Korn Got The Life Bass Tab
The song uses standard E tuning. Jonathan Davis plays the bass, and the riff is mostly built around palm-muted power chord double-stops with a couple of descending chromatic runs. You don't need any special tools to read it. Just grab a tab browser or any text editor and you can follow along. The main riff in the intro and verse goes like this. I'll lay it out in plain text since it transfers cleanly into any tab viewer: Intro / Verse riff:
E|--0---0---| A|--2---2---| D|--2---0---|
G|--0-------| This repeats, then shifts to: E|--0---0---|
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A|--2---2---| D|--3---2---| G|--0-------|
The pre-chorus changes to open-string emphasis with a slide feel: E|--0h2-0---| A|--2-----2-|
D|--2-----2-| G|--0-----0-| I've seen a lot of people post the wrong tuning for this tab, so I want to be clear: it is E standard, not Drop D, even though the low E hits hard. If your tab says Drop D, look somewhere else.
For the chorus section, the pattern simplifies but gets busier in the low register: E|--0---0---0---| A|--2---2---2---|
D|--2---0---2---| G|--0-------0---| It locks in with the snare on beats 2 and 4. That means you are playing mostly eighth notes with occasional sixteenth-note fills between vocal lines. Fieldy rarely uses a pick on this track. If you play it with a pick, it sounds thinner than the record and you will fight the mix. Fingers, preferably with the thumb anchoring on the E string, give you the right attack.
I ran into a specific problem the first time I tried learning this. The descending chromatic run in the bridge -- E to Eb to D -- on the A and D strings at the second and third frets -- kept coming out muddy. The issue was that my ring finger was lifting too early when transitioning from the Fshape back to E. I fixed it by practicing the run in isolation at 60 bpm with a metronome, focusing on keeping all four fingers planted until the next note needed them. Once I got that down, the whole section clicked. It took about three days of daily practice at 20 minutes a session to make it clean. One counter-intuitive thing about this tab: the notation often shows hammer-ons that are really pull-offs in Fieldy's playing. When you see E0h2 on the low E string in many tabs, what he is actually doing is a quick hammer on followed by a pull back off before the next chord lands. If you play it as a straight hammer-on, it drags the rhythm. Trust the tab loosely here. Listen to the track at 0.75x speed and watch the hand. Another thing beginners miss is the amount of muting required. This riff relies on deadening the strings between hits. If you let the open E ring out, it clashes with the next Fshape. Use both picking-hand and fret-hand muting. Rest your picking hand lightly on the strings right after you strike them. It makes the whole thing sound tighter without changing the notes.
For tone, a high-gain amp or a solid overdrive pedal works. I use a Boss SD-1 pushed into a slightly cranked clean channel, with the bass EQ rolled back on the low mids around 400 Hz. That frequency builds up fast in this song and turns it into mud. Cutting it by 2-3 dB at that spot cleaned up the mix immediately in rehearsal. You can also add a touch of compression if your amp doesn't have it built in. The goal is sustain on the held chords and still enough transient for the muted hits. I should mention that some online tab sources list this in Cstandard or show the verse riff an octave too high. If your tab has the main riff starting on the 12th fret of the low E string, it is wrong. It is open position. Standard E tuning, open strings, everything I laid out above. If you want the tab in a downloadable format, most tab sites host it under "Korn Got The Life Bass Tab." I recommend checking Guitar Pro or TuxGuitar files over plain text when available because they show the timing better. The plain-text versions I see online often lose the syncopation and make the pre-chorus sound straight when it should swing slightly.
The main bottleneck with learning this song is patience with the palm mute. You will want to play it louder and more aggressive before your hand learns the short, controlled strokes. Hold off on that. Play it soft and tight first. Once the muting is consistent, turning up the gain does the rest.
