I struggle with some slides.
The first one is ok, but the second (I don’t know the technical term) I do struggle with. I guess I’m just not fast enough!
(apologies for image quality - just a photo from a book!)
The first one is ok, but the second (I don’t know the technical term) I do struggle with. I guess I’m just not fast enough!
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I think you have two different slides there. I think one is a legato slide and one a shift slide. The latter is the only one you pluck a second time.
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Really, you don’t need a lot of pressure on a slide until you reach your target fret. You should start lightly and ease into the slide. Make sense?
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How do I see the difference in the tabs/notes?
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I think it’s down to whether the slide is indicated with a straight line or a curved one. Some tabs show both. In the Hal Leonard book a line on it’s own is a shift (strike the note a second time), and a line with a curved link means a legato slide where no second note is struck. I actually think, but I’m not sure, that the curved link on it’s own means a pull off or hammer on. I’m sure someone else will know better. Here’s the notation page from my book:
However the only problem is that tab, in particular, is not totally consistent amongst all users!
Sorry the image once again is not hugely clear but a bit of searching online will probably find similar!
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Usually the very last
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Mine’s a “Play Along” book (Clapton) rather than a method book so might be different. It’s the first page after the contents in this one, but I have another where it’s the first page before the contents! 
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OK, it’s missing in mine - probably some export restriction from the US for us Europeans so cannot be better bass players ^^
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Except I’m in UK and my books are stamped with “Hal Leonard Europe”. I think probably more to do with yours being a technique book and so it’s probably all there somewhere, whereas mine are books of songs with tab and standard notation, so they give a summary page on the notation as there is no other explanation anywhere, just the songs.
Could be!
I thought you were in Scotland? I learned from the movie Braveheart that “UK” is something completely different … FREEEEEEEDOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM 
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This is an excerpt about slides by studybass.com:
Slide Notation
Slides between notes are notated with a straight line connecting the two distinct notes.
Sometimes you will see a slur mark written above the line. This specifies the legato slide where the second note is not re-plucked.
Without the slur indicates a shift slide, where the second note is re-plucked. Peoples’ use of these markings is inconsistent. It always pays to listen and use your own musical judgment.
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Phew! I had it just about right then!
“slur mark” means an arc, right? I have reached the limitations of my knowledge of the English language here…
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Yep. 
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I’m struggling with getting into ear training.
I confess I don’t do it as often as I should, I just get discouraged because I don’t feel like I’m getting it. I feel I’m straight up guessing and just happen to hit the right one (just doing 3rd/5th for now).
Whenever I sit down and work on it, I don’t feel like I’m improving, and I stop, and then I’m stuck not being able to learn new basslines because I can’t figure out what note they’re playing. Tabs are an option I suppose, but then learning a tab, and finding out it’s actually wrong, is kind of upsetting to me.
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If you combine a pretty good tab with the audio of the bassline isolated (by something like moises ai) you can use the process of fixing the tab for your ear training
i.e. loop each section of the bassline and compare it to the tab, make corrections as needed through guesswork (you should know the song key atleast) and your ear, playing it through till it sounds right
(sometimes I look at multiple tabs for ‘suggestions’ if a section of the original tab I picked sounds wrong)
by the end of that you will have given yourself some ear training and have a tab for a song you are happy with
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This is brilliant! I never thought of that, thanks! Are the isolated tracks on youtube usually good, or better to get my own with an AI like you mention?
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Sheet music is often wrong too. People transcribe music and people make mistakes. There are also variations. You can play the same note on different strings. And they may be working from a different version of a song. If you listen to LaGrange by ZZ Top, the bassline on the album is completely different than live, and I’m willing to bet if I listened to different live versions, they would vary from each other as well.
And the person who wrote the song usually doesn’t write the transcription. So inaccuracy creeps in.
I wouldn’t get hung up on accurate transcriptions is all I’m saying. Very few are perfect
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