Yes. I learned way more playing in a band than I ever did with lessons. However you do it.....the real key is practice on your own.....if you can't do that it will be difficult either way.
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Did You Take Lessons Before You Joined A Band???
- Thread starter El_Charro
- Start date
I'm not sure why so many people seem to have a negative view of actually knowing what you are doing before joining a band. I'm not saying you have to take lessons for ten years or try to get to Victor Wooten level of playing, but some basic proficiency would be a good thing. You might actually be able to think about making music rather than hunting for the "G" note.
I did take lessons for about a year as a teenager. But I didn't really start getting good until after graduating high school, when I joined my first band and started playing other musicians. Knowing the right notes to play is only half of the equation, knowing how to play as a collective is what really made me a better musician.
I actually never took lessons. In high school, my friends are very talented guitarists and a drummer, so they started a band. They wanted a bass player who would hold down a simple groove and be easy to work with. They taught me the strings and how to stay with the kick drum. Over the years I've learned a LOT more. Mainly by watching lessons on line, practicing songs on acoustic guitar (I learned after basic bass lines), and playing with my buddies. I don't know a ton of theory, but I know some shapes and basic lines that I can build/tweak to fit most songs. Our cover band has has a moderate amount of success and I'm able to hold my own with much better musicians by just holding down the groove and knowing the all important "what NOT to do" lol.
Al Kraft
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I was formally trained in music (as an instrumentalist), but not specifically on bass guitar. I think either can work depending on the requirements/expectations associated with your position in the band.
Lessons?? I didn't even play bass before I joined a band! 
I've been singing in public since I was about 5 years old, and began piano lessons about the same time. I went to university for Music Theatre, and then Theatre Design, so formal training in keyboards and voice and music theory and musicology continued through my college years. I also took formal lessons in pipe organ, on a real pipe organ. That was fun!
I joined a band when I was 21, initially as vocalist and keyboardist, but I had been picking up guitar on my own for about a year. Within a year after joining the band, I stopped playing keys in the band and just played guitar. Then 2-3 years later, our bassist left the band, and after searching around and not finding a suitable replacement, I moved to bass, where I would remain for the next 15 years.
I have never taken lessons on bass or guitar. I don't really intend to, at this point, because after playing bass for 25 years, I'm not particularly interested in having a teacher tell me I'm doing it all wrong. But, if I could find the right teacher, who was not a stick in the mud about "correct technique" and not judgmental about self-taught players, I wouldn't mind studying with them, rather than under them.
For one thing, I can't play slap bass to save my life, and I'd actually like to be able to play that style competently, because it's a good sound that works for a lot of genres. Also, I probably wouldn't mind being better at playing bass guitar as a solo instrument; although that's not really my primary focus--I really prefer the ensemble setting--it can also be really cool, sometimes.
Anyway, the point is that I was already a fully-formed professional musician before I ever took up bass, so learning bass for me was really a matter of learning the mechanics, not learning "how to music", at the same time.
I've been singing in public since I was about 5 years old, and began piano lessons about the same time. I went to university for Music Theatre, and then Theatre Design, so formal training in keyboards and voice and music theory and musicology continued through my college years. I also took formal lessons in pipe organ, on a real pipe organ. That was fun!
I joined a band when I was 21, initially as vocalist and keyboardist, but I had been picking up guitar on my own for about a year. Within a year after joining the band, I stopped playing keys in the band and just played guitar. Then 2-3 years later, our bassist left the band, and after searching around and not finding a suitable replacement, I moved to bass, where I would remain for the next 15 years.
I have never taken lessons on bass or guitar. I don't really intend to, at this point, because after playing bass for 25 years, I'm not particularly interested in having a teacher tell me I'm doing it all wrong. But, if I could find the right teacher, who was not a stick in the mud about "correct technique" and not judgmental about self-taught players, I wouldn't mind studying with them, rather than under them.
