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Any female bassists out there?

#22
My teenage niece started bass but she's not doing too good, I will have to tutor her as her teacher sucks. She has horrible action on her bass and he's not doing anything about it. I will have to fix that.

Here is the question: do you ladies play with regular scale or opt for a short scale bass?
 
#27
NickInMesa said:
My teenage niece started bass but she's not doing too good, I will have to tutor her as her teacher sucks. She has horrible action on her bass and he's not doing anything about it. I will have to fix that.

Here is the question: do you ladies play with regular scale or opt for a short scale bass?
Click to expand...

I was 15 when I first picked up the bass, but then I was tall for my age. I had a Fender Precision bass and never had any trouble with it. Sounds like her bass definitely needs a set-up. That can do wonders so she doesn't get discouraged. Personally I've never really spent any time with a short-scale bass, so I don't know much about them.
 
#28
Hi there my name is Samantha. I’ve been playing for ten years now, since I was fifteen. as far as discrimination goes being that I am a transgender woman and have had my fare share out side of musical relations. I must say I’m very happy that I have never had to deal with any discrimination from other musicians. I’ll often find people that don’t get it but they have always been open minded about it. that is to say it’s my opinion that musicians are generally more open minded and respectful towards others. as for the scale of my basses it’s 34 all the way it’s more or less just because of what I’m used to I’ve been playing that scale the whole time.
also I wanted to ask are there any other female luthiers out there? as well I would like to use this as an excuse to post a link to my youtube videos. in the last year or so I’ve been doing a lot of solo performances and this is a sample of my latest.
 
#31
MakiSupaStar said:
see what I think is a volume pedal there, but I'm not sure. What effects/setup you running in that video Samantha?
Click to expand...

Here’s a diagram I made with paint of what I was using. the volume acts as a cross fade between the noise and my bass.
01.gif
 
#32
Ok here’s something I’d like to know from the women of tb. what where some of your biggest musical influences when starting out? and how did you come to play the bass? for me it was simply because my teenage friend had a guitar so I went out and got a bass. as far as my influences go, I’d say for probably the first fore or five years of my playing I had focused on being different and never cared to examen anyone else’s playing. I focused more on my technique and coming up with my own material. I eventually realized how much I could benefit from learning to cover the material of others, not only to be able to play with others but to also know whether or not my own was truly my own. as far as my earliest influences go I’d have to say it was all more or less on a subconscious level from usually what ever I was listening to at the time.
 
#33
Checking in. I play long scale simply never knew they were different lengths actually until I got a cheap bantam model off ebay (fretless to play with). Picked it up and was wondering where the rest of the neck went!
Influences are whatever group I'm playing with is playing :). I'll play whatever, as long as it's not full of profanity on stage. Started playing blues and rock covers so haven't really made up my own stuff yet :). Picked up bass because I wanted to write songs, and the songs I wrote were critiqued as being too rhythmic .... exact words: "You write like a drummer". Percussion was my first instrument so that's why......solution was : "Play a more melodic instrument". Statements came from a bass player/teacher and so I started bass lessons.

It's fun......very rarely have run into issues due to gender. Gotten a ton of dropped jaws though. "Oh, you must be the groupie?". "Nope". "The Singer?". "Nope.....I'm the bass player". :eek::eek: *walks away leaving person with jaw on floor*. hahahah!
 
#35
Also checking in. I’m new to the bass (and to this site, so I’m glad to see there are other women here). I just got my first bass in October, started taking lessons and have been having so much fun learning to play it. I'm finding quite a bit of useful info on this site too.

It actually occurred to me to learn to play the bass one day when I was listening to music in the car and kept catching myself singing along with the bass rather than the lyrics/melody. I never realized I did that until then; probably have done it for years. Since then I’ve noticed that my dad does the same thing; must be where I get it from. lol.

