Today is the autumnal equinox — a public holiday here in Japan and, fittingly, the exact moment summer hands over to autumn. The humidity breaks, the evenings cool down fast, and suddenly you actually want to sit in a room and practice for an hour instead of melting. Best time of year to play bass, honestly.
I've been working through a new batch of songs and finally got the Bass Tab Editor to a place I'm properly happy with. Big update this time — the editor has grown a lot since the last post, and the cloud library now has seven actual songs I'm practicing right now, ready to load and play along with on any device.
What I'm Currently Working On
These are the seven songs in the cloud library — all transcribed from "Super Easy Bass" sheet music and loaded into the tab editor with repeat markers, correct BPM and full notation. Hit ☁ Load from Cloud in the Song Library panel and they all sync straight to your browser. Here's where I'm at with each one:
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Creep — Radiohead90 BPM
The one that got me. That four-chord loop — G, B, C, Cm — is deceptively simple but the Cm chord has this brilliant descending run at the end of the bar with passing notes that makes it feel way more interesting than it looks on paper. Getting the timing right on those passing notes is my current focus. -
Zombie — Cranberries84 BPM
Slow and powerful. The Em bar is basically eight straight open E notes, then the C bar switches to the A string, then G back on E string, then the D/F# bar which has that satisfying little movement at the end. Once you lock into the groove it feels effortless. Good one for building stamina. -
Another Brick in the Wall — Pink Floyd105 BPM
The Dm riff is one of the most satisfying things I've played so far. The 5-3-5 pattern with the descending run feels like your fingers are doing something deliberately musical rather than just placing notes. The staccato G bars at the end of each section really change the feel — it's a completely different texture when you chop those notes short. -
Cocaine — Eric Clapton105 BPM
The E5-D5 riff is relentless and I love it. The rhythm has this swing to it that's hard to describe — there's a triplet feel buried in there that makes the pattern groove in a way that a straight eight notes wouldn't. The walkdown through C-B to get back to E is the trickiest bit to nail cleanly at tempo. -
Kryptonite — 3 Doors Down198 BPM
198 BPM. That's fast. The verse is actually very manageable — long held notes, just Bm and G and A — but the chorus hits those three quarter notes per bar and suddenly your right hand is working overtime. This one is a proper workout and I'm not at full tempo yet. Getting there. -
Seven Nation Army — The White Stripes114 BPM
Everyone knows this riff. It's one of the first things any bass player learns, apparently, and now I understand why — it's immediately satisfying to play and sounds huge even at half speed. The low E string riff followed by the G/A groove section gives your right hand a real mix of picking patterns to work through. -
The Chain — Fleetwood Mac75 BPM slow · 149 BPM fast
Two completely different sections in one song. The slow Am section is almost meditative — eight open E notes per bar, steady and deep. Then the tempo jumps to 149 BPM and the famous fast riff kicks in. That Am-to-C-to-G run on the A string is one of the most recognizable bass lines ever written. Still working on making it sound confident at full speed.
All seven songs are in the cloud library — load them on any device in one click
Open the Bass Tab Editor →What's New in the Editor
The tab editor has had a significant overhaul since the last post. I kept adding things until it felt like a real tool rather than a prototype. Here's what changed:
Notation — Ties, Slides and Staccato
Three new types of musical notation are now supported, each with its own keyboard shortcut and visual indicator drawn directly on the tab.
Ties connect two consecutive notes on the same string with a curved arc above them — the second note sustains from the first instead of being re-plucked. Press T while editing a note to tie it to the next note on that string.
Slides show a diagonal line between two notes. The direction tells you which way to slide: upward slash for sliding to a higher fret, downward slash for lower. Press S while editing. The slope is calculated automatically from the fret numbers.
Staccato dots sit above the note and tell you to cut the note short — muted rather than ringing. Press M while editing, or right-click any filled cell. Another Brick in the Wall uses these on the G bars.
Repeats
Repeat sections are marked with bright bracket strips at the start and end of the repeated bars, with a ↻ ×N badge showing how many times it plays. The playback engine respects repeats fully — it expands them into the correct play order before scheduling audio, so what you hear matches what's written. This is how the Zombie and Creep tabs can show just 5 or 9 bars while actually playing through 30+ bars of music.
Smarter Playback
Notes now sustain until the next note on the same string plays — like a real bass. Previously every note was cut off at exactly one beat, which sounded mechanical. Now the ring duration is calculated individually for each note by scanning forward through the play order. There's a minimum of one quarter note so the last beat of a bar doesn't get cut short, and a natural cap of 2.5 seconds so sparse sections don't drone forever.
BPM is saved with each song and restored when you load it. The BPM calculation also correctly accounts for beat mode — 95 BPM at 8 beats per bar means quarter notes at 95, not eighth notes, so the tempo actually matches the sheet music now.
Playback also starts from wherever your cursor is. Click any note, hit Play — it begins from that point in the song. Useful for drilling a specific section without sitting through the intro every time. The page auto-scrolls to keep the active bar centred while playing.
Bar Insertion
Clicking a cell and then hitting + Add Bar now inserts a blank bar immediately after that bar rather than always appending to the end. A subtle teal tint highlights whichever bar is currently selected so you can see exactly where the insert will land. Ties, slides and repeat markers all shift correctly when bars are inserted or removed.
Hotkey Reference
All the shortcuts are now displayed in a permanent reference strip just above the tab so you don't have to remember them:
The Season Shift
There's something about autumn in Japan that makes sitting down to practice feel less like discipline and more like something you actually want to do. Summer here is brutal — 35 degrees, humidity you can wear, and the idea of sitting still in a room with a bass strapped on is genuinely unappealing after the first ten minutes. But right now the temperature is dropping, the air is getting that clean crispness to it, and the evenings are stretching out in a different way.
I find I practice longer sessions in autumn. Not because I'm suddenly more dedicated — I think it's just that the conditions stop fighting you. The bass feels better in cooler air. Your hands don't sweat. You can concentrate. If you're learning too, I'd say make the most of the next few months before winter arrives and makes you feel like you should be doing literally anything else.
Seven songs is a solid practice list for the season. I'll post updates as I get them to full tempo.