..but I have been reading TalkBass for awhile because often when I searched a bass question online it would direct me to a TB answer
My name is Alan and I played saxophone as a kid, grew up, had a family and when I was about 29 or 30 my guitar playing brother bought a bass (Squire I think it was) and asked me if I could learn how to play it. He had never played in a band but had bought a drum machine and thought with me on bass had the making of a band..maybe?
I was surprised how I took to the bass and just fell in love with playing rhythm and had a pretty good sense of time and later on feel for the pocket.
We were soon able to replace the machine with a decent drummer and another guitar player and we were off, first playing the same song to death and then eventually had about 25 down, classic rock stuff and we played some events here and there but didn't have a singer so handled it ourselves and it could have been better, much better.
Fast forward a bit and a local (working) band we knew was losing it's bass player and rung me up asking if I would be interested in replacing him. He was leaving in 1 month and in that time I would have to learn 60+ songs and be ready to play some big gigs that were lined up. A daunting task so it was and for the first couple gigs I had a cheat sheet on my amp with all the chords for all the tunes to be able to glance at if I couldn't remember. (See pic of the bass I was playing back then a Fender HM!)
After playing with that band for awhile it disbanded and I was out of music for a few then played tenor sax in a local big band for eight years followed by home recorded a bunch of standards, etc and uploaded a bunch of them to SoundCloud under the handle 'The A Train'..stuff is still on there..
Now it's some years later and I've decided to get back into the bass and glad to be here..
Me roundabout '93-'94 with the Fender HM:
My name is Alan and I played saxophone as a kid, grew up, had a family and when I was about 29 or 30 my guitar playing brother bought a bass (Squire I think it was) and asked me if I could learn how to play it. He had never played in a band but had bought a drum machine and thought with me on bass had the making of a band..maybe?
I was surprised how I took to the bass and just fell in love with playing rhythm and had a pretty good sense of time and later on feel for the pocket.
We were soon able to replace the machine with a decent drummer and another guitar player and we were off, first playing the same song to death and then eventually had about 25 down, classic rock stuff and we played some events here and there but didn't have a singer so handled it ourselves and it could have been better, much better.
Fast forward a bit and a local (working) band we knew was losing it's bass player and rung me up asking if I would be interested in replacing him. He was leaving in 1 month and in that time I would have to learn 60+ songs and be ready to play some big gigs that were lined up. A daunting task so it was and for the first couple gigs I had a cheat sheet on my amp with all the chords for all the tunes to be able to glance at if I couldn't remember. (See pic of the bass I was playing back then a Fender HM!)
After playing with that band for awhile it disbanded and I was out of music for a few then played tenor sax in a local big band for eight years followed by home recorded a bunch of standards, etc and uploaded a bunch of them to SoundCloud under the handle 'The A Train'..stuff is still on there..
Now it's some years later and I've decided to get back into the bass and glad to be here..
Me roundabout '93-'94 with the Fender HM:
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