One thing I’ve noticed is going into music stores, the store personnel look at me funny when I ask for things for the bass. I think it is not because I’m a woman, but because I’m a woman in my 50’s and so don’t look the part (in their eyes at least). One place, the sales person was trying very hard to be nice, but was obviously having a tough time with the concept that I was buying instrument cables for a bass. When I was looking to get my bass to begin with, I went to one store and the guy immediately asked me if it was for my kid. I’ve finally decided that I either need to just take my son along with me when I go to music stores and pretend we are buying stuff for him or learn to answer yes to that question and move on.
 
#37
Hi, new to the site, glad to see the growing community on here and looking forward to contributing.
what where some of your biggest musical influences when starting out? and how did you come to play the bass?
Click to expand...
For me, it was a natural progression from playing years at the cello into different genres of music and in band settings. Though I will say that from my early years, Sean Yseult of White Zombie showed me that you can be female and play bass in metal. Since then, my influences and heros are much more technical and advanced as I developed musically.

Here is the question: do you ladies play with regular scale or opt for a short scale bass?
Click to expand...
I learned on my first bass, a Peavy, at the 34" scale 4 string. Generally speaking, most beginning bass players really can handle this scale with just some practice, there's no need to get a shorter one and you'll be happy you didn't as you advance some. Ive since picked up the MTD Kingston Artist 35" 5 string and love it. Glad I started with the standard.
 
#38
In school I wanted to learn viola; parental units signed me up for flute instead. 5 years of flute, mostly classical orchestral music. Tried learning guitar and went no where, mostly due to having what I now realize was a poor teacher, as well as a cheapo acoustic guitar with high action, tuners that wouldn't keep in tune thru more than one song, and terrible nylon strings. Teacher never even looked at guitar's set up, threw chord & strumming charts in our direction, and then never checked our playing technique. Is it any wonder I ended up not liking guitar? Also learned mountain dulcimer (own 2 of them, including a hand-built one from a luthier down in Texas) and an autoharp. When I was in the USAF working missile field duty out in Wyoming, one of the sergeants who was a flight area controller played both guitar and bass. I realized that it was the basslines to songs that I really liked, and got a few lessons in exchange for teaching him dulcimer. Then got transferred to Germany, instruments went into storage, and only the dulcimers and flute (and a soprano & an alto recorder) came out when we finally ended up back in the US. When I finally decided to get back to bass, the used pawn shop bass I'd bought back in Cheyenne had corroded beyond all repair. Bought an Ibby at the same store where I'm now taking lessons (and thus learned what a good teacher is like, as well as finally understanding that it was my guitar teacher back in junior high who had been responsible for my problems with guitar...)

My main influences are John Deacon of Queen, Dean Cortez of Hiroshima, Bernard Edwards of Chic and also Sister Sledge; James Jamerson, Tim Schmidt of Poco & the Eagles, and John Lodge of Moody Blues. While I now have come to admire the genius of Jaco, I'd never really heard of him until TalkBass!

I've taken up playing flute again BTW - never hurts to know more than one instrument! And once I get half way decent with bass, I may try to learn guitar again - but this time electric rather than acoustic, and with a teacher who really knows how to teach....

Yeah, the 'associates' at GC at first had an attitude of "isn't that sweet, the little lady thinks she wants to play bass." I've been there often enough now, spent enough $, and the few times I tried out basses there did well enough (mostly with simple blues shuffles and scalular runs) that they now greet me by name, introduce new clerks to me, and in general are a lot more respectful than they were at first. And I'm close to your age, TobyBass (on the high side of 50) so I'm sure you can eventually do the same!
 
#40
One thing I'm curious about is how female bassists interact with their audience.

I know when I first started playing there were two things that attracted me to getting into music, a) the music itself, and b) the girls.

Are female bassists as interested in meeting dudes (or other women I suppose) as male bassists are interested in impressing the ladies?

I'm not being facetious, just curious. My gut feeling would be that they lean a little more toward enjoying the music for music's sake but don't mind a hunk's compliment here and there.
 

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