The Bass Tabs Thread

Nov 20, 2006
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I lol'd at the fact that "most powertabs/guitarpros are wrong." To my ears a majority of them are definitely not wrong. Maybe understating what the bass is playing sometimes (not notating every fill that Mendez plays), yes. But not "wrong." I've seen plenty of gp/pt files that have correct bass tabs (according to studio footage, live footage, and the good ol' ear.)
 
95% of the powertabs are made by guitarists that has no clue what the bass is playing.

I'm a bass player not a guitar player, the bass tabs in all my powertabs are at least as accurate as the guitar parts. Some of the shitty GP tabs might have this apply, sure. I went to ridiculous lengths to get accurate bass tabs on songs like "The Moor" and the MAYH stuff since the bass is really buried in the mix, like digging up every live bootleg I could both audio and video and sending the song files through all kinds of sound filters in a recording program. The fact of the matter is the production is just not good on a lot of their early stuff, making it much harder to discern the bass than it should be (I know it's nearly impossible to tell what's guitar and what's bass in some parts of morningrise). Any tab that was worked on by me had just as much work put into the bass as the guitar. Besides Wreath, cause I hated that song too much to go through and do the bass after the guitar was done, and Serenity Painted Death, cause that was the first thing I ever tabbed and thus I will not vouch for its accuracy.

The point is, if you're tone deaf enough to think the bass tabs in there are garbage, then you deserve all the shitty text tabs you are asking for.
 
I'm a bass player not a guitar player, the bass tabs in all my powertabs are at least as accurate as the guitar parts. Some of the shitty GP tabs might have this apply, sure. I went to ridiculous lengths to get accurate bass tabs on songs like "The Moor" and the MAYH stuff since the bass is really buried in the mix, like digging up every live bootleg I could both audio and video and sending the song files through all kinds of sound filters in a recording program. The fact of the matter is the production is just not good on a lot of their early stuff, making it much harder to discern the bass than it should be (I know it's nearly impossible to tell what's guitar and what's bass in some parts of morningrise). Any tab that was worked on by me had just as much work put into the bass as the guitar. Besides Wreath, cause I hated that song too much to go through and do the bass after the guitar was done, and Serenity Painted Death, cause that was the first thing I ever tabbed and thus I will not vouch for its accuracy.

The point is, if you're tone deaf enough to think the bass tabs in there are garbage, then you deserve all the shitty text tabs you are asking for.

hey, i had no idea we were talking about your tabs, neither did i know you made tabs. i was just saying tabs in general are mostly made by guitar players that simplify the bass lines like hell.
 
hey, i had no idea we were talking about your tabs, neither did i know you made tabs. i was just saying tabs in general are mostly made by guitar players that simplify the bass lines like hell.

You said "95% of the power tabs" when probably 30% of them were made by me, so, yeah.

I will totally stand by the accuracy of the following power tab's bass lines:

A Fair Judgement
Advent
Closure
Demon of the Fall (this tab sucked until I dug up a couple extremely clear live bootlegs, should be great now)
Ghost of Perdition (a couple parts in the chorus might be off an octave, something weird with the production makes it hard to tell in a couple measures)
Isolation Years
Moonlapse Vertigo
The Moor (this one might sound off if you've only listened to the CD, but I ensure it's accurate, I got a crystal clear live bootleg where you can hear every single note in the bass and revealed some interesting basslines in parts like "All their faces turned away" etc that are nearly inaudible unless you're listening for them on the cd)
Nectar (the slap outro is a jangly production disaster so there are surely a couple screwups but it's as close as anyone's going to get unless the bassist tells us, I think)
Reverie/Harlequin Forest
The Baying of the Hounds
The Drapery Falls
The Grand Conjuration
When (same deal as the moor)
Windowpane (I didn't do the guitar so that might have issues, but the bass is definitely good, I checked it against videos and the making of D1/D2 on the dvd)

Maybe slightly less accurate but still a ton of work put in:

April Ethereal (some other bass player tabbed this, I added guitar, I think he did an extremely good job, though)
Bleak (See above, I made one or two corrections)
The Leper Affinity (Same bass tabber as the above two)
Karma (there are no live bootlegs of this so it was kinda guesswork in parts since MAYH has the muddiest bass ever but I did my best and definitely picked out most of the fills)
To Bid You Farewell (the outro with the distorted lead is one mangled piece of production fail and it's nearly impossible to isolate the bass part, up until then I think I nailed it)
Serenity Painted Death (First thing I ever tabbed, and it was cotabbed with a guitar player who typically skims through bass lines, so I'm sure it has some issues)
 
