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Franz Vitulli on The Importance of Reading Music for the Modern Bass Player
Reading music (and in our case bass lines) has always been important for musicians. First of all, it’s a matter of principle. Music is a language, and a good student has the duty to nurture the understanding of how the language he wants to master is formally written. From a practical point of view, it helps the communication between musicians: if you and your bandmates can read music, you can “speak the same language”, and this has a lot of good implications, for example when you are arranging a new tune, you want to tell the drummer how is the kick drum pattern you have in mind and you want to tell it unambiguously, writing it on a board or on a piece of paper, not just singing it.
But I think that today we have to see the matter from another point of view: reading music is even more important for the modern player, even if we all know that internet is full of messy tabs written by we-don’t-know-who.
Before the digital age, most of the didactic resources you might find on the shelves of a bookshop were written with double staffs (traditional notation and tabs), because the publishers usually thought (and still think) that the presence of the tabs would have encouraged the selling of the book, expecially among amateurs. If you visit a bookshop and look for bass books, you will still find books with tabs. Actually, I’m essentially talking about books for beginners, but sometimes I have found the tab staff even on books for advanced players.
Nowadays, with the possibility of self-publishing on the web (Kindle Store, Apple’s iBookstore, Scribd, not to mention blogs and personal websites, et cetera), authors can produce and publish their own ebooks without dealing with publishers, editors or anyone else: we are just at the beginning of this ebooks era, and since most of the music teachers are reasonably against the tabs (which are, by definition, confusing and incomplete), I think that we have to expect a flowering of new tabs-free resources available on the web. And you don’t want to be excluded from enjoying these new resources, do you?
Acquiring the necessary skills to read music is very difficult without a teacher, but you may want to begin learning the fundamentals of reading music before applying to a music schools or while you are looking for a good teacher. These are my suggestions:
- Memorize notes on the lines and spaces, like a nursery rhyme. The more you practice, the less you have to repeat yourself G-B-D-…!
- Take care of the rhythm even apart from the melody. There are a lot of books out there that have been specifically written for the snare drum that can be used with the bass. They really can help you to develop a strong rhythmic sense;
- A computer can tell you how to read tricky rhythmic patterns. If you’re not sure about how to read a measure, just write it in a software like Finale or Sibelius, and let it sound;
- Find an easy bass line of a song that you know and like (I would recommend James Jamerson’s “My girl”), and try to read it with your bass. Slowly and without your metronome – you are studying, NOT performing.
- If the bass line you’re trying to read is written on a piece of paper, use highlighters, pencils and erasers to highlight tricky passages or to write down notes and guides;
- It’s quite common that a song has a specific pattern that comes almost throughout the whole song. Focus on that pattern and play a first, poor but solid version of the song, then add fills, phrasings, et cetera.
As usual, I look forward to read your thoughts about this article: tweet it, share it on your Facebook wall and tell your friends about it!
Franz
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Photo: Self-portrait by Melissa Auf Der Maur
Melissa Auf Der Maur is a Canadian bassist who played with Tinker, Hole, and The Smashing Pumpkins. She released her own work and is a photographer with photos published in Nylon, Bust, and National Geographic. She released her ‘90s Rock Memoir “Even The Good Girls Will Cry” on 17 March 2026.
KB: Did you always want to be a singer-musician growing up?
I’ve played music my whole life. In school, I played trumpet and sang in a children’s choir, so music was always within me. My mother was the first female disc jockey on the Montreal airwaves; her record collection played a huge role in my inspiration and love of music.
KB: When did you start playing bass, and why this instrument?
When I was 19, the early 90s music explosion began to percolate in tiny clubs around the world. I was lucky to be a ticket girl at Montreal’s underground music club. In one year, I saw Hole, Sonic Youth, Smashing Pumpkins, White Zombie, and The Breeders – all had female bass players. That’s when the seed was planted. By the age of 22, I was the bass player of Hole.
KB: Which brands of basses have you used in your career, and which one are you using now?
The first bass that I learned on was a vintage Squier Precision. Hole was sponsored by Fender guitars, so I upgraded to Fender Custom Shop Precisions. That is all I play, but I have a cool vintage 8-string Greco that I use on recordings to thicken up guitar parts.
KB: What equipment do you use or have you used with your basses?
Ampeg SVT amps and cabinets, a couple of Sans-Amp pedals, and that is it.
KB: How did you become a member of Hole, and what is your fondest memory of that time?
Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins was helping scout a replacement for (RIP) Kristen Pfaff, Hole’s bass player. My band, Tinker, opened for them on the Siamese Dream tour, so Billy had seen me play and could vouch for me. Courtney trusted her talented friend, and that was it. I initially said “no thank you” due to my commitment to my photographic studies and the drama and chaos surrounding the band during the “Live Through This” album release. Courtney took it as a good sign that I said no, so convinced me to reconsider, and soon after, I accepted their invitation, in the name of helping put females in the male-dominated landscape of rock music. My fondest memory is every show we played as a mostly female band, symbolizing what a woman could do in a rock band. Every show had a purpose: get more women to play music.
KB: You are a photographer as well. What makes a great picture? Do you shoot in color or b/w?
I started shooting photographs at age 15. Initially only shot black & white and worked in the art school darkroom. In university, I took a color photography course, and shifted mostly and forever to that, because it was easier to process film on the road when I joined a rock band. I experimented with many cameras, point and shoots, manual, polaroids, medium format, and vintage finds. The trick to a good photograph is to shoot many and all the time – the magic is in the edit and selection process.
KB: Are there artists you would love to collaborate with or wish you had?
??I’ve been lucky to collaborate with some of my favorite musicians in my career. I would still love to collaborate with a new generation heavy electronic artist on an analog bass, heavy electronic drums, and synths collaboration project. Take me out of my usual zone, merging the past and future: my love of 80s dark new wave and new artists exploring that genre. It was very futuristic back then, and we are now, after all, living in the future. I am in the mood to play bass to heavy beats I want to dance to.
KB: What are your 7 favorite bass lines in music across all genres? And why these 7?
“Mountain Song” – Jane’s Addiction (love a rambling, rolling bass line – feels like the ocean waves)
“Black Top – Helmet” (was the first bass line I taught myself)
“Gold Dust Woman” – Hole from “The Crow 2” Soundtrack (it was my first bass line contribution to the band)
“Get Ready” – The Temptations (Motown just feels so good, because of the bass)
“Lucretia My Reflection” – Sisters of Mercy (makes me want to hit the dance floor and play bass simultaneously)
“Be My Druidess” – Type O Negative (full chord bass playing at its best by iconic, demonic, Peter Steele, RIP)
“Romantic Rights” – Death from Above (1979 – unique distorted overdriven tone, combined dance rhythm and melodic intelligence, all in one shot – also! Shout out to a bass & drum only band, which is awesome, and we should have more of, but the bass player needs to be a killer to fill that role.
KB: What are you currently up to?
Releasing my ‘90s Rock Memoir “EVEN THE GOOD GIRLS WILL CRY”. Visceral healing process, it was to get it out of me and write it, but I suspect the real magic will begin by putting it into the world and reflecting with others on what the magic of the ‘90s was all about. Powerful music decade that carried us into what is now a brave new world of digital corporate weirdness – may the past shed a light on our future. That’s my hope for this book release and tour.
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