simile

[jimmy smith]

when reading tab books what does it mean when you come across this

[geffen]

it means to play it similarly to what was before it, whether it be dynamics or articulation. so if all of the notes before it were staccato, and it says simlie in the next measure, play all of those notes short too.

[eische]

yep, »simile« means »alike«...

...so that could be that you just transport the style, tempo, feel fro mthe passage before to the following ones - like geffen said.

It could also mean, just repeat the phrase before to a certain prescripted length afterwards.
Or that you should play the marked passage whereever it reappears in the song just in the same way as prescripted for the first appearence (like you have two chords, the first is strummed, the second broken - play them like this everytime this two chords appear in the song).

[jimmy smith]

thanks alot that clears up alot but wouldn't it be easier to just place e repeat sign in the bars

[eische]

hmm, yeah, but a repeat sign will only give the possibilty to repeat... once... so in the end, you will just have the passage two times... the simile-thing could mean, repeat this till bass does this and that could be longer than two times the passage...