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Any singing bass players?

#61
I'm the lead singer in my cover band. I was primarily a singer, but knew a few chords and scales on guitar and keys and eventually ended up on bass & vocs. Got competely smitten with bass afterwards :bassist: I had no problems with singing and playing bass - maybe it's because the singing part was allready second nature to me. We play a wide wariety of stuff (ZZ Top, Pink Floyd, AC/DC, Queen, Deep Purple, and some newer stuff). I had problems with certain songs, but I usually learn the bass line first and then just play it over and over and try to sing along. It eventualy all sits in the right place. There are however some songs I will probably never manage to play and sing along - Soundgarden's Spoonman, bunch of Audioslave songs :bawl:, some RHCP stuff...
 
#62
Rockin John said:
Thumper said:

Agreed. I have to do the same (I put it down to being middle aged, tho :eek: ). I have a music stand in front of me with the book of lyrics. I read them / they prompt me as nesc. I simply couldn't operate without this arrangement.

Funnily enough, it seems now to be an accepted of live music. Even for such as bar bands playing blues, there's the music stand with the lyrics. I was really self concious at first but it is accepted so I'm fine with it. The guys in the band have been really supportive over this so all seems well! :hyper:

John
Click to expand...

Three of us do this. We all use the BIG PRINT VERSIONS. :eek:

I hope to memorize more; I hate being stuck in front of that stand. But at age 60, I'm lucky to remember my Social Security Number. :rollno:
 
#63
Oh yes, definitely 'Big Print'!

I normally retype the lyrics in (say) Arial or Verdana fonts at 20 or 22pt depending, cos they're block-y fonts, and easy read. I Bold the text and use all caps.

Normally I add an 8pt gap between each line of lyric so I can note the changes above the words using a red pen of some sort. If I dont leave this gap, the whole lot becomes cluttered.

It works very well and I have settled upon a method of doing them all the same so there's no problem learning different text layouts for each song.

John
 
#64
Big print is nice but I don't need that yet (I know it will come though...)

What I've done a few times is writing down only the first words of every verse and chorus. Then it's easier to remember the rest of the verse, and you can use a slightly bigger font. I normally use 12pt text size (I always try to fit everything on one paper), but when I do it as described, I can use 16pt text size instead, and it's undeniably easier to read.

The font I normally use is Times New Roman. Never all caps or all bold, I just hate to read that. The easiest text to read is to me text like this. If I have written out the chords above the lyrics, I print them in bold, though.

A great tip if the lyrics are a bit complicated rhythmically and different from verse to verse, is to underline the word that's on the first beat in a bar. It helps a lot when you're new to the lyrics in a song. :) I did this recently when I had to learn Chris Cornell's "You know my name", the Bond theme. The first verse is:

If you take a life, do you know what you'll give?
Odds are you won't like what it is.
When the storm arise, would you be seen with me,
by the merciless eyes of deceit?

Here, I had problems remembering how the second line went, so I underlined "like". You could underline "take" in the first line, "storm" in the third and "eyes" in the fourth as well, but those were easier so I didn't care to underline those. :)
 
#65
I sang lead for my old band. I never thought I was good enough for lead vocals, but I wrote all out lyrics and had a strong idea what I wanted them to sound like. We auditioned singers for close to three years and only found two who were any better than me. Those two were MUCH better than me, though. One turned us down. We hired the other one. He showed up for the first practice stoned, so I fired him.

The surprising thing to me was that out of maybe fifty auditions, two were actual lead singer material. Around half were like me and basically good enough to do backups. And nearly half were physically painful to hear. But that's not out of the total population. That's out of people who all thought they were ready to be rockstars immediately.

With them I never needed lyric sheets, because we practiced enough to actually learn the material. Now I'll write a song and find my notes months later and not even recognize it as mine. Getting old and senile sucks. Doing it while you're still young sucks more.
 
#66
I tend to use cheat sheets rather than full lyric sheets - I put the first few words of each verse ( or sometimes of each line in the verse if the song is new) on a 5x8 card.
Works for me, and lets me use a half-size music stand clipped to my mic stand, rather than a full size music stand. Smaller footprint, visually and on stage.
 
#73
I got into a band again a while back. The drummer and I both sing fairly well and have a good basic grasp on what we're doing. The lead player doesn't sing. But he's a pretty competent lead player. Unfortunately the weight of personality makes him somehow able to have the biggest veto vote on our playlist.

The rhythm guitarist sings about as much lead as the drummer and I together. He's really not that good. He's not hire-a-hitman-to-whack-him bad. But I wouldn't have hired him. On the other hand, we practice at his house.

I really wish we could find a keyboardist who could sing the higher parts. I mean the really high parts, like Robert Plant - Freddie Mercury high. Most likely that would have to be a woman. VERY few men have that kind of range.

I guess that's it. I just needed to rant.
 
#74
I'm a singer who plays bass. I formed a band where I'm lead singer and bass player of the band. my band is called temptation's wings. it's a band I formed as a side project while serving as bass player for 2 other bands. I've recorded songs with this band and I've posted many of those songs on my band's soundclick website. in case you're wondering, my band sounds like a blending of white zombie and black label society. here's the link of my band's soundclick website.

SoundClick artist: Temptation's wings - Temptation's wings is a groove metal band from chicago, Illinois.

Feel free to check it out. in case anyone is wondering about my other bands, visit this link.

http://www.talkbass.com/forum/f19/my-three-bands-826985/
 

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