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What made you pick up Bass?

#121
late 70s, one of my sisters played flute, the others were always listening and singing/dancing to old motown. Me playing "air guitar".One sister gave me some of her old LP's..One of them was by "Yes- Fragile/Drama LP's, The other bought me an Ovation acoustic for xmas one year, tho i couldn't navigate the ultra thin neck with all those guitar chords, so it sat for a few yrs till two strings broke and luckily i was left with "EADG"
 
#123
Back in the early 80's I organized gigs for local bands. Every time I saw a band play, I looked at the bass and thought, that's an instrument I'd like to play. Back in 2010 my then 13 yo son wanted to play electric guitar. So we went to a large music store and bought him the necessary gear to play and practise. Being there, I tried a few basses. With some keyboard experience from my teens, I could find the notes pretty easily. Two weeks later I returned to the store to buy me some bass gear. I picked up some bass skills pretty quickly, so we could jam the roof down. :bassist:
 
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#124
I was a piano/keys player all my life, and dabbled in guitar/bass/drums mostly as my writing/production/recording life got going in my late teens. I did own a Mexi Fender Jazz for the studio but hardly ever played it. I was far more likely to play synth bass in a production cuz that just had more of “my sound stamp” to it.

Then I met another, very talented dude who pkayed keys and sang motown, blues, r&b , etc. Kinda a modern Ray Charles sorta cat. We became musical friends, and one day he asked if I could possibly play bass in his band.

I went from barely dabbling to gigging that Mexi Fender Jazz 3-5 nights a week, overnight. I had obviously already been an all around musician, and years of piano served me well, but the BASS PLAYER in me was quite literally 80% forged on a stage, night after night, damn near improvising my way through r&b classics.
 
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#125
ZWARA said:
What made you pick up a bass? My thump got started by Twiggy Ramirez previously of Marilyn Manson. I just loved the huched over "chug-chug" and sleaze pouring out of his gritty style. Just fell in love then and there.
Click to expand...

Yes! Manson's version of "I put a spell on you" was one of the very first basslines I learned back in 6th grade. I've had a soft spot for thunderbird basses ever since.
 
#126
Whenever I listened to live music , the only things that you could hear were the bass and the snare. I don’t think that was really the case though, it was probably that the only thing I could focus on were bass and drums!

I always felt attracted to that particular register anyway - a “low “ female voice is absolute music to my ears, too!
 
#127
My father. Bought a cheap bass about 12 years ago which I always had in my periphery. He later showed me a video of Robert Trujillo playing a intro solo on For Whom The Bell Tolls. That sealed the deal, despite me going a completely different direction genre wise shortly afterwards
 
#128
My parents always had music playing when I was a kid. Even though I didn’t know who or what was making the sounds, McVie, Dunn, Chen, Jamerson and Sklar were huge influences of what drew me to the bass guitar. At around ten years old friends and I started discovering Sabbath, Maiden, Motorhead, Dead Kennedys, GBH, SubHumAns. Some class mates started playing guitar. Luckily for me a friend’s dad let me borrow a bass guitar!
 
#130
Another bored violin survivor. At 13 I figured guitarists were a dime a dozen and I should play something bands actually needed. My folks wouldn't put up with a drum kit so next up was bass. At this point my ear couldn't even isolate the bass part in a lot of AOR I was listening to. That made groups like RHCP (circa Mothers Milk, before they sold out LOL), Minutemen, Fishbone, and a lot of other punk adjacent bands super cool because they actually wanted you to hear the bass.
 
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#131
I was a lead singer in at least 2 bands that kept losing the bass player for whatever reason (you know who you are) back in mid/late 70s. The last bass player left a crappy Ric copy in the rehearsal studio, so I picked it up before anyone got there and it connected with me. Borrowed a decent Jazz bass a while later. Took a long time to be able to play and sing comfortably at the same time; still have to work hard at it with syncopated lines but eventually it got easier.
 
#132
My dad wanted a bass player to play along with him as he sang and played his guitar. When I was big enough to reach the nut with a bass strapped on, it went home with us from the music store. I played daily with my dad teaching me how. At 14 I began to worship at the 2 wheeled alter and dropped bass like a bad habit for motorcycles, only to pick it back up in my early 30’s as a way to have something in common with my family. A few years later my brother asked me to join a band he was forming and…
 
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#134
My mom started piano when she was 12, and always thought she started too late. So when her first-born son showed some musical inclinations, she over-compensated and started me when I was like 5-6 years old. Much too young. I didn’t want to practice scales – I wanted to go outside and play with all the neighborhood kids. So, the lessons didn’t last long.

In the 6th grade I started playing drums in band. Must have been pretty good at it, because I owned 1st chair all through junior high. There was a kid in my class who wanted to sell his kit for something dirt cheap like $10-15 (this was about 1968). I worked my butt off all summer doing all the chores around the house I could find to earn the money, but didn’t quite come up with enough. I didn’t realize it until decades later, but there was no help coming from Mom and Dad, like “You worked so hard – we’ll kick in the last few bucks and you can keep working to pay us back.”

Bored around the house, in maybe 5th or 6th grade, I’d sit on Mom’s left side when she played piano and pick out the bass notes on the low keys. I went to a concert with Mom and she pointed out the bass player and said, “I bet you could do that.” After a while, a friend of hers loaned me an old guitar he had, so I then started picking out the bass notes on the low strings. When it looked like I was going to make a go of it, the parents let me pick what I wanted from the Sears catalog. I picked their violin-shaped bass because it looked like the one Paul McCartney played.

And the rest is history. My story is that Mom pointed me to bass instead of drums because it had a volume control. Any way you cut it, it’s Mom’s fault I don’t have three instruments under my belt. But I really enjoy playing bass.

Wayne hapless bass player 1970.jpg

Regards,
Wayne A. Pflughaupt

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