How did you start playing bass

[Blankandson]

The OP is so similar to my bass beginning that I don't need to add anything. In Germany in 1964 - 67 every kid anywhere had an electric guitar. I went with bass and now, 55 years later, I'm still playing weekly here in Tennessee. Everyone in Tennessee plays music so I'm no big deal. I'm still having fun though.

 

[Kingmixer325]

"went to a pawn shop (no instrument store in my little Oklahoma town in 1968) - chose a used EBO over a Pbass"

What a stroke of luck to find that EB0. How much was it.

I don't remember the exact amount, but I think it was probably under $200; since it was 1968 & used, I can only guess what year it was made. Falls under "if I only knew then what I know now"...

 

[blk01acr]

Started playing in high school in the mid 60's, took a 45 year break then started playing again 2 years ago when I retired. Missed playing for all 45 years of my sabbatical......

 

[Grant Cherry]

When I was 24 my then wife bought me a really cheap right handed acoustic guitar for my birthday, it didn't even have a truss rod. I swapped the strings around for a lefty and tried to learn by myself with a book. That lasted about 4 months. Fast forward and I'm 59 and just sold my Harley and thinking i need something to do and always loved music (as a spectator so to speak) and the deep thumping notes of the bass so I decided then and there I am going to learn the bass. Bought a cheap second hand lefty Squire Jazz and watched a lot of youtube lessons. Then got myself a guitar teacher who taught entry level bass and also a bass teacher. I alternated between the two teachers one week the guitar guy the next the bass guy. Put an add on gumtree looking for someone to practice with and got a call from some guys who needed a bass player but practiced for fun. We were all oldies and bald and as there were four of us called ourselves the 4skins until one of the guys got sick and it all fell apart but i still practice with one of the guitar guys. I'm still at it and it has been about a year now and still enjoy it. I love the old instruments and now have about 7 including a 84 MIJ medium scale fender pbass which is my main play and a 90's 62 reissue full scale MIJ pbass, a 77 rick 4001 and a beautiful fender areodyne and a few others. I'm still terrible but I enjoy it and will play till i die i guess.

 

[Just_Ethan]

Started playing at 13 because it sounded pretty cool, then didn't care/play much for 2 years... However! Once I discovered Rush, Yes, Primus, etc it blew my mind how they could play such a thought to be simple instrument, and ever since then I have been diddling my bass everyday. It's like getting high, but better.

 

[Badwater]

I started playing bass because I wanted to play more than one instrument for creating music.

 

[LukeM]

Back in my teenage years (15, I think) a good friend let me borrow his National P-Bass copy. Mile high action, punky sound, but it resonated like crazy. I played it through a 1959 Hotpoint B/W television, through the FM radio input, through the 5 watt tube amplifier in the TV, into a 9"x22" speaker in the bottom. Couldn't play too loud, or the front glass would rattle. Mahavishnu Orchestra, Return to Forever, Frank Zappa on the Philco record player, me on bass through the Hotpoint. Playing by ear, and trying to keep up.
Fast forward 45 years: my basses have gotten better, as have the amp equipment. My playing has gotten better, too. I still miss those seminal days when I was figuring out keys and chords and changes and tempos and beats and stuff.

LRM

 

[Fat Otto]

The first note I ever played was a low E. From there it was all downhill.

 

[ScrewDevil]

I'll simplify for the sake of brevity. Lol
My 15th Christmas I asked for a bass and amp I saw in the new Sears Wishbook. I got it and plinked and fiddled with it with no knowledge or idea how to play it but I started figuring it out fairly fast.
Fast forward a couple years, I upgraded to a Squire Bullet P Bass and fooled around with that, had a loose kind of band for a little while, that kind of thing. Farting around at home, learning the occasional bass line.
About a year later 2 guys I knew, both older and with working band experience, decided to form a new band. The guitar player mentioned that I had a bass.
I was shanghaied into upgrading my amp and joining what turned out to be the band I'm still in over 25 years later today.
So much for brevity...

 

[IamGroot]

Bass player didnt make the recording session. I was drafted. Borrowed the bass for a week and i was hooked.

 

[TuneSalad666]

I always liked singing, coming up with my own songs and singing gibberish English, which I didn't know how to speak yet, to the songs I heard on the radio.

At some point my parents suggested me to go for audition to the local childrens church choir where I got accepted.

This was my first experience of really performing music together with other people.

