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Tips for a bassist learning guitar
- Thread starter KickingBass
- Start date
Haha! good one! I'll try my bestDon't get cocky and arrogant..
Stay honest to the gauge your guitar was designed for. Straying too far may be problematic and could easily diminish its tone and even its productive lifespan, especially if you run heavier gauge strings.
I use ~1.3mm for electric, usually around 0.8mm for acoustic (steel string), for nylon I don't use a pick at all.
For strings (electric) I usually use 10-46. Can't remember the gauge of my acoustic, but I do use a set on the lighter side (11-52?, just a guess).
Later
Rob
This has really struck me. A band nearby is talking about auditioning guitarists and I'm trying to ramp up to be able to do it. It's an originals band, so there are no tabs or anything out there, it's guaranteeing that I learn things the "right" way, training my ear to pick out parts. I do it all the time on bass; but I'm finding it REALLY takes an effort to "hear" a guitar part and focus on that, my ear just instinctively keeps getting drawn to bass parts.
Pain is bad. Fix your technique. One thing is that it's especially tough with barre chords. I think part of it is that the first barre chord most people learn is the F, which is all the way at the bottom of the neck and requires you to press your index finger across all six strings. That can be a killer. I would suggest taking the major barre chord pattern and practicing it up around the 10th or 12th fret first (a D or high E major chord), where neck relief gives you the lightest string tension. Then practice playing it further and further down the neck as you get comfortable till you arrive at F. Also, you CAN make it easier by curving your finger a little - you only need to press the 1st, 2nd, and 6th strings. Another trick a guitar teacher taught me is to let gravity pull you hand some; drag the strings down slightly rather than pressing the barre at 90 degrees into the neck. That eases some of the pressure on your hand. Just don't do it so much that you start bending the notes.
Bear in mind also that, just like basses, guitars have their own features that affect playability - different thicknesses of neck, string spacing, etc. Fretboard radius makes more difference in guitar playing than bass - rounder fretboards are more comfortable to barre, but flatter ones let you bend notes further and are easier to shred on.
Mostly a heavy 1 mm pick for me. I sometimes prefer a medium (.73-.8 or so) if I'm just strumming.
But kickingbass wants to learn to be a guitarist - and that's the key component, isn't it? ;-) 10 minutes a day in front of a mirror saying "who's the coolest? You are!"; making sure all your knobs go to 13 and keeping them there at all times, learning that "the mix" means some muted background noise with your god-like guitar front, center, and painfully loud...Don't get cocky and arrogant..
It's not about being a better musician - it's about being the only musician!
Otherwise you're just going to be a bassist who plays guitar...
(apologies to any guitarists who don't fit the TB gee-todd stereotype...of course, they might just be bassists who can play guitar.)
Nothing like heavy steel on a machine designed for nylon strings. All kinds of relief when the neck joint folds upwards (pulled that out of the junkpile one year, though it's also a Korean off-brand for a starting quality point - but the steels sure did a number on it.
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I'm a finger style bass player. I can finger pick pretty well i definitely needed work with the pick. Take some lessons bad technique is hard to fix when it becomes habit.
