A Bass came a callin

We're here.  Not a lot of bass parts here, but it's a good place, anyway.

Bassmasta was nobbled a week or so ago. However there are two great forums talkbass.com and basschat.co.uk. However the tough news is there is very little bass tab out there (compared with guitar tab). This makes proper scrip books like the 'Bass Tab White Pages' and 'Motown Bass Classics' doubly worth buying.

However most the time you'll need to figure the bassline out for yourself. At it's most basic this means playing the root. So if the song's Em7 F5 you just play E and F notes, nice and simple eh? Of course then the question is _which_ E and F notes. You can play open strings far more effectively on bass than other guitars. Most of the time you'll be looking to inject some grunt by using the thickest bass strings E and A. Look for an area of the neck where all the notes you need to play are within 4 frets of each other. So you can reach them without moving too much.

One thing to watch out for is linear playing on the E string where you are moving all the time. You'll see this in punk and thrash groups but it really is bad practice. Sometimes it's what's needed but be suspicious of it. I'm also suspicious of bass lines all on one fret but again they are often how 60s bands played.

Lots more, such as root and fifth, root and seventh explained well at studybass.com.

Wahey, Bassmasta appears to be fully functional again!

Not great, I avoid slap bass and fancy solos on purpose as what I need to work on at present is getting ballsy root notes on the beat.

With regular guitar you can do some fancy stuff a bit off time and get away with it. With bass you have to be on the beat, even if you have to sacrifice a bass figure by reducing it down. I play simple to try and get things moving right...