Bass Tab White Pages – Hal Leonard Sheet Music Songbook | 200 Songs with Note-for-Note Bass Transcriptions and Tablature | Rock, Pop and Blues Bass Guitar Collection for All Skill Levels

This is the first book of tab you should buy if you are taking up bass and plan to play classic rock and blues rock. It has 200 songs, and mostly good songs that bands do play. I bought this to get sheet music to a couple songs I couldn't find anywhere else. Then got it and discovered it had about 10 more I need to learn for the band I just joined, about 5 or 6 I bought sheet music for while in other bands, and about 10 or more another one of my bands plays, although I play guitar in that one. So they are songs that get covered by bands. If you expect to play classic rock and blues, you'll find a lot of good songs here. I always weigh buying sheet music "by the book" like this because sheet music for many songs can be obtained for a buck or two online. I don't really like storing books due to space and weight, and I prefer printed copies of sheet music because then I can organize them in my band books I create for various bands I play in. That said, I'm considering just having the binding cut off and scanning these so I can organize them better and make it more portable for practice (i.e. just what I'm using now, thank you.) As always, I wish Hal would just make this downloadable as a pdf, or better, importable to guitar pro or finale where I could add little song notes or highlights or modifications...but we wouldn't want to drag Hal Leonard into the 1980's and beyond...they like being stuck in 1955 technologically, I think. It's more profitable for them I suppose. They need to take all of these bass tab songs and put them on Sheet Music Direct, which is their joint venture that sells online music for about a buck (and rising...I think $1.29 now...). I call them Hal-1955. Sort of the precursor to Hal-2001. Of course, it is now 2014. With all of that said, it's a great collection for $20...if you play bass in classic rock / blues bands, you should probably own it.

Tab versus Standard This mostly excellent compilation of over 4 decades of mostly rock songs shows the bassist's part in both standard and tab notation. (Standard requires reading notes; Tab actually shows the four bass strings and numbers what fret to play next). Who's in the Book While certain schools of funk and soul are slightly underrepresented for my tastes (where's James Brown or Sly Stone--were there copyrite issues?), the book includes some Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson, Martha and the Vandellas ("Dancing in the Street"), and The Four Tops. Mostly, though, this is a collection of what is now deemed "classic" rock (e.g., Cream, Beatles, Santana, Stones, The Who, Led Zep, Hendrix, David Bowie, the Byrds); metal bands (including Black Sabbath, Foo Fighters, Van Halen, Kiss, Metallica, GNR, Ozzy Osbourne); 1950s-1960's oldies (Fats Domino, Elvis, The Crests ["16 candles"], Ricky Nelson, , Carl Perkins, Buddy Holly and the Crickets, Jerry Lee Lewis), and a smattering of relatively recent (last 20 years) bands (the Black Crows, Goo Goo Dolls, Stone TEmple Pilots, Rage Against the Machine, Sheryl Crow, Slipknot, System of a Down). There are also some bands that are inexplicably included (why are there two songs from "power ballad" band, "Cinderella"), but, hey, to each his or her own. Only A Few Songs per Group Each group is represented by one to seven songs (only Stevie Ray Vaughn has that many), and most range from one to three. Therefore, if you're a big fan of a particular genre or band, you might look for a more specialized book. However, there aren't that many books with bass tab! What I Like About This Book Strengths of the book include the variety mentioned above, a one-page decoding of tab symbols, the excellent price, and song transcripts that generally show the treble clef, chord accompaniment, and lyrics. Sometimes you're only shown the 2 or 3 bass sections only, and the first few words/notes that accompany the riff without the rest of the song. Who Will Benefit From this Book? Moderate to advanced players will get the most from the "White Pages," and here's why: Even with the beginner-friendly tab, it is still very helpful to know how to read music. While tab indicates many of the techniques, it doesn't show you the all-important left hand finger placement that allows bassists to move smoothly over the neck, nor does it easily convey rhythm and the more complex moves. Unfortunately for the novice, many of the songs are at a fast pace and will be too difficult to play. Ideally, you'd have the bucks to get a -device that will play back slowed-down notes from a song without losing their pitch ($200 and up). Ideally, in fact, you'd have a guitar teacher! But for those without the time, money, or inclination to go this route, this book can get you playing pieces of some real songs, a rewarding activity that you won't get from too many beginner bass books. Recommendation For this reason alone (and, again, I'm speaking to newcomers), the White Pages can be a useful, fun resource, particularly when paired with a really excellent instruction book such as "Bass Guitar for Dummies." You might want to supplement this with bass transcriptions from the internet, sometimes from bass interest groups. (One problem with that, however, is that tab notations are not always the same.) The bottom line is that fairly competent bass players will enjoy a lot of transcriptions at a cheap price, while novices will have fewer songs they can play all the way through. The publisher might have thought to publish 2 or 3 books like this, but differentiated by the difficulty (speed, complexity, etc.) of the bass line.

