Bass actually sounds an octave lower than it is written on the bass clef.
These notes start on the lowest note of a four string bass which is E and go up one
fret at a time. To learn where these notes are found on the bass neck see the section on fingerboard note names. Notice that the sharps (#) are written
before the note on a music stave and after the note when written as a letter name. This
applies to both sharps (#) and flats (b).
There are two acrostic sayings to help you remember the lines of the bass clef (Good
Boys Deserve Fruit Always) and the notes in between the lines
of the stave (All Cows Eat Grass). These can be helpful as
long as they don’t confuse the fact that the letter names are simply the alphabet
from A to G and then continuing on with A after G.
The symbols on the left of the bass clef are rests of the same duration as the notes on
the right. There is one bar worth of notes for each note type so you can see how long each
type of note lasts. The duration of a note or rest is determined by the number of beats
(or fractions of a beat) that it lasts for and the tempo of the music. The tempo is
expressed in beats per minute (BPM) and is usually written after a crotchet (quarter note)
symbol.
= 60 means there is one beat per second. A dot after any note
increases its duration by half again and a curved line (tie) between two notes of the same
name means that the first note is held for the duration of both notes.
The following graphic is another way of showing how the various notes are subdivisions
of a bar expressed in beats. Each of these lines represents a bar of common (4/4) time.
