New adventures in bass-playing
 

Hey bass brothers and sisters, it's been awhile! :)
I embarked on a new adventure this last week with my live bass playing.
I've been playing my Ibanez Soundgear 6 string fretted for many years, gigging out with it as my main bass for a long time.
I've been playing in an R&B band for over a year and a half now (www.nexxlevelband.com), and absolutely love it-we play out 10-12 times per month, good stuff.
So this past week I decided to try out something new-my shoulder has been really bothering me from the heavy Ibby, and I have a beautiful Schecter 5-string fretless bass that I've played occasionally for the past few years that weighs a fraction of the Ibby.

I've always found the fretless to be challenging in this band's context as I use a lot of popping and artifacts in my playing, but also found that playing the fretless really forced me to think harder about melody and phrasing.
So I played my mid-week gig last week half the night with the fretless, then went 100% fretless on both Friday and Saturday nights.
I loved it! It was challenging, but the tone just blew me away. My BL and also my musical director liked the tone as well, so I think I'm going to spend some time playing the fretless as my main bass.
I was surprised to find that I was able to utilize a lot of similar techniques for popping, although the sound has a different characteristic.
I'm happy to say that this has renewed my bass passion, and I'm excited for the days to come!

Thanks for letting me share-Dan

Very nice!

Switching things up every once in a while can be just the spark we needed to be happy again once we've grown bored with the same ol' same ol'.

Thanks Ray!

Anytime.

This is one of those reasons of why I have 4 basses, 6 electric guitars, a pair of acoustics, plus various amps. If I get too bored with what I've been doing, I walk into my personal "Guitar Center" and go "shopping". If that fails I can rearrange my drumset and really screw myself up. Ha ha.

If you think about it, it doesn't cost you anything to keep what you have already paid for. :D

Same with me...we grow in different directions at different times and its things like these that really ignite the passion. I think this also shows the health issues associated with gigging a lot. The repetition can kill you.

Mark King, from Level 42 did a lot of slapping and popping and found he needed to rest his hands for a day after he did four nights in a row. I can see why a heavy bass would be a problem when gigging 10-12 times a week.

10- 12 gigs a month? Whewww.. that makes me tired just thinking about it. :p

I wish I was gigging that much.

Blue

It's a good busy schedule for sure. Thanks for the support on the change :). My next hurdle is getting a really good memory of positions to not have to watch my hands as much (never had that problem on fretted, lol)