Transcribing Bass Scores

Knowing where to start, and how to make them look professional!

There have been many times when I’ve picked up a book or found a chart online with a bass
transcription and thought to myself, what was this person thinking when they did this? However, at the same
time, there have been many times when I’ve looked at good bass transcriptions and thought, wow, I can’t wait
to play this chart! The question is, how does one go about doing it in an accurate fashion, so others might be
interested in it equally as much as you. As a person who has been playing bass for over 40 years, and
transcribing bass scores most of my life, there are some basics to putting your transcription onto paper that I’m
going to share with you as person who does this regularly for The Bassment (www.thebassment.info), and
numerous other bass players.
There are many ways to take a bass
chart and figure out the exact notes,
including programs or apps like
Transcribe!, or Anytune, and even tangible
items like the Tascam GB-10 Guitar &
Bass Trainer. You need to have something
that will slow the tempo down, loop
sections, and if possible, take the bass
track and bring it to the forefront of the
recording. All of the tools I mention above
do exactly this.
Personally, I prefer the Tascam
GB-10, as it’s easy to take anywhere, and
it’s pretty easy to learn. It also allows one
to load up hundreds of songs, and sort
them in any fashion you wish. For me, this is the tool to use as I can easily plug my bass in with some
headphones and immediately get a nice clean sound. Although I’m not an expert on using my iPad for playing
along with, as I still, to this day, have not found it to produce a nice, clean bass tone.
Another thing that I sometimes
do, that makes a lot of sense, is to watch
people play songs on YouTube. I
remember seeing a fellow play a cool
song online that I wanted to transcribe,
but the bass was so hidden in the
recording that I thought it was time to
start using my eyes instead of just my
ears. This worked out well, however, be
very careful when doing this as people
often add and leave out notes all over the
place especially since they tend to put
their bass in front of the actual recording artist’s version (for good reason). In fact, recently I was watching a
bass player on YouTube add all kinds of different phrases, and another who put the same song in the wrong key.
It’s something to be very conscious of as not everything you see is what is actually being played in original
version of the song.
 For now, this will get you started, and possibly looking into some of the many tools out there that can be
used to transcribe bass charts. I’d love to hear from you if there’s something else you use that works better than
these.
Next time, I’m going to dive into the topic of software, and what might suit you best, according to your
budget and learning style, in order to have your chart up online so that people can enjoy it too.

Cheers!
Ron Mollinga