After my voice transitioned to a deeper male voice, which as far as I remember it did fairly early on and without any of the major issues most experience when their voice transitions, I joined the regular choir and even received a small monthly pay for singing at the services at the church.

Anyway at some point, while previously having been mostly into classical music, my discovery of the band Manowar and the heavy metal genre led me to wanting to start a band and learning how to play guitar.

My first band wasn't a heavy band though, but a punk band a friend of mine asked me to join, and where non of us at first knew anything what so ever about how to play our respective instruments.

Even the singer was horrible.

We still had a great time though, but no matter what high thought we had our self about our "unique" take on music, it objectively sounded just awful.

Fast forward a couple of years, and after I had actually learned how to play guitar decently:

One day I got the chance for picking up the bass at band rehearsal and jam a bit, and to my surprise I fell in love with the feel and sound of it, right there.

This must have been around 1994, when I was about 16 years old.

Shortly after I answered an add by two guys, a drummer and a guitarist/singer, looking for a bass player for their band.

I went to the audition and got accepted.

I even was complimented by the drummer, who had a good deal of musical training, both playing guitar and piano beside drums, on how great my bass play and the lines I came up with for their songs was.

At that point I didn't even own a bass myself and had to borrow one, but somehow playing bass just felt more natural to me than playing guitar, and for some odd reason I had a much easier time coming up with great bass lines than I ever had coming up with just decent guitar parts.

After that bass quickly took over the guitar as my main instrument of choice, even if I still play guitar from time to time on the sideline to this day.

 

[Frndmoretti]

When I was 15 me and some friends decided to start a band.

I was really into Red Hot Chili Peppers and The Clash at the time, so when we were decinding who would do each thing it was a no-briner for me. I actually screamed I WANT THE BASS before anyone took the spot.

My dad was unemployed at the time so I started by playing the guitarrist's sister's electric guitar with only the bass knob on on the amp.

Some months later I got my first bass.

After some years I decided to start singing too and here I am.

 

[BillyBSireM7]

Back in my teenage years (15, I think) a good friend let me borrow his National P-Bass copy. Mile high action, punky sound, but it resonated like crazy. I played it through a 1959 Hotpoint B/W television, through the FM radio input, through the 5 watt tube amplifier in the TV, into a 9"x22" speaker in the bottom. Couldn't play too loud, or the front glass would rattle. Mahavishnu Orchestra, Return to Forever, Frank Zappa on the Philco record player, me on bass through the Hotpoint. Playing by ear, and trying to keep up.
Fast forward 45 years: my basses have gotten better, as have the amp equipment. My playing has gotten better, too. I still miss those seminal days when I was figuring out keys and chords and changes and tempos and beats and stuff.

LRM

My musucal life was forever changed the night Mahavishnu Orchestra debuted on Kirchners Rock Concert.

I’ve been accused of sounding a lot like Jan Hammer. Cool in my mind, there are far worse comparisons!

 

[CPR4LIFE]

When I was 13 (1981), I started playing guitar, and of course, I was going to be the next Jimmy Page. At the time, I was really into Zeppelin, Ozzy, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, etc.--but I never really payed much attention to the bass playing on any of their records.

Then.....at 14, I picked up the 'Journey To Love' album by Stanley Clarke---but only because Jeff Beck played on it. Got it home, put the needle on the record.....first track is 'Silly Putty'........first 3 notes sound out and BAM!......I'm hooked. I never realized a bass could do that.

Not long after, I took $50 of my paper route money and bought a Hondo Bass. It was more suited for archery than music, but it got me started.

That's a hot track...thanks for bringing it into my world!

When I was 24 my then wife bought me a really cheap right handed acoustic guitar for my birthday, it didn't even have a truss rod. I swapped the strings around for a lefty and tried to learn by myself with a book. That lasted about 4 months. Fast forward and I'm 59 and just sold my Harley and thinking i need something to do and always loved music (as a spectator so to speak) and the deep thumping notes of the bass so I decided then and there I am going to learn the bass. Bought a cheap second hand lefty Squire Jazz and watched a lot of youtube lessons. Then got myself a guitar teacher who taught entry level bass and also a bass teacher. I alternated between the two teachers one week the guitar guy the next the bass guy. Put an add on gumtree looking for someone to practice with and got a call from some guys who needed a bass player but practiced for fun. We were all oldies and bald and as there were four of us called ourselves the 4skins until one of the guys got sick and it all fell apart but i still practice with one of the guitar guys. I'm still at it and it has been about a year now and still enjoy it. I love the old instruments and now have about 7 including a 84 MIJ medium scale fender pbass which is my main play and a 90's 62 reissue full scale MIJ pbass, a 77 rick 4001 and a beautiful fender areodyne and a few others. I'm still terrible but I enjoy it and will play till i die i guess.

