Why did you start playing bass?

[JohnArnson]

It's a stretch, but if you think about it, a complicated bass line is kind of a "lead" playing style since you typically play individual notes instead of holding a chord.


I'm attempting to play guitar, but me and picks just don't jive, plus I have really long fingers, chords are like a contortionist trick for me, but getting slightly better.

Well, I started out using picks, and did so for many years, coming from guitar, I eventually learned how to use my fingers, but as it turns out I actually am back now on using picks for bass, cause I much prefer the more aggressive sort of emphasis of the initial attack you get from that, but prefer finger style for guitar.

On another note learning chords always feel that way to start with, I remember it did for me too, chords are very useful on bass as well though, but might be easier for your long fingers there since you got a bit more space in between strings and frets.

 

[Wyvern]

Well, I started out using picks, and did so for many years coming from guitar, I eventually learned how to use my fingers, but as it turns out I actually am back now on using picks for bass, cause I much prefer the more aggressive sort of emphasis of the initial attack you get from that, but prefer finger style for guitar.

On another note learning chords always feel that way to start with, I remember it did for me too, chords are very useful on bass as well though, but might be easier for your long fingers there since you got a bit more space in between strings and frets.

Some tunes a pick does sound really nice, If I want that attack, I hammer the strings or use my fingernails to flick- obviously it's only good for a few notes and you really can't use it for a whole song.

I also opt for hot, mid-heavy basses (like my Dingwall) and use the Dark glass Alpha Omega and just give it the bite setting and a little drive with no distortion.

But, yeah, I need to practice more with a pick.

 

[ugly_bassplayer]

Fame....$$$.....women.......what else is there???

 

[dannylectro]

One of the first bands I was in, back in like 1977 when I was still a mediocre guitarist, I kept telling the bass player (who was actually also a guitarist) what to play. He finally had enough and said “F—— you. You play it” and put it in my hands. I never looked back.

 

[Rocksolid]

My dad was a harmonica player and had started teaching me how to play in primary school. I had told my music teacher and he asked me to show him the basics, so once a week after school I'd spend time showing him. One day I showed up for his lesson and he said: no harmonica today, we have a school concert in 2 weeks and the bass player just had his appendix out. No such thing as keyhole surgery in 1981!!!
He sat me down, right handed bass with a left handed player Hendrix style. He put markers under the strings on the fretboard too help me learn.

After the concert, my parents started looking for a bass for me. Left handed basses are like rocking horse sh*t in 1981 in Australia, so my dad told me the dilemma. I started again right-handed.
Only ever had 6 months of lessons, and I've played some amazing gigs to thousands. It will never be my profession, but that one moment changed my life forever.

 

[jpaulo]

A long, unattended calling - now being “epiphany-ed”?

Heard a lot of traditional jazz/ dixieland as a kid but couldn’t take piano for more than 6 months, got into progressive rock as a teenager, tried w/o any success or perseverance, guitar, electric guitar and keys.
At 25, I was musically frustrated with the inability of playing anything.

Fast fwd almost 25 years. Getting to mid age crisis...
I am granted a life extension after a liver transplant, it makes one wonder...
My kid gets interested in guitar, starts having classes.
I hear Deep Purple - Nick Simper playing Shield (Book of Talyesin) again, and that was it: decided bass should be my thing - and that I would really put effort into it.

Now, about a year into it, I suck - a lot: but I’m having fun!
I’m having classes with my teenager son (he plays the guitar and I just make the base) and just had my first “gig” after joining a local School of Rock.
Trance state comes thru playing!

Don’t know what’s in for tomorrow, but music got stronger in my daily routine after I started making 41Hz noise - and I’m enjoying the “low” ride!

 

[west al]

I started playing bass in 1968. I was playing a 6 stringer, and was not too great at it. A friend suggested I try the bass. Everything bonded with the bass. Since then, it's a bass.

