| hey dude, welcome to TB. I'm not sure why everyone is bashing on you but just ignore them. I'm a fan of emo and i've got a few friends who classify themselves as that too so its all good.
From your questions it seems like your probing for some general info here. From past experiences in the stage setup, and from going to a lot of concerts, I would say I usually see the bass player on the Left of the drummer, but i've seen it on the right and even center before, i've played multiple ways but whatever works best for you is the best. I hear better out of my right ear so I always postion myself based on that, so again personal preference, the band leader might also dictate your standing position.
As far as you timing question goes, I was explained by my current band leader a way that might help you understand this. Basically what he said was that I should be playing at half the speed of the guitar player, so if he's playing really really fast, I would still be fast but not as fast as him. I was told this because they were teaching me the place that bass served, being my first real band experience at the time. Basically to sum it up, bass sounds good because the bassist keeps good time. A bass looks and may be easier to play than guitar on some things, but it's the bassist who keeps everyone in shape (with the help of a drummer). If you listen to music, like really listen to it without any other distractions, sometimes you will notice that the really cool and "good" songs are ones where the bassist is just holding down the timing and not getting all fancy. Sure fancy is cool, but not all the time.
As far as trying to learn and stuff, I would suggest checking out musictheory.net for some helpful background info, yeah it may be boring learning theory at first but it pays tons as it helps you advance your playing much faster.
Also another resource for learning that might be helpful would be to take a look at online bass tab sites, such as bassmasta.net, basically tab is a form of notation where it shows the strings and the frets that you should play. It doesn't give you any rythmic information but it gives you the finger placement in an easy to read manner. It is helpful for first steps in learning and its pretty cool to be able to learn familiar songs that others have already converted out to tab notation.
hope this helps and welcome to talkbass,
david.
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Currently Playing:
My first bass -- a 4 string Ibanez SRX300
Last edited by Ibanezzer : 10-16-2006 at 08:49 PM.
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