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No Respect For US

#21
i agree partly with your horn-blowing friend - playing the bass in a band situation is quite easy (particularly in a rock/alterna situation), but i've always found the greatest challenge of being the bass player is writing the bass parts. if you think about it, a guitarist is the lead instrument so he can pretty much do what he likes, and the drummer can play whatever beat springs to mind (accounting for taste, of course), but the bass line is always an enigmatic and difficult prospect ... it must gel the rhythm and the lead together, be audible but not intrusive, and provide a certain feel/groove. this to me is the hardest aspect of playing bass ... but no-one said being a mother was easy :D
while people may play certain bass lines and think to themselves, "huh, this is easy. what's the big deal with this instrument?" they rarely ever think of the genius and creativity involved in writing that line and how perfectly it integrates with the song and fulfills its given purpose, whatever that may be. simplicity is often bliss, as they say.
without sounding like some kind of magic sword-loving weirdo, i truly believe that people who go on to fall in love with and play the bass guitar seriously are enlightened souls.


rock on :)
 
#23
Tee hee! :D

At least a bass has 4 strings - doesn't a trumpet only have 3 valves (is that what they're called??)... and you can only ever play one note at a time on the trumpet... whereas there is the option of more on bass.

Yeh, root notes are simple, but there can be a whole lot more to it than that..... apart from laying down the rythm.... keeping the band together....

you can make it as hard or as easy as you like
 
#24
Originally posted by Hategear
I always compare it to masturbating without an orgasm -- sure, they may look good while they're doing it, but in the end, they didn't really play anything.

Originally posted by brewer9
Hmmm, I really dont want to conjure up that particular image. I'm not sure how "good" they look while they're doing it and I dont want to find out either.

But, hey if thats your thing....go for it.
Click to expand...
LOL!

Sorry, it should have read like this:

Sure, they may look good while they're doing it, but in the end, they didn't really play anything. I always compare it to masturbating without an orgasm.

EDIT: I went back and fixed it. ;)
 
#27
About a month ago, I met a guy who plays guitar. (I haven't heard him play btw.) He heard I played bass. The first thing he said to me was, "So why do you play bass? Is it because you tried to play guitar and you found it too difficult so you switched to bass???" At the time, I wasn't even offended. I just explained what got me into bass playing and the stuff that I am into. I let him listen to some CD's in my car (a CD with Oteil playing and Jeff Berlin's "In Harmony's Way"). If he even has ears to appreciate good playing, I would think that this would have given him some new-found respect for the bass.

Reading through the posts in this thread made me remember that incident, and remembering the incident made me feel offended, even though I wasn't offended when I had my encounter with this guitar player. I thought, "What a cocky statement!"

But as I'm writing this post, it just makes me realize that his statement is just a reflection of his ignorance. I shouldn't feel offended. He obviously hasn't been exposed to very much music.

But I feel all of you fellow bass players who posted above. I've come across countless numbers of ignorant people, mainly rock guitar players who have this attitude. I remember an incident about 5 years ago. I got together with some guys to jam with them for the first time. We were going to jam on a Stone Temple Pilots song, but the guitar player wasn't an improviser and he didn't know the solo. So we listened to the CD, but he couldn't figure it out. Within a couple of listens though, I figured it out on the bass. It was simple, really. It was all in A minor pentatonic, so for me, it was relatively easy for me to transcribe. The thing is, this guitar player also had an attitude like, "You're just a bass player, what do you really know about playing?" By the end of the jam session, I think I pretty much changed his views on things.

I'm not a fan of ego, and I hate the whole "jock" mentality that some musicians have. I try not to put myself in musical situations where I have to collaborate with such people. But if I'm in that situation, I get people like that to see that music is music - twelve notes. It's what you do with the notes. I let them see that "I love the bass. Period. If I wanted to play guitar, I'd be playing guitar, and I'd be playing it better than you, thank you very much!" (in a nice way of course;)).

Ignorance is bliss.

Edit: My statement about guitar players applies only to certain people. Having said what I said above, I really enjoy listening to good guitar players, and I have deep respect for many great guitarists. After all, the guitar is a string instrument, and I believe that bass players can learn a lot from great guitar improvisers.
 
#28
Any instrument is as easy or as difficult to play as you want to make it. It just depends on the amount of time that you want to spend on any given instrument.

Bass is fairly easy to pick up...let me rephrase...it's easy in any situation to just follow a guitarist. I don't know crap about playing guitar, but I bet I can pick up one and play rythem just watching another rythem player or bassist for that matter :D

People like to give the bass an "Easy To Play" wrap because of the "4 string" issue. But in reality it can be as hard or even harder than playing guitar. There are many times in my band where I actually lay down the melody and the guitarist backs me up and vise versa, it's not about getting the girls or the money or even the attention. I don't know about everyone, but I play bass because I like it, regardless of if I'm in a band or not. It's all about the love ;)

Jared
 

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