 

[Samatza]

I played piano accordion and piano from age nine, when I turned 11 my brother brought home a bass and asked me if I knew how to play. I sat with it for months, got some advice and taught myself to play, then I taught my brother.
We used to alternate between keys/guitar/bass and one day I landed a bass gig, that was about 1974 and then that was it, I just loved those low notes.

 

[SoulReflection]

Really happy with the results of this thread.

Common theme...no one else wanted the job and happiness ever after. Fulfilling a need and finding your musical future. Sounds like a win-win to me . Congrats to all...

 

[SRVoodoo]

I've read a lot of comments about being a guitar player & changing over to Bass.
My question, as I have done the same thing, is did you learn to play bass properly
or do you play bass like a guitar player plays bass? y'know what I mean?
Was anybody able to learn from the likes of James Jamerson, John Entwistle, Geddy Lee
and all the old heads that wrote all those awesome basslines that we love so much? Or are we just talking about root-fifth type of playing?...and if so, how did you go about learning those styles? I ask because my journey started out with me playing bass in a '70's Punk band with a pick. That band is no longer together & I've lost the pick....mostly but, I'm trying to really really learn how to be the glue. I've been listening to a crapload of Rush, old '70's Disco-Funk & anything that Jamerson recorded although I know I'll never be able to cop his lines.

 

[vvvmmm]

"...play bass properly
or do you play bass like a guitar player plays bass"

Bofe. But then I don't necessarily try and sound like someone else, mebbe just vague stylee. You can do that when yer not doin' covers.

 

[Kijekuyo]

I grew up listening to late '60s/early '70s Motown/War/Santana/Sly/funk/soul, and I think that experience defined the kind of groove I crave in music. It was heavily bass-driven. I found '70s reggae and later Afropop to have similar kinds of groove and the same kind of appeal to me. This is the music that really moves me even though my favorite artists (The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, CCR) often fall outside those genres. It was therefore natural that I took up the bass. Last night, I played the Jackson 5 song "ABC" along with a Youtube video, and I loved how it felt to play the bass line while feeling its interaction with the other instruments in their parts. The words of "ABC" are pre-adolescent, but the rhythm is fantastic. The second reason I picked up the bass was because I thought it would be the easiest instrument to learn quickly. I left the bass a few years ago to play percussion and flute, but now, with my new J-Bass, I'm back to let you know I can really shake 'em down.

 

[The Great Genius]

I actually got away with it...for a while...

Me too. But there IS a good reason for why I am a member of the mediocre bassist club!

 

[The Great Genius]

I sucked at guitar and I could already read bass clef.

I can't play guitar worth a lick, and everyone insisted that I had to before I could play bass.

 

[The Great Genius]

Anyway, the reason I was drawn to it is the same for many others here in that their musical heroes played one.

but I was also drawn to it distinctly from the first moment I heard one.

 

[Wyvern]

I've read a lot of comments about being a guitar player & changing over to Bass.
My question, as I have done the same thing, is did you learn to play bass properly
or do you play bass like a guitar player plays bass? y'know what I mean?
Was anybody able to learn from the likes of James Jamerson, John Entwistle, Geddy Lee
and all the old heads that wrote all those awesome basslines that we love so much? Or are we just talking about root-fifth type of playing?...and if so, how did you go about learning those styles? I ask because my journey started out with me playing bass in a '70's Punk band with a pick. That band is no longer together & I've lost the pick....mostly but, I'm trying to really really learn how to be the glue. I've been listening to a crapload of Rush, old '70's Disco-Funk & anything that Jamerson recorded although I know I'll never be able to cop his lines.

Geddy Lee is my inspiration, and the doodles I write are evidence of it.
However, I will say Geddy's style broke me, when I joined my Praise team a few months back, the simplest stuff had me stumped, I kept on getting ahead of myself- I have been used to playing fast, and playing along with guitar rather than the drums. I've gotten better at calming myself down, but reading chords and playing slow is still a struggle sometimes.

Geddy is pretty much a guitar player.

