My son the marching band bassist.

Stinsok · #1 09-03-2009, 05:24 PM

Last year, my son approached me about taking up the bass and playing with the school band. I got all excited, gave him my '92 Jazz with CS pickups and an Ampeg BA115HP. Well, he screwed around and never did anything with it. We offered him lessons and whatever support he would need. I finally told him if he wasn't interested I would like to play that bass on some gigs.

Fast forward to this year, he comes to me and says he really wants to play (with only a short time to get started before school and marching season.) I explained that time was short and if he didn't want to look like an idiot, we better get to work.

Today, I picked him up from band practice. I arrived before they quit and heard them play a couple of songs. He is no Billy Sheehan but I was impressed with his playing. The HS he attends is very small, and the marching band is very, very small. There are no Tuba's, not even a baritone. He IS the low end.

The school has a Fender Bassman 200 combo with a 12volt inverter(converter?) on a cart that he uses. When I heard it I was thinkin' that thing sounds cool. When I got a closer look all the eq knobs were on "10." The master was on 10 and he was using the gain as the volume control. I gotta work with him on that!

mwiles30 · #2 09-03-2009, 05:30 PM

I used to play bass for my High School's pep band, and also with the pep band at Northern Kentucky University.

It's very good reading practice.

Stinsok · #3 09-03-2009, 05:32 PM

He did have the advantage of being able to read. He plays trumpet and it made the switch a heck of a lot easier.

mwiles30 · #4 09-03-2009, 05:34 PM

Reading is where all of the in-school bass gigs come from.

CamMcIntyre · #5 09-03-2009, 05:37 PM

I hope it enjoys it!

I did the same thing for the 4 years of high school. The last 3 years, I doubled on upright bass in the marching band.

If it's a small school-he'll more than likely get asked to play for whatever else needs bass. I could barely play and read music my freshman year, by the time I graduated-I could sight read pretty well.

The bands I played for in high school are what motivated me to move to Chicago and go to music school. Now, I gig pretty regularly, so i think it worked out well. I have a long way to go before I'm as good as I want to be though.

all the best.

WalterBush · #6 09-03-2009, 05:45 PM

I did the same thing for 2 years in HS...although we had a Peavey on a cart with the inverter so we could actually march, with the band aid pushing the cart in uniform. The aid, not the cart, that is.

My junior year some tuba players came up through the junior high feeder schools, and I got to learn to play tuba over the summer so's I could be section leader, but even that helped me learn quite a bit about constructing bass lines.

This is a great opportunity if your son wants to play bass...the exposure I got playing for the HS band in a small town got me a lot more paying work than I would have expected to be available in my town.