alright in this instructable ill teach you how to read tabs for bass or guitar so you can learn your favorite songs :) and yes the bass in the photo is mine

Step 1: Step One. Get a Bass or Guitar

... just read the title lol

Step 2: Step Two. Getting Tabs

alright simply open your internet browser and go to google or a site such as ultimate-guitar or bassmasta.net

attached are two pictures. one of bass tabs and one of guitar tabs

Step 3: Step Three. the Numbers

alright so in a tab you'll see four or six lines (depending on if you're learning bass or guitar) with numbers on them. most songs are in stardard tuning which is E. but there's drop b drop d drop c etc.. the numbers in the tabs are the numbers of the frets you'll be holding down so if the E line looked like this... |-----6-6-6-8-4---| you would hold down the sixth fret play it three times then play the eighth fret once and the fourth once. pretty simple right? okay next step.

Step 4: Step Four. More Numbers.

now if you had a guitar your tabs would look more like this...

|------------------------------------------------------------------------|
|-33-33-3--77-77-7---33-33-3--77-77-7--88-88-8-77-77-7-88-88-8-------5---|
|-44-44-4--77-77-7---44-44-4--77-77-7--99-99-9-77-77-7-99-99-9-77-66-----|
|-44-44-4----------------44-44-4---------------99-99-9------------99-99-9---------4-|
|-22-22-2--55-55-5---22-22-2--55-55-5--77-77-7-55-55-5-77-77-7-55-44---4-|
|----------------------------------------------------------------------4-|

btw that looks horrible but i just copied and pasted but you get the idea. anywho the bottom line (on both guitar and bass) is the top thickest string of the instrument. the pattern of the numbers is the strum pattern (how many times and in what rhythm you play it) and the numbers are the frets. in this case there's lots of numbers stacked up. thats called a chord. so what you do is hold down the frets as displayed above and strum just those strings. not the ones where theres nothing on the line. still following? okay good. next step.

Step 5: Step Five. Finishing Up.

alright so now you know what tabs look like and how they work. now for symbols. every now and then you'll see these things in a tab / or \ or h or p. here's what that means. the / means slide from whatever fret is portrayed down to the first fret and stopping. the \ means the opposite. slide up. the letter h means hammer on which is playing the note before the letter then just tapping your finger on the next and not picking it. the p mean pull off which is exactly the opposite of hammering on. you play the higher note and pull off to the lower one.

and now you know how to read tabs and what they mean :) now go pick up a guitar (or preferably a bass) and learn :D