You said "95% of the power tabs" when probably 30% of them were made by me, so, yeah.

yea ok im sorry, it was all a personal attack on you because i hold a grudge against you since you slept with my sister. or wait, what? i obviously didnt have any statistic research to back me up, i just used the same percentage as the one i quoted to state that i thought most tabs (not only opeth ones) are usually made by guitarists and thus got simplified bass leads.

edit: oh and i didnt realize until now that powertabs.net was up again o.0
 
yea ok im sorry, it was all a personal attack on you because i hold a grudge against you since you slept with my sister. or wait, what? i obviously didnt have any statistic research to back me up, i just used the same percentage as the one i quoted to state that i thought most tabs (not only opeth ones) are usually made by guitarists and thus got simplified bass leads.

It's true, but Opeth tabs have a much better percentage of non-fail than usual. Even the powertabs I didn't touch frequently have pretty decent bass tabs. But yeah, check out my list up there if you want good ones, I think most of them are on ultimate-guitar though I know a couple on there aren't the latest updates.
 
To Bid You Farewell (the outro with the distorted lead is one mangled piece of production fail and it's nearly impossible to isolate the bass part, up until then I think I nailed it)

which part are you talking about, the part at ~8:55 until 9:40-something? that part is somewhat easy to hear with good headphones (listening to it atm but don't have my bass gear hooked up to see what it is note-wise)
 
which part are you talking about, the part at ~8:55 until 9:40-something? that part is somewhat easy to hear with good headphones (listening to it atm but don't have my bass gear hooked up to see what it is note-wise)

Yeah, that's the section. If you have the powertab, it's specifically measures 215-222 in the bass score that I couldn't figure out. Like, I can hear the lower bass notes, but I can also hear the high hammerons, and I'm not sure if he was doing chords or tapping the high notes or if there was just a clean guitar overdubbed there that's what's playing those. I transcribed it as if he was tapping it cause that's kinda what it sounds like, but I remain unsure. I'd be more than interested to hear your attempt at that. I haven't touched this tab in almost 4 years and it's probably about ready for an update :p
 
to me it sounds like it could be two tracks of the bass, only because of the positions of what he's playing (according to your tab.) I'll have a crack at it later, too lazy to hook up the bass right now
 
to me it sounds like it could be two tracks of the bass, only because of the positions of what he's playing (according to your tab.) I'll have a crack at it later, too lazy to hook up the bass right now

The positions in my tab are terrible, I'm sure they could be played with some ridiculous string skipping but at least in fingerable positions on a six string, it just sounds kinda weird to me. 2 tracks of the bass there does sound possible.
 
The point is, if you're tone deaf enough to think the bass tabs in there are garbage, then you deserve all the shitty text tabs you are asking for.

Hey man, I didn't mean to offend; to be honest I don't know if I've ever seen any of your tabs. However, I have seen plenty of tabs (not just Opeth) that clearly have incorrect bass lines. I'd love to check your tabs out, though - do you have a link to them?

By the way, I did a lot of searching, but I never found a bass tab of DWAL on the net (that's why I tabbed it). And as far as IMTON goes, I found some bass tabs, but they had numerous errors (not horrible, but not correct, either).

Since you've tabbed many Opeth songs, would you mind writing out the bass lines to that funky middle section in The Lotus Eater? I've found a few bass tabs for it, but they are clearly wrong (I know Mendez's dissonant-sounding fills don't have as many notes as found in the tabs).
 
The link in my sig goes to powertabs.net, I can download them all from there, however I'm not sure if the site is still in the private mode where you can only download tabs if you've previously uploaded them. If it's still like that, go to ultimate-guitar.com and look for the powertabs that I mentioned in my post, if there's only one of them then it's mine. The file info would also say tabbed by Erik Dietrich (unless ultimate-guitar edits that out, which is entirely possible).

EDIT: also, what part of the lotus eater are you talking about? Give me the times you're curious about and i'll tab it if it isn't too much of a pain.
 
The link in my sig goes to powertabs.net, I can download them all from there, however I'm not sure if the site is still in the private mode where you can only download tabs if you've previously uploaded them. If it's still like that, go to ultimate-guitar.com and look for the powertabs that I mentioned in my post, if there's only one of them then it's mine. The file info would also say tabbed by Erik Dietrich (unless ultimate-guitar edits that out, which is entirely possible).

EDIT: also, what part of the lotus eater are you talking about? Give me the times you're curious about and i'll tab it if it isn't too much of a pain.

Can't download from powertabs.net, but I'll find them on ultimate-guitar. Also, the Lotus Eater section from 5:48 to 6:23. Would love to hear your interpretation of it.