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Bass players as lead singers?

#27
Tom Robinson
Janice Johnson - A Taste of Honey
Johnette Napolitano - Concrete Blonde
Jean Millington - Fanny
Kasim Sulton (w/Utopia on some songs)
Peter Cetera (w/Chicago)
Jon Camp (w/Renaissance on some songs shares w/Annie Haslam)
Diane Chai - Alleycats
Meshell N'Degocello
Brian Wilson
Chris Hillman
Timothy Schmidt ("I Can't Tell You Why")
 
#28
volt9stormrider said:
What well-known bands have bassists that are lead singers? I only know of three:
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Perhaps you need to get out more often. There are any number of bands that fit this bill...

However, you've raised a significant issue. IME, singing & playing bass simultaneously is generally more difficult that playing guitar & singing at the same time. I'd say that's largely because of the distracting effect of moving basslines that change pitch constantly - compared with guitar, with which one often has the opportunity to simply hit a chord and allow it to ring, or strum only one or two chords while delivering the lead vocal - much simpler to execute...

MM
 
#31
I have been the lead vocalist on about 50% of my band's material for years and I've also played guitar and sang-- I do believe it's easier to begin playing guitar while singing but once you've broken the ice on singing and bass playing it gets a lot easier fairly quickly. I suggest learning how to sing and play a lot of the old school 70's and 80's funk while singing-- once you've got the choppy rhythms and off beat parts of that stuff most other styles in Top 40 stuff is pretty easy. Anyways that's how I did it and I can pretty much sing and play anything that comes to mind (with the exception of some of the heaveir jazz standards where the bass really blazes the whole tune). It makes you an invaluable commodity on a music scene when you can front and back the band at the same time!
 
#39
X Wolf said:
I just sing in spite of what I'm playing rather than trying to sing with what I'm playing. Anyway, it works for me.
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Never thought of it that way. For me the best way to sing and play is to first get the bass line down to muscle memory, where I could play the line with absolutely no thinking required. Then I sing over it. I'm better at singing than I am at bass, so you might think it's the other way around, but no matter how well I sing it's taking up most of my concentration. Singing really well is not something you can do when you're preoccupied.

It's funny that it really is easier to sing while playing guitar than most other instruments with the possible exception of piano. I've always thought the difference was that on an instrument like guitar, you're playing a chord; it's just a hand position. On bass, you're playing a note; it's harder to play one note and sing another because you're thinking about both notes.
 

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