Bass Tabs for Tears Dont Fall by Bullet for My Valentine
The bass line on this track is straightforward but gets messy if you try to play it too fast. The main riff sits mostly around the fifth fret on the A string and open D. Matt Tuck doesn't do much with effects on this one, just a straight DI sound going into the amp. Here's the primary riff broken down. Play it in E standard tuning: E string: 0-5-7-5-0-5-7-5 (repeat pattern)
A string: opens up between 0 and 5 periodically for the chorus feel.
Where to Find Reliable Tears Dont Fall Bass Tabs
Most tabs you'll find on free sites have timing errors. The verse comes in at roughly 138 BPM and the chorus drags slightly because the drummer holds back. That's why so many beginner tabs sound wrong when you run them along with the record. I spent about two hours matching tab notes to timestamps last month trying to pin down the exact fingerstyle picks versus hammer-ons in the second pre-chorus section. Ended up just transcribing it myself instead of fighting with whatever third-party tab was claiming to be accurate. UtaTea and Songsterr have the closest versions to what's actually played, but even those miss the palm muting notation on the quieter verses. If you're serious about learning this, you're better off using a DAW and slowing the track down to 85% speed to catch the subtleties. Takes about ten minutes to get the full part locked in that way. The bridge section throws people off. It's not as heavy as the rest of the song and Matt switches to a more melodic approach around the seventh and ninth fret positions. Most tabs skip that entirely or just write power chords when they should be written as individual notes. I ran into this exact problem when preparing for a live set and had to figure out the transition from the bridge back into the final chorus. The gap is only about four bars and if you miss the fingering change you're behind by a full measure before the drop kicks back in.
For download links, Songsterr lets you export MIDI files which you can import into any tablature software. That's probably the cleanest route since you can then adjust the timing yourself rather than trusting someone else's transcription.
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