Howdy Mitch,

Re. bass lines: I'll reiterate the part that David has said about simply listening in "analysis" mode to a lot of music - lots and lots of it .

But one thing that you may notice is that the way a piano plays a bass line and the way a string bass plays a bass line are a bit different. With piano bass, you often get rather large jumps in a bass line, whereas with string bass you get a more melodic type of line. This is mostly due to the ergonomics of the instruments - but in slap style, anything goes .

You can use MidiNotate Player to see how these bass lines are played, and you may want to pay particular attention to ones that are scored as piano arrangements, rather than say a rock band, since the pianist's approach to bass may be a bit different. (sidenote: I play in our church band, and we have a fellow who plays keyboard, and I play electric bass. We were learning a new song one day, that he was a little familiar with, and I was trying out some variations on a bass line. He made the comment that the bass in the piano was played a certain way, and he played it on the keys, which sounded nice. So I played the same line for him on my string bass - and it sounded quite different, and not "right" because the instrumental nuances are different - it's just a totally different instrument. He said what I'd been playing previously sounded better It's just an example of adjusting the line to fit the instrument.)

Regarding the octave range, you may be seeing an "instrument transposition". Bass notation is usually written an octave higher than it actually sounds, as is guitar notation.

Regarding printing out the score, MidiNotate Player is akin to the Adobe Acrobat Reader - you can listen to and see arrangements that others have made, but you cannot edit them. If you want to do some editing or setting up practice sessions (repeated loops and such) you might want to explore Musician or Composer. They both have a free 30 day trial.

Have fun - bass is great!
Sherry