What got you into playing bass?

[Thunderbird90DB]

Hey everyone, just wanted to ask and share stories about how we all got into bass.

Heres mine.
When i was about 12/13 or maybe even 14, my brother was learning guitar and one evening on a walk with my dad and brother, my dad asked me why dont i learn an instrument. He suggested a bass, which back then i had no idea what it was! i remeber him also saying that i could make it as hard or as easy as I wanted (playing, like just the root notes or more complex stuff). so i decided to ask my mum to get a bass from her work, so she brought back this gorgeous blue stagg musicman copy, and my brother was originally going to learn it i think, but got really frustrated it was so big and hard for bhim to play. So off he went into a tantrum and i picked it up and thought it was the coolest thing ever. a few months later i went to buy my first bass with birthday money from a shop called cash generator. it was a KCC p bass copy, and loved it. i flirted with guitar for a while, but went back to bass and today play the both, although im more naturally leaning toward bass and still think its the coolest thing ever.

And that the coolest people ever play it!!

[Shoot_A_Hostage]

Okay.
I played guitar for about 3 years. I always thought I was the best at it ever, Hendrix-incarnate. And then I met my current guitar player. He KILLED me. I was floored and I thought HE was the best ever. TUrns out, as good as he is, he's average, maybe even middle-of-the-barrel. I wanted to quit music.
And then I started playing my grandpa's bass. And it was like
AHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

Losing those two strings was the best loss of my life.

[Gonzo476]

I've enojyed music since I have memory, so I decided that I wanted to play an instrument. I tried guitar, piano and finally bass. I simply loved the lows coming out of the amp, so my uncle (the only person in my family who actually thought that I was going to play bass for more than a week) gave me one for my 16th birthday. Now I'm 18 and as time passes I like my bass more and more

[Thunderbird90DB]

im really glad to hear that! thanks for all the quick posts guys! its great to hear how we all got into playing this wonderful instrument!

[PDavyduck]

Gene Simmons.


and the fact that my older brother was more interested in his girlfriend than his BC Rich NJ Series. so after repeated covert operations of sneaking his bass from under his bed, my parents bought it off of him and I got it for Christmas one year.

[bluewine]

Hmmmm, It was 1964 and I was at a Sunday visit at the Grand Parents. The old Ed Sullivan Show came on. This is the show that introduced The Beatle to America.

I saw that Paul dude playing that cool electric violin bass thing and said, "I have got to get into this"

Changed my life, that show.

[Rumblefisher]

I had always wanted to learn how to play an instrument, and growing up listening to albums like Load, Reload, Gargage Inc., I grew fond of that crunchy, growly metal sound a guitar could accomplish. My parents, however, had other ideas and really pushed schoolwork above everything else. When I started med school though, I felt that desire to learn music still, and I bought a basic ESP F series guitar. I was alright at it, but I hated that the strings were so close together, as I have somewhat large hands; plus I kept slicing my fingers on those thin strings! As I was studying at a classmate's house, I noticed a large case in the corner. It was massive, for a pointy BC Rich Beast. I played a few notes on it, and I loved it. Strings I could really feel and a nice growl coming out of the amp. He said he had a Squier Affinity P he never used, and he gave it to me. Since that time, I think I've spent more time studying basses than schoolwork!

[Ziltoid]

I've been playing music since im like 9-10 started with flute played it two years to learn musical notes and the such, then i tryed guitar i didn't liked it but still played it for bout 1 year and half maybe 2 then my guitar teacher (He had a studio was fun) realized i didn't liked guitar at all, picked up a bass and told me to try that, it was a spector Spectorcore with semi-hollow body, man that guy changed the whole thing...

[Thunderbird90DB]

lol Paul dude, thats so awesome!

[Bassman316]

What got me into bass was really two things:

1)My cousins up in Allentown are all in a horror-punk band, and one Thanksgiving years ago when they were down visiting, they brought some of their gear with them. At this point in my life, yes I listened to music, but I didn't even know the difference between a bass and a guitar. I noticed my cousin, who is the bassist in the band, playing this big guitar with a long neck and four big strings on it, and I was really curious about it. After they finished jamming, he asked me if I ever played bass before. Of course, my answer was no. The next thing I knew, he was shoving his Squier Precision Special into my hands. The following February I had my first bass in my hands.

2) Between that Thanksgiving and that February, I started hanging out with this guy at school who was constantly wearing either a Pink Floyd shirt or a Grateful Dead tie dye of some sort, who also spent the lunch period flipping through music catalogs. He got me onto Pink Floyd hard, and we started hanging out, and we would watch stuff like Floyd's Live in Pompeii. Roger Waters standing in front of a wall of amps with his Precision made me want to play bass all the more. That Christmas my folks bought an acoustic guitar for me, and the first thing I did after I learned how to tune the darn thing was thump out the bassline to Another One Bites the Dust (I'm into Queen, too). Two months later the brown truck dropped off my Yamaha BBG 4S II.

So I have my best friend Ryan and my cousins from A-town to thank.

[Thunderbird90DB]

allentown! thats namedropped in a band i love called hidden in plain view, awesome band, good bassist too shame they stopped .
Horror punk is amazing too! HUGE fan of the misfits, got the coffin box set recently and havent stopped playin it, definately a must for fans!

[Nyarlathotep]

Heheh. Love threads like this.

Long story short: I kept downtuning my guitars. Eventually the low string was the same note as the A on a standard tuned 4 banger.

So I figured I might as well just get a bass. Then I downtuned that, so I got a 5 strings. Then I've downtuned that too

[Bassman316]

Originally Posted by Thunderbird90DB

allentown! thats namedropped in a band i love called hidden in plain view, awesome band, good bassist too shame they stopped .
Horror punk is amazing too! HUGE fan of the misfits, got the coffin box set recently and havent stopped playin it, definately a must for fans!

Oh yeah the Misfits... my cousins are ALL about some Misfits. They label their band as horror punk, so that's what I referred to them as. I dig it, even though it's not really my bag. They've been doing a lot of playing in and around A-town, and they played somewhere in NYC a couple of times (don't know where).

[Rock-Bassman]

Everyone else played guitar and no one played bass... but I tried out guitar, too high pitched for me. Picked up 4 stringer and that was it.

[wildhorse]

As McCartney has said "Noone else would do it"

[Kenton]

I played guitar on and off for 2 years and then got my first bass to write music on and it was cheap on ebay, then i went to collage which was all guitar players, 1 bass player, couple of drummers and singers thought id give it a chance seeing as everyone was far too rock n roll for 4 stings and Ive not looked back since.

[RickenBoogie]

I actually lost a game of "straws". No one played anything, but everyone wanted to be the lead guitarist. I lost, but turns out, I won. That was in 1973.

[Thump Jr.]

I played guitar for a while (still do) and then one day I heard "Feel Good Inc." by Gorillaz and realized that the bassist was capable of being the coolest man on stage with only a few notes. That sounded a lot to me like what I was looking for, so I got a bass. Now I'm addicted. I love the feel of playing big bass strings with my fingers, I love the sounds a bass makes, and I love the bassist's emphasis on groove. I think I was born to play bass - it just took me eighteen years or so to figure it out. XD Now if only there was someone at college to play with . . .

[Bassman316]

What surprises me is the amount of people over the years that I work with that throw this at me when I start talking about bass:

"Brian, you were born to play bass. Look at your last name- Fassbender- and flip two letters around, and you get BassFender." I always smile and agree.

[Mark Wilson]

Moved to Misc.