When I ordered this I had no idea what to expect. So when a phone book sized book arrived, I realized why it's call the White Pages. The paper used is about the same as in a phone book, so when you open it to a page, it stays there. The standard music notation is used, along with frugal use of TAB. It appears that any song with lyrics includes the lyrics and melody with chords. I've been able to find most of what comes up at a band practice. I'm relatively new to the band/class and prefer to have a more accurate presentation of the bass lines. I was pulling this book out the first practice after I received it. I'd consider a next edition if there wasn't any overlap. Great reference; I prefer standard notation over TAB, so I'm quite satisfied with what I acquired.

Kind of like a jazz fake book, but for beginning bass players, this book has a fairly wide range of well known rock songs. Each song is tabbed, along with the actual written music, so you can play along with different recorded rock hits, learning to read bass cleff notes and rhythm as you're going along. The selection of songs is kind of peculiar, (Allman Brother's Jessica is in here, but not Melissa), but the book encompasses a pretty wide swathe of styles (Everclear, Dishwalla, Sheryl Crow, and The Temptations each have one song each in here). The transcriptions are really solid. I'd recommend this book to any serious beginning bass player, if you're ever going to be good enough to get work as a musician, you'll need to be versatile. If you're content to play just one kind of narrow genre in a garage band, this book is probably a waste of time, becuase you'll only find one or two songs you'll ever use out of the book.

Ottimo strumento per chi ama suonare. Imprescindibile. Spero in un secondo volume dedicato allo strumento piu' esaltante del mondo. Grande.

Excelente libro, llegó antes de la fecha señalada Buen servicio gracias.

Es un libro enorme con sus más de mil páginas y ha llegado en perfecto estado. Usado pero muy cuidado, muy contento con la compra, gracias.

Ce bouquin est énorme! Plus de mille pages en papier recyclé. Un vrai annuaire téléphonique. En plus intéressant, heureusement. Hal Leonard a regroupé 200 titres rock/blues/pop/soul tirés des innombrables songbooks pour basse qu'il a déjà publié. Les morceaux sont proposés sous forme de partitions (clé de Fa, of course) et de tablatures, avec symboles d'accord et paroles, ce qui est plutôt sympa. Comme les gars de chez Hal Leonard sont plutôt "authentiques" dans leurs transcriptions en tablatures, ce livre est bien une véritable bible pour le bassiste - de tout niveau - qui a envie de s'entraîner dans toutes sortes de styles. On trouve en effet ici des morceaux des Byrds comme de Marvin Gaye, des Beatles comme de Black Sabbath, de Stevie Ray Vaughan, comme des Pretenders. Attention: le choix des morceaux n'est pas toujours celui que vous auriez fait personnellement, mais, ah, Hal Leonard a sans doute encore envie de vendre ses autres ouvrages... Et, remarquez, pour moi, avoir à la fois Paranoid et Iron Man (et War Pigs!) de Black Sabbath, ça suffit déjà à mon bonheur... ;-) Bref, si vous êtes abonné à un service de musique en ligne comme Spotify ou Deezer, vous trouverez facilement les 200 morceaux proposés et vous pourrez ainsi répéter chaque jour dans un style différent, en écoutant l'original, si le cœur vous en dit. Pour découvrir les "vraies" lignes de basse des hits du rock, ce bouquin est plus que précieux. Indispensable. Surtout à ce prix.

Ich halte mich eigentlich für einen Musiker mit gutem Gehör, also kann ich bei Coversongs die Akkorde oder Bassläufe gut raushören. Aber so ein Songbook macht die Sache schon einiges leichter, man hat gleich die Stimmung des Instruments und bekommt wirklich super-genaue Niederschriften der Original-Künstler! Klar sind manche Songs schnell erlernt und spielbar, manche erfordern höheres Niveau. Über 300 Songs zu dem Preis! Man muss es im Schrank haben. Beeindruckende Telefonbuch-Optik, und auch Qualität. Die Seiten sind sehr dünn, aber man muss es ja nicht auf Reisen nehmen oder durch die Gegend kicken. ;-)