Was Bass your first choice?

[sotua]

As a teenager, I got heavily into Metallica, and my best friend played guitar, so I got into guitar. I was learning to play guitar when the Black Album came out. When I heard the intro to Enter Sandman I ditched the guitar. I wanted to sound like that rumbling bass! Twenty something years later, it's been really fun playing bass and I'm finally trying to finish my guitar learning. Since I started as a metalhead, I learned mostly riffing and I-V-VIII power chords. So right now I can play the rhythm parts to most of Metallica's 80s catalog very well, but Weezer's "Island in the Sun" sounds like poopie when I play it because I never learned playing chords.

(so you can say I should give thanks to Bob Rock for turning out that huge sound )

 

[vmabus]

I wanted to play cello, but they were all taken.

 

[Nev375]

In middle school, I was recruited into the band to play tuba. I had the interest but was confused and felt stupid cause all the other kids had experience with music. I had no idea what was going on so I quit a few weeks later.

5 years later I picked bass up on my own and taught myself. I had no contact with other musicians for years, just guitar mags and my cassettes.

 

[mc900ftj]

Yep. I do play other things, but bass was my first choice.

 

[BassGreaser]

I wanted to play drums but my parents said no.

 

[Hounddog409]

I too was always drawn to the bass/drums as the OP.
I always wanted to learn the bass as far back a I can remember. For reasons I can no longer remember,
I started on drums some 35 years ago. Played for 10 years. Also played Sax at the time on and off. Life happened, traded my set for a truck that was needed and sold off the Sax's.

It wasnt until the kids got older that I finally had the means and time to buy a bass and start the long process of learning a new instrument.

...and man does it feel right. I wish I could go back and start on bass. I might be pretty good by now.

 

[Deleted member 264575]

Yes. At ten years old in 1972, I could be found bouncing around my room to Roundabout, by Yes.
It was bass for me, from the start.

 

[bushbass]

I started on acoustic rhythm guitar as a kid, occasionally fill in as backup singer and rhythm at church now and then 1 Sunday I grabbed the bass and now I love feeling the power of the low end!

 

[khutch]

My first instrument was thrust on me by grade school music staff who apparently dragooned any student who expressed an interest in band and who could make something approaching a sensible sound on a reed instrument into playing either clarinet or saxophone. It was clarinet in my case and while I did apply myself to the instrument and became fairly proficient on it I never came to love it. I will still play it a little and may get more serious about it in the coming months. Bass guitar was the first and so far only instrument that I actually chose to play. I really liked the role it played in 1960's rock and roll which of course is the music I grew up with. And I had been singing the bass part of hymns in church for years. So it was the BG that really grabbed me as something I would like to do. I abandoned it after a brief flirtation as a young man but took it up again seriously a few years ago when my church began advertising for bassists. The clarinet may never had been an instrument that I loved but the musical training I got while playing it has certainly served me well in years of singing in church choirs and now playing BG too!

 

[moody]

I took up saxophone in Junior High, because my eldest brother gave me his. But Bass Guitar was my first choice and I took up playing it about a year later; I even remember the exact date: July 18, 1976. Yes, I'm pretty damn old.

I was born less than a month later...

Started with piano, played classical guitar, dabbled in electric then joined a band on bass. Haven't changed since.

 

[Matt O]

Astronaut
Spy
Helicopter pilot
Spider Man
Bass player

In that order. The first four ideas didn't work out, so...

 

[jjmuckluckjr]

Yes. Bass player from the get go. Check out this 14 year old future rock star in 1978.

 

[Gizmot]

I was one of a dime-a-dozen guitar players and I decided that I wanted to play more often. I worked in a music store and could get a deal on whatever I wanted. So - I got a basd and amp and have been playing pretty consistently since (48 years).

 

[Matt O]

Yes. Bass player from the get go. Check out this 14 year old future rock star in 1978.

View attachment 738065

Sweet rig. Still got it?

 

[jjmuckluckjr]

Sweet rig. Still got it?

Unfortunately no. That amp could rattle some pictures off the walls. One of our gigs revived noise complaints from 2 miles away. Still one of my proudest memories.

 

[Optofonik]

Voice (major), synths, piano, bass, drums, ukulele, in that order

 

[Big Hoss]

Since I first heard Rush and Pink Floyd in grade school I knew I wanted to play bass. I took a couple of guitar classes in Jr. high because my brother had an acoustic guitar I could use, and they didn't offer bass classes, but when I decided as an adult with income to spend, to dive into learning an instrument, bass is my first, and foremost choice. I do still want to learn guitar, and possibly piano / keys, but they will always take a back seat to that bass to that bass.... sorry I digress.

 

[Pyrat]

Typical teenage band situation..."let's start one..." "uhm, okay!". Guitar rejected me...bass became my lover. Almost 40 year love affair...so...yeah, kinda~

 

[BlueAliceOasis]

I wanted to do drums, but my parents discouraged me from that and then an uncle of mine encouraged me to go for bass. Guitar is overdone anyway, so why not? I thought. Glad I stuck to it.

 

[BlueAliceOasis]

Oh, before drums, or simoustaneously, I wanted to get into piano and took lessons for a decent bit, but now I don't even remember how to play the beginner's version of Ode to Joy. Eh.