I repeated the process a few times just to see if I could repeat it and I could. I think that being so concerned with “perfection” was impeding my ability to get anything done. Practicing the keyboard using the Simply Piano app on my phone helped me with my bass playing.
I know what you mean, @eharrell . . . 
After all this time, I’m finding that the less I think about what I’m doing, the better I seem to DO at it . . .
Go figure. 
Cheers, Joe
I love this. Thanks for sharing it!
Hey @JoshFossgreen ,
I do struggle using sheet music for bass, for me the barriers are more getting my head round the below:
The concept of the “beat” and note length. I find this beyond confusing, for example in 3/4 time is a whole note longer than a bar and if there are three quarter notes in a bar how are they still quarter notes (and not “third notes”)?! Are there always four quarter notes in a whole note regardless of time signature of is it a misnomer? Arggh, my head hurts just thinking about it. 
On piano every note on the stave corresponds to a very specific location on the keyboard - I can’t seem to find the answer to this online but is this the same on guitar/bass or not? I’ve noticed you don’t seem to see ledger lines used in guitar sheet music so I’m guessing not…perhaps? So for example is it more the case you would see a lower E and a higher E on the stave purely to suggest an octave jump or have I got it wrong and every note on the fretboard has its place on the stave?
How on earth bassists/guitarists are supposed to use sheet music at any meaningful speed. On piano you are essentially taught to “cheat” by mapping the position on the stave to the keyboard - jump a space, jump a key etc which feels very natural and can be done fast. But on bass/guitar you tend to play across the fretboard rather than down it (e.g. you wouldn’t tend to play a line on one string) PLUS the accidentals aren’t distinguished in any unique way unlike piano with the black keys and on the sheet music itself (specific symbols). I’m guessing the answer is that insane fretboard knowledge is required, but it’s whether this should be gained BEFORE learning sight-reading or THROUGH (painfully slow) sight-reading practice.
All of this leads on to another headache of mine which is understanding exactly how the notes on the fretboard link in. Again on piano you have all the octaves in a nice neat order. I think this Fretboard Toolkit video does simplify this somewhat but I continually get confused by this and messes with my head. E.g. is C at the 8th on the E string and C at 3rd on A string the same pitch and if so…why (happy accident?) 
I’m off for a lie down - too much thinking!
I know you asked @JoshFossgreen, and I am sure he will reply as soon as he gets around to it, but perhaps I can help remove some of your confusion…
You could define a system that uses third notes (instead of quarter notes), and then, of course 3 third notes would make a whole note. The next finer division would then be 9th notes and so on, but this is conceptually harder to work with than the system we have based on multiples of 2.
Now, for time signatures: this is mainly a convention to make written music readable by defining segments (aka bars) and define how many, e.g., quarter notes are in one such bar. We could define to have three quarter notes in one bar, and we’d get a 3/4 time signature. Similarly, we could say 4 quarter notes make up a bar, or 5 or 6 etc - and, consequently, we would get the time signatures of 4/4, 5/4, 6/4 and so on. Why do we need different time signatures? Because they have different feels!
I am sure you have heard a waltz!? It is mostly in 3/4 and has a strong beat and two weaker beats per bar, such that it sounds/feels like DUM da da, DUM da da, DUM da da, …
Most rock music is in 4/4 and there are typically alternating strong and weak beats (also often referred to as down and up beats): DUM da DUM da, DUM da DUM da, …
The main theme of “Mission Impossible” is in 5/4 - it could be written in 4/4, but then one repetition of the motif wouldn’t fit in one bar, which is, if nothing else, awkward to read for the musicians.
Maybe what is confusing is that we say the time signature is “three quarters”, but really we mean “three pulses of a certain duration (that we call quarters)” - quarters are just the unit here!
And, by the way, a whole note would NOT fit into one bar when the time signature is 3/4 - but you can still have a whole note in that time signature - it would just “spill over” into the next bar 
And, there should be ledgers also in music for bass and guitar. Perhaps, you were looking at tabs (tabular notation)?? Tabs don’t use ledgers.
