Does anyone use Tomplay for backing tracks/sheet music? I confess I’d never heard of it but it’s just popped up on my Facebook feed and piqued my curiosity
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no, but now i have something else to do 
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I use Go Play Along 4. You can download the music from Ultimate Guitar tabs and then add the mp3 of the song and the program syncs them together. I might check out Tomplay tho too. I’ve never heard of it.
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So I checked out Tomplay, signed up for the free trial, but the selection of songs is seriously lacking, and for $170/year (CAD) it’s not worth it. The one thing that IS cool is that there are different levels for some of the songs so the beginner/easy levels are just that and then you can change the level to intermediate or whatever, but its still a very pricy site with not enough song selection. But that’s just my two cents.
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I’ve just a closer look at it Retta and I think I have to agree with you. I counted up the bass songs (because I’m sad like that) and there about 120 songs over a wide range of styles and genres so most players probably wouldn’t be interested in at least half of them. There are 124 pages of piano music though (as opposed to 16 pages for bass) so it’s clear where their focus lies. Predictably there are far more songs for guitar as well but I guess most of us are us are used to slimmer pickings for bass.
A note on the pricing though. It seems the UK might be cheaper than the Canada, which is unusual. The annual price for UK is £87.99 which works out at $152 CAD but that might just be because there is an offer on. A far better approach would be the £8.99 monthly subscription because I doubt there is a full years worth of songs for most people.
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It looks to me like just another way to toss $10 a month. Hard pass for me.
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Pam, I think if you could find half a dozen songs you wanted to learn it would be worth a month’s subscription (or even just the fourteen-day free trial 
) but it’s hardly a long term proposition. Now if something like that existed with an extensive catalogue for bass…
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Have you seen any of the sheets? I’m mildly curious is it’s really sheet music, or if it’s just tab.
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Yes Pam, it’s proper notation and tab. I think that may be the one strengths of the site, in that the sheet music will be correct because a lot of their subscribers will be orchestral players who read
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Just a quick update.
Despite my misgivings, I’ve signed up for this.
The reason For doing so was because I was getting so deeply embroiled in the Talking Bass Chord Tones module I was reaching the point where my head was starting to explode and I didn’t want to pick up the bass because it was no longer fun (The chord Tones course is well worth doing but intense). I was working through the course exclusively and realised that what I was missing was playing along to songs as we did with Josh… Granted there are the songs to play through on the Bazzbuzz course but it’s a bit more faff having to find a youtube video to play along to. What I like about the Tomplay songs is that the backing track is already there so you can just pick a song and instantly start playing to it.
A few good things I like about it:
Most songs have different levels: Beginners, intermediate and advanced so it’s similar to Josh’s slow, medium and fast exercises.
You can mute out any instrument or vocal (not just the bass) or adjust volumes of each individually.
You can alter the tempo of any song
You can choose tab and notation, just tab or just notation
Although I’ve not tried yet you can apparently add your own annotations to the sheet music and record yourself
Now the things I don’t like:
There doesn’t seem to be an option anymore to pay monthly so you either buy songs individually (£4.99 each) or spring for the annual subscription of £89.
If you only want bass it’s possibly not the best value for money because there only about 140 songs in the catalogue. That said if you bought the beginner, intermediate and advanced versions as you worked through a song you’d be spending £15 so you wouldn’t have to buy many songs before the annual subscription made sense.
For me it’s pretty good value because all access also means access to all other instruments and as I have a passing interest in guitar and piano as well I’ve got access to thousands more songs.
Currently I’m working though Georgia on My Mind and Summertime and enjoying bass so much more again I’m ready to launch back into Chord Tone Theories.
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I totally agree that Chord Tone Essentials is intense. That said, I LOVE 2-10, arpegio patterns. It clicked with me in a big way. I do love the whole course btw, very useful, but have to take it in bites.
When that course overwhelms me I switch over to Ariane Cap’s book and do some basics.
The other thing I do is mark down the stuff to come back to at a later date.
My plan is to finish course, then pick each thing I didn’t fully absorb and deep dive in it for a week or two exclusively.
There is literally years of practice material in there, don’t feel like you have to swallow it all at once. This is another +1 for BassBuzz, everything is metered in easy to digest chunks. I don’t care much for the ‘here is a topic, here are the 1,157 ways you can practice it across the fretboard, in every chord known to man from triads to 21st chords’ approch much. Puts me off. But that is how most do it, they feel like you have to be told everything (not really true).
I would prefer if they gave you the basic info, told you go up and down the bass via cycle of 4ths, and then have a separate section and checksheet in the back of all the variations to come back to (and state that clearly) for later. So instead I just make my own list and take that approach.
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Hi @chris6 ,
I just had the same experience - tomplay popped up in my FB feed. Now that you’re into it a bit more what are your thoughts?
I’m overloaded with books and instruction I want to get back to a bit of fun (not that the 50 song challenge isn’t)
Worth taking the plunge?
That’s a good one.
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