I found that if I knew the song, word-for-word BEFORE I try to play the bassline, I'm much more comfortable. Trying to learn both at once is frustrating as hell for me. I've been playing bass in bands for years, and the band I'm in now has a female lead singer who I happen to harmonize with quite well. What screws me up is when I'm playing bass with my left hand, keys with my right, and trying to sing high harmonies on top of all that. I'm not trying to be a show-off, we just needed the keyboards on some songs, so I started to do both. Then they wanted my harmonies- I told them to decide, bass, keys, or vox, I can only do 2 at a time. Well, they said "All three!" so I got stuck with the duties of being the basskeyboardbackingvocals guy. Now, almost two years later, it's easy for me, I have a blast doing it, and people seem to like it as well...