As for fast sight-reading - in my own experience: many bass players learn what they play by heart, and rarely come into a situation where you’d have to sight-read a new piece.
Anyway, sorry for the long-winded answers. Hope some of this clears your confusion a bit. If not, ask away. And I am sure @JoshFossgreen will also chime in - he can explain this stuff probably in a much more easily digestible way 
That’s brilliant.
I think that’s what gets me. So the subdivisions always stay the same (e.g. a whole note will always be the length of four quarter notes) regardless of time signature, but these just might not fit in a bar. So in 2/4 a whole note would take up two full bars?
I think I was looking at simplified pieces.
So is the bassist’s bass clef the same as the pianist’s bass clef - i.e. looking at the Fretboard Toolkit diagram would the G on the bottom line of the stave (G2 on piano) be specifically played either the 10th fret of the A string or 5th fret of the D string?
Because what’s confused me is in the Ed Friedland Bass Method it shows this particular note as being played the 3rd fret of the E string - or is this right and has the bassist’s bass clef been dropped or shifted in some way?
How critical would you say sight reading is for bass outside of say jazz and professional recording where you are faced with new music/no recording. The thing that gets me is repeating rhythms by ear is almost human nature, but trying to translate rhythms off a page feels a impossible task for me.
Quick fire answers!
There are no whole notes in 3/4 time, a full bar would be written as a dotted half note.
Yes, it’s kinda silly! We stick to the whole/half/quarter/eighth/etc. system even when time signatures change. For example, in 5/8 time, there would be five eighth notes in the bar, which makes the name not make any sense. But it would be more confusing to keep changing notation systems!
No, it’s not the same because we have four strings, so there can be as many as 4 places to play the same pitch. For example, the G in the top space of the staff could be played on the open G string, the D string 5th fret, the A string 10th fret, or the E string 15th fret. For just starting out, you can just pick whatever option is closest to an open string though.
There are ledger lines in bass music! Just not in very looowww bass lines.
Every pitch (octave specific) has its place on the stave, some pitches can be played on multiple fret/string locations.
Practice a s**tload!
That’s a good question. Probably both. You need some neck knowledge to start, but reading also helps develop your neck knowledge.
Yes, and it’s because the strings are tuned 5 half steps apart. So 5th fret E = open A, and onward, so that “shape” repeats all over the neck.
Technically, bass is an octave transposing instrument, so the note a pianist would play reading the F outlined by the bass clef would be an octave higher than if a bassist read it (on the 3rd fret of the D string).
Takes practice! You have to digest them in small chunks and get used to seeing them. It’s just like when you first learned to read letter by letter, before you could read words, and then phrases/sentences.
Hope that helps! And thanks @joergkutter for your contributions too!
Since in my experience this trips literally everyone up (though less for bass since it is an even octave) I would elaborate a little more for Rich and say the reason this is done is for convenience.
The bass guitar actually plays an octave lower than the bass clef. For convenience, so that we don’t need to stare at funky ledger lines all the time and guess what note they are, bass music is notated transposed up one octave so it (mostly) fits on the bass clef.
The piano plays that low too, but since it also plays the notes in the bass clef naturally, it can’t transpose and must use the ledger lines for the lower octaves.
But this brings up an important idiom that you will see repeated more than once. Music notation is nearly entirely about convenience. It seems really complicated at first (and, well, it is) but most of music notation is about conveniently and concisely representing music in a written way.
There are instruments that fit entirely in the treble clef but transpose their notation by a half step just so that music doesn’t have to have sharp, flat and natural signs all over the place. Other instruments do it so that variously keyed instruments in the same family will share note fingerings for a written piece. It’s kind of maddening until you realize it’s much better that way. What it DOES mean is that you can’t necessarily take a score for one instrument and use it directly on another, though.
Damn. This is a great thread. My thanks to all of you for taking the time for posting all this. I wish there was a way to say, “Hey! Everybody! Read this thread!”
