I just submitted my tab for The Black Eyed Peas/Where Is The Love to the BassTabArchive/ultimte-guitar.com.

Gotta love this sentance "Check your tab for quiality and accuracy before you send it to us."

Errr... ultimate-guitar.com. I need some quiality assurance myself.

There has to be some kind of natural law that comments about a misspelling must also themselves include a similarly heinous misspelling.

Yeah, I don't know what's worse. Their misspelling the world quality as part of the instructions to double check your work, or my misspelling something when pointing out their error.

Its just karma and hubris, karma and hubris,
But I like it, like it, yes I do.

http://www.google.com/search?q=i+know+it%27s+only+rock+and+roll+but+i+like+it+lyrics

*sigh*

I had to replace 'only' with just to get it to almost scan.

:-)

only -> just leaves you with Dire Straits as the first hit. At least that's better than the Spice Girls.

Hey, what's wrong with the Spice Girls? Don't ya love their spice racks?

Thank you for doing tabs for one of the crappiest pop bands making music today. ;-)

I don't care how crappy you think the band is, their bass player is freaking awesome.

I was just teasing you Mark. I've got an ear for the bass too. Great instrument.

Side note:
I've got a young friend named Matt who is on his way to becoming a well paid professional musician (www.irvingtonband.com). He is the best guitar player I've ever known. For the band's cds, he lays down just about every one of the guitar tracks, as well as doing quite a bit of the vocal work. But on stage he can only play instrument. So, what does he choose? The bass, of course. I asked him if it's hard to give up most of the fan attention to the other guys. "Nope, the right poeple know." I'm really proud of him.

That's cool. Does he sing on stasge too? The hardest instrument to play while singing is the bass... Well, depending on how complex the bass lines are. Something about playing a melody while singing a melody. Guitar is much easier to play while singing.

Yep, he does. But the kid is a marvel. He is also one of the best drummers I've ever heard. (Also one of the best pianists, etc etc.) Complicated rythms are like breathing for him.

> Guitar is much easier to play while singing.

Depending on syncopations and such, yeah. I know what you are saying though. There is something about the rythm/melody relationship of the bass that makes it hard to do really well. Sometimes seemingly simple bass lines will trip up experienced guitarists.

Well, guitar (as vocal accompanyment) on the whole is just "memorize chord positions, switch between them while strumming." Since strumming is just "moving your arm in time with the music" singing over it is relatively easy.

Since bass (as counterpoint) is typically more than "play the root & play straight eighth notes" and involves melody, and moving your fingers on both hands for every note played, it seems to occupy much of the same part of the brain singing does.

Sure I'm oversimplifying, I can sing over the bass line for Funky Broadway, but have a hard time singing a couple of lines of Sweet Jane on guitar because they fall on an offbeat or something.

I'm always amused when guitar players tell their friends to play bass 'because it's easier' pick up the bass and haven't the first clue what to do, but almost any bass player can pick up a guitar and play through all of their band's songs.

I was never good at complicated rhythms. Even simple rhythms mess me up sometimes. It's all a matter of musical dialect, I suppose. I can only "speak" as well as what I'm used to hearing. But I can play 99% of the song I set out to play, so that's good enough for me.

The remaining 1% being James Jamerson licks from Motown, but I suspect if I dedicated myself to it, I could pick it up easily enough.

I have nothing to add, just that I used to play bass too, although I only started because we couldn't find a proper bass player. They must be like buses -- you wait for ages, then dozens turn up at once. :)

Sadly, although I pick up my accoustic from time to time or annoy the neighbours with hour long drum solos during fits of boredom, I've more or less abandoned music as a hobby. I keep meaning to dedicate some time to it, but life's got far too complicated to find sufficient time, and with a house full of people it's even a problem finding space!

We should start an ?Off Topic band.

what would we do, serve milk & cookies?

Nope. Conduct organized random acts of kindness. Fight Club style.