Threeline

for bass players — working songs out, practising them, learning them

The whole thing
is three rows.

How long the note is, where it sits on the neck, and what it's called, one above the other so you can read all three at once. It's how I've always written transcriptions on paper. Threeline does the same, typed.

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Open it to use it here and now. Download it to keep your own copy, which goes on working whether or not this page does.

A pencil transcription on paper: a row of note lengths, a four-line staff with fret numbers, and the note names Fis, Cis and Dis written underneath.
On paperYears of my transcriptions look like this.
The same two bars rendered by the editor: note lengths, fret numbers on a four-line staff, and the names Fis, Cis and Dis underneath.
TypedThe same two bars in the editor.

Why there is a third row

Tab shows you where to put your fingers but not what you are playing. Notation shows what you are playing but not where. I wanted both, so the fret numbers and the note names go on the page together.

You never type the names. Put a 4 on the D string and Fis turns up underneath it. Move the note to another string and the name changes with it. Dutch names, or English if you would rather have F♯ and B♭.

Two bars at 96, played twice.
44312x5AAmx5A5A2B3C2B3CCh5D7E

There is a bit of everything in those two bars. Quarters and eighths, a dotted quarter, a tie, an eighth rest, two ghost notes, a triplet, a slide into the second bar and a hammer-on coming out of it, chord names, and a repeat instead of writing the bars out twice.

The same line, both ways

The opening of the Bourrée from Bach's third cello suite, up an octave for the bass. Once as three rows, and once as standard notation on a bass clef — the view Practice mode can switch to. Same bars, same fingering; only the notation changes.

Eight bars at 100.
Tab44112G14A15Bb14A12G11F#12G14A12G11F#9E7D10C8Bb7A8Bb7D10C8Bb7A10C8Bb7A510G9F#10G7A8Bb10C7D9E10F8D#7D10C8Bb7A8Bb10C7D8D#10F12G14A15Bb14A12G10F8D#7D10C
Standard4415

Chords first, notes later

Some songs are easier to take apart from the top down. You get the chord progression on one listen, then go back and work out what the bass is actually doing under it. The whole shape goes in as one line of typing — or straight from an iReal Pro chart.

  1. Type the progression

    [Verse] Am | C | G G7 | Dm

  2. Get the bars

    441AmCGG7Dm

  3. Work out the notes

    4415AAm5A3C7E3CC3C7E10G3GG3G2BG71F5DDm5D1F5A
The editor's chord tones panel: the chord Am, its notes A, C and E labelled with their degrees, and a twelve-fret neck with every place they fall.

It will show you what is in the chord

While you are filling a bar in, the panel shows the chord you are under, which notes are in it, and everywhere they sit on the neck. Click one of the dots and that note goes in. Saves counting frets to find the third.

Majors, minors, sevenths, sixths, sus and diminished, with the root spelled either way. Slash chords keep their bass note, which you will care about.

One bar per line, or use |. Two chords in a bar splits it between them. [Name] starts a new section. When you type a fret over a rest it becomes a note, and the chord stays where you put it.

What it does

Write it

  • Pick a note length, type fret numbers, space to move on.
  • Or type the note names instead — c d e, then # or b — and it picks the octave nearest the last note and the string and fret nearest your hand.
  • On a phone, where there is no keyboard, a keypad takes its place.
  • Bar lines look after themselves.
  • Rests, dots, ties, triplets. Dead notes, hammer-ons, pull-offs, slides. Slurs over a phrase to be played legato.
  • Double stops — two or more strings sounding together, shown on the tab and on the staff.
  • Staccato dots, and words like legato, let ring or a tempo written under the staff. Dynamics from pp to ff, and cresc. and decresc.
  • Any time signature, and it can change from any bar — 7/8 and 5/4 as readily as 4/4.
  • Repeat marks with a count on them, and 1st and 2nd time bars.
  • Chord names above, lyrics below, and headings like Chorus.
  • Click a chord to see its notes on the neck, then click one to put it in.
  • Shift the whole song up or down a fret at a time. Notes keep their strings where they can, a note that would leave the neck finds another, and the chords and the key move with it.
  • Split a section in two, and join it back when the split was in the wrong place.
  • Copy a phrase and paste it further on. Undo goes back as far as you like, and there is a redo for when you go too far.

