Do you also play the piano?

[nonohmic]

Specifically, do you play it with the idea it will help you be a better musician and hence bassist.

if yes, what are your reasons?

If no, any particular reason why not?

 

[5StringBlues]

Having a mother that was a classical pianist and teacher, I should, but..........


When I was in elementary school, I heard Mom tell many parents, "If Billy/Suzie/yournamehere doesn't do their theory homework, I can't have them as a student."


All my 8 year old mind heard was HOMEWORK.

 

[Pacman]

Yep. It was my first instrument. It's invaluable in transcribing, arranging, writing charts, and a ton of other musical tasks

 

[nonohmic]

Having a mother that was a classical pianist and teacher, I should, but..........


When I was in elementary school, I heard Mom tell many parents, "If Billy/Suzie/yournamehere doesn't do their theory homework, I can't have them as a student."


All my 8 year old mind heard was HOMEWORK.

I feel ya. Had one in our hall my whole childhood. It just looked like discipline.

Yep. It was my first instrument. It's invaluable in transcribing, arranging, writing charts, and a ton of other musical tasks

Nice one and good to hear. I just bought a keyboard with transcription in mind specifically. Having a lot of trouble trying to learn things by ear directly onto the bass, esp fretless.

 

[bholder]

Having a mother that was a classical pianist and teacher, I should, but..........


When I was in elementary school, I heard Mom tell many parents, "If Billy/Suzie/yournamehere doesn't do their theory homework, I can't have them as a student."


All my 8 year old mind heard was HOMEWORK.

Same here. Little boys shouldn't try to learn from mom.

I do play. Badly but working at it. But having the keyboard helps me "think music" in a way that's hard without it.

 

[5StringBlues]

Same here. Little boys shouldn't try to learn from mom.

I do play. Badly but working at it. But having the keyboard helps me "think music" in a way that's hard without it.

She would ask every couple of years if I wanted to learn. Never tried to force it on me, which is very suprising.


My first mistake, in a lifetime of huge ones.

 

[ProbablyTooLoud]

It's great for trying your bass line out with the chords in a song, seeing how it does or doesn't fit, and adjusting as needed.

Personally, I love seeing everything right there laid out in front of me, left to right, black and white.

I'm no great player, but lessons from age 6-9 taught me to read music, for which I am ever thankful.

 

[buldog5151bass]

I'm self taught on piano- well enough to have played keys in several bands. It's a great skill to have. You can 9lay any interval or chord, and it's all right in front of you to figure out. Never mind lots of of modern music uses keyboards as triggers.

 

[JeezyMcNuggles]

Specifically, do you play it with the idea it will help you be a better musician and hence bassist.

if yes, what are your reasons?

If no, any particular reason why not?

A little

 

[micguy]

Piano was my first instrument - my parents wanted me to play piano, because we had a piano (my sister was really good at it). I quit after 2 or 3 lessons. As that was 57 years ago, I'm not sure why at this point.

I can play a C chord with the best of them (and an A minor as well).

 

[CallMeAl]

Took lessons for a few years in college, and a few more later in adulthood. I’m a terrible reader, but can do OK with chord charts and lead sheets.

It really opened my eyes in terms of understanding theory, and I find it useful still for ear training, and working out melodies and harmonies.

 

[J Wilson]

I was classically trained by a degreed husband and wife team, and was up for a classical piano scholarship to North Texas which I ultimately passed on.

Keyboards are invaluable as with both hands you can make all four parts or entire compositions where you can learn the relationships of the parts as they combine to a whole.

I often think it would have been an entirely different world to learn a one-note-at-a-time instrument like bass guitar without the fundamentals of harmony I learned on keys.

All these years later, I've strangely never had keys around the house or ever wanted to gig on them.

 

[dbsfgyd1]

Specifically, do you play it with the idea it will help you be a better musician and hence bassist.

if yes, what are your reasons?

If no, any particular reason why not?

No convenient teachers, and no piano for practice. Electric pianos of the day were not considered worthy to learn on. So I played brass instruments and guitar from about age 8. Started playing bass around age 14.

That said, if I were 8 today. I’d be going the heck with a guitar and bass, I’m playing keyboards. I can get a serviceable bass or guitar part out of a keyboard, alone with any other instrument using samples on demand.

As for learning theory, I was blessed with decent amount of musical aptitude. The first two years of MT course work was learning what things I already knew were called.

I do think that being a proficient pianist would certainly be a leg up playing bass.

 

[LBS-bass]

I said yes, but I qualify that with "poorly." I can play well enough to string some chord changes together but others will attest to the fact that I need someone way better than me to finesse that into something that sounds good. Usually.

This is about the only song I've written recently that didn't seem to need another player, but that's because the whole vibe of the thing is pretty minimalistic and piano just provides some simple bones. I played everything on this song, which is rare. Some of the percussion is sampled, some is not, but I do a lot of drum programming on this and other tracks.



For anything more complex than this, I bring in someone else. Like this, beautifully played by another TB'er:

 

[Johnny StingRay]

No. I play bass. The piano player plays piano.

 

[TerenceE]

No. But I should

 

[nonohmic]

Same here. Little boys shouldn't try to learn from mom.

I do play. Badly but working at it. But having the keyboard helps me "think music" in a way that's hard without it.

"To think music" that's a good way to put it. Even after a week I feel like I'm seeing the changes from a mile high, rather than street view like when I'm just on the bass.

 

[two fingers]

Nope. Not really.

Ironically, I sold pianos for several years and was pretty good at it.

 

[N4860]

I didn't vote because I don't consider myself much of a keys player but I can get around it for basic stuff. I have a midi keyboard controller on my desk that I keep plugged into my computer mainly for writing song progressions but I play it so infrequently.

 

[J-Bass RMR]

If no, any particular reason why not?

Why? Because I was a little bastard when I was a kid!

My mom had her masters in piano & voice. She taught from our home studio.
We had a console and a grand piano in the house.
My older brother and sister? Both went on to be music majors.
But when the time came for me to start lessons - there was NO WAY I was going to take piano lessons form my mom. Not cool! I probably got dragged to the piano kicking and screaming - wouldn't practice, yada yada.
And, they finally gave up on me! (kind of surprising when I look back on it - my parents were pretty strict, and I normally didn't get away with much)
Possibly my biggest regret to this day.

They finally got the last laugh though.
When it was time to sign up for "band" when I was 11, I couldn't play percussion because I didn't have piano lessons - and the only instrument left was the double bass!

I guess it all turned out ok, but everything has always been more of a challenge without having that background.