I'm struck by some of these comments how little creativity and how much lack of ambition there is among many bass players on this site. These comments like "as few notes as possible" and "simple is better" are patently false unless followed with "if you want to work in an a formulaic band that sounds like everyone else". I'm not saying simple playing is bad by the way. I'm saying be yourself. Don't artificially limit your vocabulary for non musical reasons such as an ideology that was created to make studio sessions more predictable and therefore cheaper. Use your ears and let them take you where the music is going.
Bass Player magazine just published a list of their top 100 bass players. While not exactly the top 100 I would have chosen the likely suspects are all there. What connects all of these players? It not some false formula for determining whether a bass line is good by how many notes per measure. It's having a distinctive musical personality that makes the music they participate in better, or at least different, than it would be without them.
To me the best advice would be "be yourself" or "work to develop a vocabulary, an identity that's you". Without that you can be a bass player and maybe a financially successful one but you'll never be a "bassist". If your worried about playing less notes just to play fewer notes all you'll be doing is making subpar guitarists have wet dreams so they don't have to learn to listen and musically communicate with others.
Oh, and definitely bang the drummer's girl. I don't see how that could go wrong.
