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Playing bass on guitar?

Tamz

Tamz

Nov 3, 2008
60
0
Brisbane, Qld, Australia
#1
I was wandering if anyone has been asked to play bass on a guitar before. I was asked to do this last night by a guitarist and they were just like "sure it's the same" :hmm: but really it's not the same, and it kinda annoyed me that they said that. It's kinda random but I was wandering if this has happened to anyone else.
 
#5
Yeah the first thing I thought when they asked me to do this was "are you serious?" but they did look quite serious. I think the problem was I was sitting with a bunch of guitarist who didn't really know much about bass. I've only been playing bass for a little while now and I'm starting to see why guitarists are so annoying, but I'm sure there not all like that just the majority seem to be.
 
#6
Tamz said:
Yeah the first thing I thought when they asked me to do this was "are you serious?" but they did look quite serious. I think the problem was I was sitting with a bunch of guitarist who didn't really know much about bass. I've only been playing bass for a little while now and I'm starting to see why guitarists are so annoying, but I'm sure there not all like that just the majority seem to be.
Click to expand...

You're beginning to see why we call them guitards.
 
#7
Actually, I saw a couple of really good guitarists trade off playing "bass" and rhythm/lead a couple of weeks ago in the Evangeline Cafe here in Austin. They used a couple of normally tuned Strats. There was just the two of them, and they both sang as well. I was amazed at how well they brought it off.
 
#10
If someone asked me to do it because they specifically wanted that sound, because that's what best served the piece of music, because it was an intentional choice by the composer/creator/producer, I'd have no problem with it. If someone asked me to do it because they were an idiot, I'd just laugh and tell them "no".

In my very first band when I was ~14 years old (and I was playing guitar) we went through a 6-8 month period where we couldn't find a bassist or a bass, so I wound up playing a lot of basslines on a cheap Korean department store electric guitar strung up with super-heavy roundwound strings ("super-heavy" for guitar strings at least; I'd guess the low E was maybe an .055 or .060?) Roll off the tone knob, crank the bass control on my amp, and voila! Thuddy/punchy midrange basslines. I could certainly imagine a producer wanting that sound...though not sure I'd want to listen to it for more than one song in a row.
 

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