For one thing, I can't play slap bass to save my life, and I'd actually like to be able to play that style competently, because it's a good sound that works for a lot of genres. Also, I probably wouldn't mind being better at playing bass guitar as a solo instrument; although that's not really my primary focus--I really prefer the ensemble setting--it can also be really cool, sometimes.
Anyway, the point is that I was already a fully-formed professional musician before I ever took up bass, so learning bass for me was really a matter of learning the mechanics, not learning "how to music", at the same time.
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I remember that in college, one of my housemates had a black Fender Precision in a case under his bed, but he pretty much never played it. That was probably the first bass I ever touched, but only briefly. After I joined my band, the bassist in the band had a cheap Hohner Steinberger copy, and then bought a cheap P copy, then eventually a 1968 Mustang Bass, and he played through a black panel Fender Studio Bass combo, but the drummer had his brother-in-law's 1960s vintage Gibson Custom Shop EB-2 and Ampeg B-15N, and I got to play all of those, before I ended up switching to bass. Around about 1993 or 1994, I bought myself a brand-new 1992 Fender Jazz Bass Plus V Ash for $811.00 at Zapf's Music in Philadelphia, and that remained my main bass through 2012, about a year later, maybe, I bought a Trace Elliot Series 6 AH200 head and Pearce Electronics 1x15 cab from 8th Street Music in Philadelphia, for $250 each, my first rig of my own.
Al Kraft
Supporting Member
- May 2, 2016
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I say it counts if you learned something...even if it was just a life lesson...
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Technically, yes, I did take (music) lessons before I joined a band. I took piano lessons for about a year, when I was 13 or so - which would have been about 1964... My parents - who both played multiple instruments - thought it would be a good idea for us 4 kids to learn piano. Which, I suppose, it probably was... In 1968, a friend got a new left handed Rick 4001; a Vox amp/cab (he was a big Beatles fan); and lessons, for his birthday. I used to go to his house after the lesson was over, and we both learned to play bass. However... I didn't take lessons with the idea of joining a band. I took the piano lessons because I had to - and no one was happier than I was when Dad got orders to the UK, and we had to leave the piano behind. I learned to play Jimmy's Rick because it was simply something fun to do while living in an isolated military housing area near Langley AFB, Va. And, to get away from my extremely irritating siblings... I didn't "join" a band until 1973, when I was an E-4, stationed in Panama. I started with them as their sound man; instrument tech; and set up/tear down roadie. I wound up being the substitute bass player, because all of the regular band members sometimes had to pull night/weekend duty, and me playing bass simplified the shuffling around. Taking lessons wound up being only marginally useful, in any case. For mostly job related reasons, I didn't have a bass of my own. I had to use the "real" bass player's MIJ P-Bass copy when I played. He was right handed - and I'm very, very not. I had to play right handed (which was almost impossible for me then - and still is now), and the only way I could manage that was to learn the songs by rote. Which was a very useful memory exercise, but pretty much negated the usefulness of music lessons...
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I voted yes, but I took cello lessons not bass lessons. The middle high school band teacher formed a jazz band and asked me to play bass. I got a second hand Fender Mustang Bass and spent a few weeks during the summer working my way through my cello etude books. I finally took some electric bass lessons the summer after I graduated from high school, but I had been playing 5 years by that point.
That's exactly what happened to me, but only after 5 years. It was kind of a shock, and my first impulse was to resist it, but he persuaded me. The thing is, it really sucked to be practically incapacitated despite knowing how to play, but getting past it happened remarkably quickly, followed by progressing to a still higher level.
Oddly enough I'm also mostly self-taught in electronics and computer programming, and recently a high level software engineer joined my team. He told us that he planned on being tolerant of our programming styles, but instead, I asked him to look at what I was doing, and tell me what I was doing wrong, because I wanted to modernize my approach. It turns out things have chanced since 1981.
He recommended some books and also answered a lot of my questions. Once again, after a brief period of frustration, I've come out of it writing much better code.But to each their own, I certainly wouldn't force this on you.