That band name!

I've always been really into music. My parents were hippies so I got off to a good start. Unfortunately I tried a bunch of different instruments in high school but none really stuck. I guess I was most successful (if you can call it that) at drums. When I got to college that ended...because I sucked. I had pretty much given up on ever playing anything. Fast forward to 2011 and I move to FL. I meet a fellow motorcycle rider at a bike night because I'm wearing a shirt with a guitar on it. He asks me if I play and I say, "I wish". He says he does. Has been for over 30 years. Eventually he offers to teach me some things but I'm kind of intimidated by the guitar. I started looking at YouTube guitar lesson videos and became even more intimidated. I've always loved bass so I thought, "4 strings...can't be as hard as guitar so let me give that a shot" and I told him I was gonna try bass.

I tried for about 6 months or so but really didn't know what I was doing and didn't have any direction so eventually I was just a bass owner. After staring at a bass, that seemed to be staring back at me, I decided to give it a shot again. My first step was to sell the Epiphone EB0 because I never really liked it anyway. So I bought an almost new Austin P Bass on Craigslist for $50 and stripped it down. Had no idea what I was doing but I thought if I put a bunch of work into it I'd be more inspired to take it seriously. So I gave it a natural cherry finish, put tapewounds on it (I have always loved the Motown sound), new pick ups, and found an instructor. I've been taking lessons for about 3 months and if I didn't travel so much for work I'm sure I'd be further along than I am. So far I'm having fun with it and I think all the work I did on this instrument really did serve to motivate me!

Edited to add: The Beheringer XL1800 or whatever it was amp my buddy directed me to kind of sucked, so that was demotivating too. Now I have a Fender Rumble 25. It's simple and coupled with the tapewounds I can get the sound I like so that helps to motivate me too.

 

[MichelD]

I'm pretty thrilled that 215 posts later my thread is still going.
And I'm still learning. I was 16 when I started learning bass, even if it was on an electric guitar, and now with 3 electric basses plus an upright, a guitarron and a baritone guitar in my collection, plus numerous amps, every time I pick one up I feel like I'm embarking on an adventure to somewhere unknown.

 

[isaac42]

I'm pretty thrilled that 215 posts later my thread is still going.
And I'm still learning. I was 16 when I started learning bass, even if it was on an electric guitar, and now with 3 electric basses plus an upright, a guitarron and a baritone guitar in my collection, plus numerous amps, every time I pick one up I feel like I'm embarking on an adventure to somewhere unknown.

I was about that age when I started, too. I've probably told this story before, but I was the lead singer in a band that needed a bass player. I was pressured into becoming the bass player, but eventually took to it. Had to learn to play bass while holding down the lead vocals, so I became a singing bass player by default. I have you beat on numbers, but I don't have an upright, a baritone or a guitarron.

 

[MichelD]

What I often say if people ask is that the beauty of bass playing is that you can pick it up pretty quickly and learn to play simple basic stuff right away.

And you can stay at that level for the rest of your life if that is what you desire.

If you want to advance though, the sky is the limit. I got my upright 30 years ago and every time I pick it up I try to work on stuff that is challenging, which for me is most playing.

I work on major/minor scales arpeggios in all keys, even if it is very unlikely that I will have to play an Ab minor 7 chord any time soon. But learning that chord in several positions particularly in a moveable shape, gives me an education so that the next time I have a Bbm7 or Bm7 or even a Bm7b5, I have a pattern I can depend on.

I have friends here in this town who are really good at slapping. I never particularly liked the notion of slapping I find it kind of a one-trick pony cliched style and so have concentrated on scales, and arpeggios in all keys in my self-taught study regime.

 

[dab12ax7ef]

I was 13 in 1999 when my dad bought me my first bass. He let me pick a new MIM Fender, I chose an Arctic White Jazz because two pickup are better than one, lol. I wanted to play bass because he did in his kid band in the 60s. Although he had a p-bass back then. I got to gift him a ‘57 AVRI P-bass later before he passed away, now both of those basses are extremely sentimental instruments for me.

 

[Cheez]

In 6th grade I decided to take “orchestra”. I guess because I was tall for my age the instructor suggested the bass. I’ve always been glad she did that.