Read it

  • Four, five or six strings, and alternate tunings. Change it and the notes move, not the music.
  • Octave numbers in Helmholtz, scientific, Yamaha or written pitch. Or none at all.
  • Or leave the note names out of it entirely, and read it as tab.
  • Or, while you practise, read the whole thing as standard notation on a bass clef — set the key and it draws the signature and spells the notes. The tab is what you edit; this is only another way to look at it, and the fingering never moves.
  • Or on a treble clef, written two octaves up — for borrowing the editor to learn a flute part, say.
  • Or, in the same place, just the chords: the bars and their symbols, more to a line, a grid to improvise over.
  • Or the chords over the words, each chord sitting on the syllable it lands on, like a lead sheet.
  • Set how many bars go on a line, and break lines and pages yourself.
  • Bar numbers, for when somebody says take it from 17.
  • A section that is just a repeat of an earlier one can say so in a word instead of being written out again.
  • Prints to PDF with none of the editor on it.
  • Full screen for a music stand: the editor gets out of the way and the music grows to fill the window. Or two columns, so a whole piece fits on one screen.
  • Or let it scroll by itself, at the tempo, with nothing playing: each line comes up just as you get to it. Scroll back with a hand and it carries on from there.
  • In practice, space turns half a page, so you can scroll on without taking a hand off the bass for long.
  • Mark it up like paper: a yellow sticky note anywhere on the page, and a highlighter in four colours over the bars that need work.

Play it

  • Play from any note, or select a passage and hear only that.
  • It follows the repeats and the endings.
  • Loop four bars at 60% and bring them up to speed.
  • A click on every beat — in whatever metre the bar is in — and a bar of count-in before you come in.
  • Plain, P-style or J-style. Where a pickup sits along the string is what changes the tone, and that is what it models. Notes ring on like a real string until the next one damps them.
  • Or a flute, two octaves up, joining the notes under a slur without a fresh breath.
  • The page turns a line early, so you are never reading off the bottom of the screen.
  • A drummer to play against, in whatever metre the bar is in — 7/8 comes out 3+3+1 — with the kick following what the bass actually does.
  • Lock the music while you practise, so a stray key or a hand on the screen cannot rewrite the line you are learning.
  • Write the line out as MIDI for GarageBand or any DAW, drums included. Pitch and rhythm travel; the string and the fret cannot, because MIDI has no word for them.
  • Open a MIDI and get a draft to start from. It works out where on the neck each note goes — the file cannot tell it — by taking the path that keeps your hand stillest, then you change what does not suit you.
  • Open an iReal Pro chart the same way, for its chords and form to write a line beneath — and send the chords back out, for iReal Pro's band to play against.

How it's put together

One fileDownload it once and it keeps working.
Works offlineNo account, no sign-in, no connection.
Nothing leaves your laptopThe downloaded editor: no tracking, no uploads, no cookie banner.
Plain filesTranscriptions are plain .json. Keep them wherever you like.

What you get when you download. One file called bass-notation.html, which lands wherever your browser puts downloads. Double-click it and it opens in your browser like any other page — except it is now yours, it needs no connection, and nobody can take it away. Put it somewhere you will find it again, next to your transcriptions.

Worth knowing. The editor here opens empty every time, so nothing half-finished is ever silently waiting for you — open a .json file to carry on with it. (If you closed the tab mid-thought, what you had is kept, and the editor offers it back.) The copy you download works the other way: it is yours, so it picks up where you left off.

It runs in any current browser. Saving over the same file, where you pick a name once and every save after that writes straight back to it, needs Chrome or Edge. Those are the ones that let a page hang on to a file. Firefox and Safari do everything else the same, but Save gives you a fresh copy each time, the way a download does.