Quality bass guitar transcriptions can be difficult things to find on the Internet. Though there are tons of tabs and transcriptions of varying quality circulating the Internet of popular songs and even some lesser known songs and even songs, finding a reliable source of readable, user-friendly bass guitar transcriptions can be very difficult.
Luckily – I had some time to do some of that digging and came up with three sites for quality bass guitar transcriptions. Each of these sites had a very user-friendly interface with clear navigation to get to the transcriptions. These sites also offered their work entirely free – no need to make a user account, no need to pay a fee or a licensing cost to use them.
If you saw something you liked, downloading it was as easy as one, two, three. More over, all these sites covered a wide breadth of musicians and artists including Zapp, David Bowie, Bob Marley, soul artists, funk artists, rock artists, underground acts and lesser known acts that have been kept largely to those who might recognize the name from vinyl digging.
So here you are – three fantastic sites to get bass transcriptions from:
1. The Bassment
The Bassment was established in 2009 by bassists Simon Merrick and Ron Mollinga. The two formed The Bassment with the goal “to provide as many high quality transcriptions to the bass community as possible.” I personally cannot think of a better goal to build a site around – especially since there are so few sites that are providing such a quality service to the bass guitar community.
Browsing the site, you’ll quickly find that The Bassment’s transcriptions are
- entirely free
- come in downloadable PDF format and
- cover an extensive variety of music from pop to soul, to funk to disco and beyond
Even more, many of the site’s transcriptions come in tablature and standard notation.
If you’re looking around for quality bass tabs and notation, be sure to check over at The Bassment – plus check out these samples below of the site’s transcription work:
2. Basslessons.be
Basslessons.be is a site out of the Belgium offering far more than just high quality bass transcriptions. The site also offers Lessons via Skype, a page devoted to drum loops and a page titled, “ABC” where you can find a page containing all of the important definitions and terms that a bass player might need to know including truss rod, the difference between fretted and fretless and even sections devoted to definitions of dots and fret inlays. You never know…
Like The Bassment, Basslessons focuses primarily on funk, soul, RnB and reggae bass transcriptions. Acts including The Brothers Johnson, Bob Marley, Rick James, Betty Wright and The Whispers are just some of the more popular bands with transcriptions the site has to offer. Christophe, the site’s manager also said that the site also offers a number of jazz and jazz fusion transcriptions as well from Adam Nitti, Alain Caron, John Patitucci and many other prominent names.
Unlike The Bassment, the site only offers the transcriptions in standard notation and does not give the reader the option between standard and tablature. To access the transcriptions, simply right click the image of the transcription, click “Save Image As”. Christophe has also told me that people who donate to Basslessons.be get exclusive access to high quality PDFs and transcriptions not typically offered on the site.
Moreover, the bass guitar transcriptions are not available for download so your only way of getting to them is by heading over to the site and reading right off the page itself.
Lastly, if you’re looking for something more than transcriptions, Christophe also offers bass lessons via Skype. Contact him on his website above for more information.
3. Redtenbacher’s Funkestra
Definitely one of the more eye-grabbing bass guitar transcription sites I came across, Redtenbacher’s Funkestra gives a very strong hint at what the site focuses on: funk. And lots of it.
The website is run by bassist and musician, Stefan Redtenbacher where in addition to bass transcriptions of popular artists including Stevie Wonder, Luther Vandross, Dr. John, James Brown and more eclectic musical artist including Michel Camilo, Sade and Harvey Mason.
The charts provided by Redtenbacher are easily located next to each one of the song names in one, lengthy table cataloging almost 100 charts. Each bass transcription is only in standard notation so, like Basslessons mentioned above, there isn’t much of an option for those looking for just tabs.
None the less, Stefan Redtenbacher’s Funkestra site is a great place to stop over to for quality bass transcriptions and some really awesome, funky music courtesy of his own band and production.
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Lastly, while you’re stopping over to these sites, make a donation while you’re at it to keep these great resources coming:
- Donate to The Bassment
- Donate to Basslessons.be
- Buy from Redtenbacher’s Funkestra
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