What made YOU choose bass-playing?

[OzzyGreg]

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Why did you choose the bass as an instrument to play?

My story:

Back in the early eighties I was at a local club seeing some Aussie punk band play. They were pumping along fantastically and the place was rockin' big time.

All of a sudden the bass player's amp died, and I could not believe the dramatic effect it had on the band's sound.

Right there and then I immediately gained a huge appreciation for bass guitar and thought to myself: "Yeah, that's what I want to learn to play!"

Never wanted to play anything else since.

What about you?


Greg

[Jamesemt]

Nothing as grand as that, I'm afraid. Played and taught guitar on and off for 10 years. Gave it up because of the guilt of not praticing every day/missing days/taking the guitar on holiday .

Wanted to get into a band, so decided to take up the bass a few years later, bought the bass on the Monday, in a band on the Tuesday. Lasted 3 months before I realised the bass is a lot harder than it looks...

Fast forward to last year, bought another bass and now playing (not practicing!!) every day and loving it

[Depth_Charge]

I keep re-telling this story

I wanted to learn guitar, rythm or lead. A friend was showing me how to play "For Whom The Bell Tolls" by Metallica. He shows me the start and straight away I tell him off for treating me like a chump and I demand he show me "the high bit" being played as well. He says "what high bit" so we put the song on, the intro starts and there it is, so I sing it back to him.

"That?" he exclaims. I nod. He smiles, takes the guitar off me, hands me this huge heavy guitar with less strings (a bass LOL) and plugs it into the bass amp and says "You'll want one of these then". Then he snatched my pick off me and showed me the basics of fingering the bass.

Then he showed me the riff I wanted to learn. I played it then slid down the string and played an open E and as soon as I heard that low note, I knew I found the instrument I wanted to play, and I never looked back. So much so that despite owning that 6 string guitar for over 15 years I still can't form the chords A through G on it...

I get tingles everytime I tell that story

[Deacon_Blues]

Started on guitar when I was 14/15. After 20, I started to realize I was playing very "bass-like" lines on the guitar, and felt that I wanted to switch to bass, which I finally did when I was 23.

That didn't mean I skipped guitar completely, but since then I've done only a handful of gigs as a guitarist. I also intended to pick up drums seriously some 5 years back, and I still would like to have a drumkit to fool around with a bit, perhaps use it for some home studio recordings or something. I'd like to become at least decent on keyboard/piano as well, I know how to play it in theory (I like that way of saying it ) but I can't do it properly in practice.

Guess you can't call me a one-instrument guy, but bass is my main instrument in any case. If vocals don't count, that is...

[Lizooki]

Started guitars years ago and got bored and quit.
35 years later my daughter wanted an electric so we get her a Washburn, amp and accessories from a local shop for christmas.
As I was "showing" her stuff she complained I was spending too much time playing it, so I decided to get my own again.
BUT, I was also gonna play at church. We already have at least 6 guitards, so I decided to try a bass.

Best decision I could have made.


Matt

[El Dragon]

Aston "Family Man" Barrett, a Wailer from the Bob Marley's band.

[mjolnir]

I was a huge Hendrix fan as a kid, wanted oh so very bad to be able to play like him, so I picked up guitar before anything else. I was getting ok on it, starting to be able to play this riff and that without totally embarrassing myself, but I was totally losing interest in what looked like a ukulele in my hands... I'm a big guy, and guitar has always felt very awkward for me, especially in my hands which are like giant meat slabs.

So I went over to my Gramps' place one summer, and he had TONS of guitars, literally a wall of them in their cases from floor to ceiling (about 8 feet high by 12 or 13 feet long), and I had played them all at some point, with the exception of one. It was a little thing (I found out later it was a 32 inch scale) so I thought it was just another guitar, but it was a HEAVY sucker (mahogany slab body) in the case whenever I went to open it. When I actually saw it I was transfixed. I'd never seen anything like it before (this is also partially because it was covered from strap peg to tuning peg in sparkle paper that literally blinded me for a moment...) and when I played it... I was hooked.

I still tried to keep up guitar, but over time I slacked on it more and more and got better and better on bass, and after about four years of playing bass and six or seven years playing guitar it was pretty clear which one I would choose.

[Phalex]

It seemed like every kid in my neighborhood played guitar, myself included. We'd get a bunch of us together and play in someones basement, and I would always find myself noodling around, not playing lead, but not playing chords either. (When you have more than 3 kids playing guitars at once, it's awkward to have everyone playing the same stuff as everyone else, or so I thought at the time.) As it turned out, I was playing basslines. So, I got myself a bigger guitar with fewer strings, and now instead of being one of the many, I'm one of the few.

[soong]

I saw my friend play nirvana on bass once a time ago and i honestly thought it was piss easy.

I knew i couldnt do guitar so i did it, and now i've matured in knowing its not any easier at all! haha

[kdash]

i started out playing acoustic guitar. however my church youth worship team did not have a bassist, and there was an unused bass guitar lying around.

the rest, as they say, is history

[SelenaBassGirl]

I have always liked the sound of a bass as a kid (funk music) but didn't quite know what that wonderful sound was. I esp. liked the sound of the bass slapping. During my teenaged years, I became a Michael Jackson fan and used to put my ear to the tape player to hear the bass in the song Billie Jean. That is when I found out it was called a bass. Later on during my teens, I became a Duran Duran fan and although I played the keys, I used to don a yardstick using a long double looped belt (an 80s chic thing) and run around and pretend I was John Taylor! I developed a crush on a bass player in high school and for some reason started getting drawn towards them (I have dated several of em). Not that I went for bass players, it just seemed there was a "vibe" or something that made me stand on the same side of the stage as them, etc.
I continued playing the keyboard and then I developed yet another crush on another local bass player and used to go watch his fingers work on that bass. I knew then that I wanted to play it. I bought my first bass (my p-bass)in Apr. 07, at a flea market. It sat there for months b/c I had no idea how to play anything with strings on it. In Oct of 07 I learned Brown Eyed Girl using tabs. During that time I started liking a Mavericks song Oh What a Thrill. This was about Dec. I played around with the bass until I figured out how to play it by ear..in one evening I learned the whole song and recorded me playing it (filmed it). I then learned another and another and another. I never used tabs because I couldn't get it right. I like the challenge of learning myself. In Jan, I got my jazz bass, and con't learning. Now I own 3 basses and still learning everyday. I got about 20 or so songs learned, and all but Brown Eyed Girl is done by ear. No teacher. just me!