I have had 0 training, I never read or watched tutorials or techniques till very recently, learning Geddy's stuff for me was just a matter of trying and trying and changing my technique to be able to emulate him.

The two favorite techniques I learned through playing Rush is the "Geddy finger"(my phrase) which is hitting the string with the pad and then nail of the finger which is good for speed and attack, and his triplet-y thing? technique, which is a quick index pluck followed by a double finger rake, usually followed with a hammer on or pull off- gives a really cool "ba blla boo" sound.

I can only play his "easy" stuff, currently 3/4 through learning Vital Signs- it's not a hard song, but the lines change throughout and has odd tempo shifts and a little solo near the end.

The First 3 songs I learned on bass were- Animate, Overture, Enemy within- all 3 have very different right hand techniques- none of them resemble normal bass lines, which like I said kinda screwed me a bit.

 

[SRVoodoo]

you're more advanced than me my friend

 

[Wyvern]

you're more advanced than me my friend

I doubt it, I can play the songs, but I don't 100% nail them, some days I can play no problem, other days I'm tripping on myself, but SLOWLY getting better. I am not one of those people that can pick up something and just destroy it, I'm one of those that hacks away at it until I learn, much like falling a tree with a pocket knife.

This is the song that inspired me to finally get a bass- took me months as a new bassist to finally play a resemblance of it, my fingers blistered so bad before I got my calluses.

 

[Alembic83]

Yep, Billy Gould for me, too! I didn't even know what bass was or what it was supposed to sound like til I heard him! The tone and bass lines combined with the cool visuals of him headbanging (e.g. Brixton Academy) with a cool looking bass (Integra), and I was pretty much hooked.

oh, totally! Billy Gould killed it. Not only were his bass lines killer, his tone was REALLY killer. I can only assume you mean Eric Avery from Jane's Addiction. I was maybe what you'd call a pedestrian fan of Jane's Addiction. I liked the tunes I heard, I just never went out of my way to listen to them. ...however, Eric Avery had a VERY cool quality to his bass lines that was pretty uncommon for bass at the time. ...to be fair, though, anything not shadowing a guitar's root notes was uncommon at the time. That being said, his bass approach had a very cool "noodling at home by your self" quality to them that I found pretty awesome. He had some solo-arrangment-for-guitar device usage I still dig on.

...and that bass line to Been Caught Stealing during the bit where the bass plays alone with the drums has fantastic groove and grit to it. I am not one of those that gets inspired by a musician's body of work but more "this thing this person did here in this song" and "what this other person did there in that song". Even though I don't think I've ever played a line that could be mistaken as directly inspired by that bass groove, it is in probably 75% of every bass line I play. Just such a killer feel.

 

[Wisebass]

Hi SoulReflection

Not new but always funny! I am in!

I actually got away with it...for a while...

Entertaining was a big part of it! (still is!)

I started playing with some guys in our local youthclub. There was a live blues jam every friday.

Learned to lay down the roots and to groove with a drummer.

Bought the "Killer" album (Iron Maiden) and after listening...

"Wrathchild"

… I knew that the bass is it! I bought a cheapo P bass copy from my lawnmower money and started to practice.

Told my pa that the guys I planned to play with, would rather shoot a piano player than hire one.

He wanted me to learn the piano and had promised to pay my lessons.

9 months later I found my first amp under the christmas tree instead.

Of course my first band was not a heavy metal band. Everybody wanted to play a different style.

The only solution was to play originals (Post punk garage "Krautfunkrock" )
​

Friends in school wanted to start a band as a way to get girls.

​

chicks.​

​

​

It worked!

In my first band we were all 14 to 15 years old. Getting girls was meeting girls, hanging out

and talking to them without blushing.

We managed to audition a lot of background singers.

Some of them were cute, but none of them could really sing.

I remember our drummer' s father (we rehearsed in his basement) asking us,

why we never auditioned any of the the girls from the church choir.

I don' t know who said it, but the answer was: "No way! Have you seen them?"

You got to have priorities!


greetings


Wise(b)ass