Help and Advice Needed

[Yegor P.]

Hey there guys,

I have been playing bass for almost two years now (but I did play a bit of bass in 2003-04). Before playing bass I was a drummer and did some solid work on the percussion. I also fooled around with a guitar for a bit, but never liked it.

I have a huge problem, which, frankly, depresses me a lot. I have been a bassist in a band for almost a year now and recently we broke up due to conflicting music tastes, beliefs, desires and schedules.

I want to explain first that we were a cover band and that our set list was a bunch of classic heavy metal from the 80s (Iron Maiden, Accept, Quiet Riot, Black Sabbath, etc) and some more modern death metal (Children of Bodom). Basically, for the last 2 years I have just been learning songs and playing them, just playing them in different situations and mastering them. I feel that I am not a musician, but a mere copy-cat who imitates other styles and plays cover songs.

Now that our band has ceased to exist, I made a promise to myself - that I will become a real bassist, a real musician. I want to develop as a musician and create something, something interesting, and hopefully original.

The thing is I do not know where to start. I have some basic grasp of theory, but it's very minimal - I mainly rely on what I learned while drumming and while playing all the covers.

I would be very grateful if someone can give me some tips and advice on where to start building up my knowledge of the theory and of the instrument. Also, if you can give me some tips on how to improve my improvisation so that I feel more comfortable during jam sessions. What important topics of music theory do I need to look at?

Though, there is one positive moment and it's the fact that I have a good baggage of cover songs in case of concerts coming up.

All help and advice will be very much appreciated and helpful, so please post

P.S. I have actually used a plectrum before most of the time, but in the last 5 or 6 weeks I have been working heavily on moving to finger picking. Oh, and also I am into heavy metal (Steve Harris, Johny Middleton and Geezer Butler are my heroes)

[RiddimKing]

Start or join a band that wants to do original metal. You'll become part of the songwriting process automatically--even if it's 'just' coming up with the basslines. Eventually, you'll probably come up with lines that become the basis of songs. Of course, you'll draw on the stuff you learned doing covers, but once you apply them to new music, the riffs change to fit the new song. If you then find you have difficulty coming up with basslines, then you can go to a teacher and get practical and theoretical help for approaching the parts of a song.

[capnsandwich]

Originally Posted by RiddimKing

Start or join a band that wants to do original metal. You'll become part of the songwriting process automatically--even if it's 'just' coming up with the basslines. Eventually, you'll probably come up with lines that become the basis of songs. Of course, you'll draw on the stuff you learned doing covers, but once you apply them to new music, the riffs change to fit the new song. If you then find you have difficulty coming up with basslines, then you can go to a teacher and get practical and theoretical help for approaching the parts of a song.

Good advice.

Also, check out this website: www.studybass.com , It's a great place to find information on basic bass theory and beginner to intermediate level techniques.

[wkbryan]

www.carolkaye.com

Though she is not a metal bass player she has made a living playing a lot of different styles of music. She has some top-notch eductional videos, CDs, and books as well as sharing a lot of information on theory and technique on her website.

[onlyclave]

Originally Posted by wkbryan

www.carolkaye.com

Though she is not a metal bass player she has made a living playing a lot of different styles of music. She has some top-notch eductional videos, CDs, and books as well as sharing a lot of information on theory and technique on her website.

Uh oh dude, you just started a war by bringing up Carol Kaye.

[deckard]

No offense to anyone, but I purchased Carol Kaye's "Music Reading DVD & Book" from her website and I've never been so disappointed with a purchase of instructional materials.

The quality of the DVD was absolutely awful & had obviously been poorly/roughly edited from some ancient VHS tape - in this day & age of well-produced bass-instruction DVDs (example: Todd Johnson's excellently done "Technique Builders" DVD), there is no reason for such abyssmal quality.

The accompnaying booklet was poorly done, too... like someone had willy-nilly xeroxed a few bits together. And very disjointed & poorly organized.

I felt, and still feel, ripped off.

Caveat emptor.

JMHO