Yes!
BUT (and sorry that there always is a but)…
as Josh also said here:
Similar reasoning also applies to “whole notes” in 2/4. (It is really mostly a semantic problem).
So, I was a bit too sloppy in my first answer. To be more precise: you cannot use the notational symbol of a whole note (the “open circle”) in a 3/4 or 2/4 time signature as a whole note doesn’t fit into one bar of these time signatures. But, you can still have a note in your compositions that has the duration of 4 beats/pulses (and let’s just use quarter notes as our unit again). So, in order to write a note that is 4 beats (quarters) in duration in a 3/4 time signature, you’d need to write it as a dotted half note in bar 1 (i.e., this “fills” the entire bar, and thus is equivalent to three quarter notes) followed by a quarter note in the second bar. In order to show that they are one continuous note, the two symbols are connected by an arc over them (hope this makes sense!? Would be easier on a blackboard ).
Likewise, you can’t use the whole note symbol in 2/4 either. In order to get a duration equivalent of a whole note (i.e. four quarters), you’d have a halve note in bar one, and a halve note in bar two and connect the two with an arc!
Or any other combination of values (quarters, 8th, dotted quarters, …) that add up to 4 quarters in the end, while never exceeding the allowed number of quarters per bar (as dictated by the time signature).
Whew!
Way to go deep team!!! This is gold. Pure gold.
Thanks guys, super insightful and beginning to get through my thick skull.
So pretty much consider it the same as a clef on piano featuring the “8vb” notation to tell them to play an octave lower? If so any reason this isn’t routinely noted on sheet music for bassists - is it just a case of “they should know”.
And if you are playing a piece predominately higher up the neck (say 15th fret on) might you see both a “normal” bass clef and treble clef used (or “8va” and ledger lines)?
There is no doubt some great info in these posts. But to answer this question, I don’t think it’s critical at all to know how to sight read. It’s something I’m not great at, and am working on. And if you can repeat rhythms by ear, just go with that for now, and overlap it with learning how what your’re hearing looks as sheet music.
Yes, all these could happen. I attach en excerpt from a Donna Lee transcription, and as you can see, here you have the “8va” notation as well as plenty of ledgers. I think switching to another clef is much less common, but could occur.
Thought I would toss this in. I have been using this app (free) on android. It has a nice progression of reading the notes and gamification to keep you engaged. Perfect for the quick break at work or when you have a few minutes and are not at your bass. While i can identify all the notes (working on key signatures) I am still not fast, so playing along with sheet music is tough. I feel like this practice has been accelerating my learning. I am not worrying yet about where they are on the base. I will connect those dots later, just trying to get to where I can look at the staff and just know what the note is.
Somebody already mentioned this, but this is the trainer I use. It does throw a bunch of notes at you early that are above and below the staff, which are harder. So for now I concentrate only on the notes on the staff, once I get those down I will move on. For the notes on the staff, the nemomnics for lines Good Boys Do Fine Always (or, more relatable Good Burritos Don’t Fall Apart - thanx, wiki) and spaces All Cows Eat Grass helps.
Hello Josh! I’m half way through your course and love it! I read music 50 years ago and can now read music again thanks to you. I found one great bass music book “Easy Pop Melodies” with bass clef notes for the bass, but most of the books just have the tabs. Any recommendation on where to find music books with the notations as well as tabs (or no tabs)? I’m probably just looking in the wrong places.
Thanks!!
Linda
Hey Linda, good question! I should compile a more formal list of resources on that…
Trombone music is a good place to look, since they read bass clef in about the same range that we do, something like this: Free Christmas Trombone Sheet Music - 8notes.com
Piano music (left hand parts) can work too, but sometimes the notes drop way below the register we’d normally read in, which means you have to octave-transpose… which is hard.
Here’s another site with some easy children’s songs stuff - Children's Songs for Bass Clef Instruments
Yes, they’re children’s songs, but they’re a great place to start practicing reading. Plus you can impress the hell out of any 5 year olds you meet. 
