25 Bass Tabs That Rule

Tabs are the best, easiest and most powerful way to get straight into playing your favorite bass lines. In this article I’m giving you 25 classic, instantly recognizable bass riffs. They’re accurate, they’re rated in levels of difficulty, and they’re all excellent.

I love Tab. I learned my favorite songs through Tabs. Long live Tabs!!!

If you’re brand-spankin’ new to the world of bass tab and want to know what the numbers and lines are all about (and what’s that godforsaken dashy-line, dot-matrix-esque thing that the internet still has creeping around?) I wrote a big giant article about that right over here.

(* who, let’s face it, are your more cool, good-looking, and sophisticated friends)

The tabs are all below, along with some slick pro tips if you want to take a deeper dive. Enjoy the jams, enjoy the tabs, and remember – friends don’t let friends look at just any internet tab. I mean, come on. Let’s have some standards!

The Riffs

Ok. I lied. I’m sorry. The bass teacher in me couldn’t just dump 25 sick and sweet and rumbly riffs at you without doing some light teaching first.

Tabs are great because you can get into the music without reading standard notation and rhythms.  

Tabs are not great because you have to know exactly how the bass line goes and be able to hear it in your head in order to learn the tab correctly.

Thus, make sure that you know exactly what part of the song the riff is from (and I have noted it as accurately as humanly possible in each example) and that you can sing/hum/scat/hear the bass part you are supposed to play.

If you can’t hear what the bass is doing, tab can’t help you. 

Here, as in everywhere else in the music-verse, your ears and musical hearing come first.  

Ok, ok. Music teacher spiel done. On with the riffs.

The Riffs, Actually

I broke the riffs into 5 tiers of increasing difficulty. But I’m not in the room with you. I don’t know you. I don’t know what music you know. You might slay all the riffs in tier 4 and stumble on everything in tier 2. The organization is my best guess based on my teaching experience, the complexity or speed of the riff and how easy it is to hear the specific bass riff you have to play in the music.  

One last thing – please note the time stamp where the riff that I tabbed shows up in the song! It’s not always the first thing you hear.

Have at it.

Tier I

Pro Tip

Play with a relaxed fretting hand so you can shift up and down the neck more easily!

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Pro Tip

There are some hard to hear, quick open E strings in the riff. Slow it down, sing it to yourself slowed down, and work up to speed.

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Pro Tip

Try and play those A’s short and tight, and really dig in for that G!

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Pro Tip

Be patient! Don’t rush a laid back heavy groove like this.

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Pro Tip

It has a nice syncopated rhythm. For any tricky rhythm, make sure you can sing it, hum it, tap it, and really know it. It’s the only way to get a handle on complex rhythms.

ALSO – Tuning Alert!! To play Feel Good Inc. with the recording, use the tab as above, but you have to retune your bass one half step lower to: Eb, Ab, Db, Gb.

Tier II

Pro Tip

It’s like a jazz walking bass line! It swings the eighth notes, which you’ll do naturally if you listen and play along, but it’s worth knowing that this is what a swing feel feels like!

TUNING ALERT! In order to play this bass line along with Mike Dirnt (bassist for Green Day) and the rest of the gang, you need to tune your entire bass down one half step to Eb, Ab, Db, and Gb. If you don’t want to retune your bass, the tab still works and sounds rad. But it will not sound rad with the original recording unless you retune.

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Pro Tip

If you can play this riff, you can play the blues scale. Memorize the pattern for this riff, and then use that pattern to make up your own dirty, cool blues riffs.

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Pro Tip

More bouncy rhythms! Make sure that you’re relaxed and placing your notes exactly with the track.

And, again, if the rhythm is giving you problems, do everything you can to internalize it. Dance to it. Clap to it. Sing it. Your groove and rhythm will be better if you can try and make it physical and musical and not analytical and mathematical.

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Pro Tip

It’s pretty simple, just has a few quick notes in it. Also, it’s nice to play up on the 12th fret. Don’t be afraid of that part of your bass! It sounds real nice and bouncy and warm up there.

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Pro Tip

Are you a lean, mean rhythm machine like Dusty Hill? We would all be so lucky. There are a lot of repeated notes here. The idea is to play them with the drummer so that the shuffle blues rhythm makes every person in earshot shake their booty and scoot their boots.

Tier III

Pro Tip

Your first odd time signature! You’ve gone prog! Bring on the laser light show!! The cool herky-jerky feel of this song is due in large part to the fact that there are 7 beats in the pattern instead of pop music’s usual 4. The bass line is what makes the quirky rhythm work.

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Here is where you learn to be more machine now than human, twisted and evil. Wait, no. That’s Darth Vader.

Pro Tip

This song will test your stamina, your speed, and your accuracy. It’s a human metronome test. Only 4 notes, but a tricky pattern and pin-point rhythm placement! Good luck.

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Pro Tip

Your first ghost note! Those x’s in the tab mean that the bassist is plucking the string, but is not pushing the string down against the fret. He’s making a muted sound by plucking the string while his fretting hand is resting on the string without any pressure.

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Pro Tip

This is kind of a gift in Tier 3. It’s only two notes, and it is simple and driving and wonderful. You just have to be able to keep up with the track!

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Thank the bass gods the tempo on this is nice and slow. You’ve got a lot of slick fretting hand work to do here to make this bass line work.

Pro Tip

Play the D with your first finger, and – on the slide up the A string – stay loose! Stay relaxed. You’ll never play a slide with a tight, tension-filled fretting hand.

Tier IV

The way that Krist Novoselic (bassist for Nirvana) plays this is very different from how I tabbed it out. He has a bass tuned a full step lower than yours or mine, and he plays it way up on the A string (or, what used to be the A string before he tuned it down).

Pro Tip

If you want it to be tribute-band-perfect, you’ll have to play it the true re-tuned, up-the-neck way.

But if you want to play it the way me and all my friends played it back in 1991 when the album came out, play it the way I tabbed it. It sounds pretty darn close.

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Pro Tip

The trick here is playing the bass line instead of following the vocal melody!

The first two phrases are easy because the bass line is the vocal melody. But in the 3rd and 4th bar, they are different. Try and hear it in the recording, and play the bass line! The song is much more groovy and hip that way.

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Confession: Until YouTube offered the isolated bass track for this song, I had no idea what the bass did, or that it was at all different from the guitar riff. But it is different! And that’s why it’s so dang hard (same with Smoke On the Water later).

Pro Tip

An exact copy of the guitar riff is not always the best bassline, and this is a great example.

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Pro Tip

Once again, the bass line does not follow the guitar line. It drives the song and keeps things headbang worthy, but you have to listen to the bass line and try your best to ignore the power and lure of the iconic guitar riff!

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In contrast to the last two riffs, Geezer Butler (bassist for Black Sabbath) is playing the exact same thing as the guitar riff… which is the exact same thing as the vocal line.

Pro Tip

It’s an easy part to hear and memorize, but that quick little back and forth from the G to the F# is a doozy!

Tier V

Pro Tip

TUNING ALERT! To play this song you have to put your bass in “Drop D” tuning. You must tune your low E string down a full step to a D.

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TUNING ALERT!  In order to play this bass line along with Mike Dirnt (bassist for Green Day) and the rest of the gang, you need to tune your entire bass down one half step to Eb, Ab, Db, and Gb.

Pro Tip

To play most of Green Day’s catalog, you have to re-tune the entire bass. Every string goes down one half step.

I remember being a little miffed at these re-tuning bands. Here was me with my one bass in my practice room trying to gank my strings around for all these different bands, and these rock stars probably had a bass for every and any tuning they wanted. Lucky ducks.

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Pro Tip

This is just real fast. The main bass riff is easy to hear, but those in-between A’s are fast!

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Pro Tip

The album cut of this has synth bass, but they play it on electric bass live.

The tab here has been adjusted and simplified slightly to account for things that are hard to hear, and things that are in the electric bass live version vs the record. The main groove is still there and intact! But it’s always good to know when you’re not playing something verbatim from the record.

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Pro Tip

Tons of movement, lots of cool articulations and a nice syncopated rhythms. Sing it, sing it, sing it, play it slow, and relax!

If you can count, you can play tabs!  Pretty handy, eh?

Next steps after you’ve rocked these 25 killer riffs:

• Play through some full songs.
• Make your own riffs that sound (almost but not exactly) like the riffs you’ve learned. 
• Start a band.
• Join a band.
• Play your favorite riff so much that everyone around you starts to complain and you have to stop.
• See how loud you can play your favorite riff before your neighbor/roommate/family/local police shut you down.
• Play more riffs.

Viva La Tab!