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Why Did You Start Playing?

Aberdumbie

Aberdumbie

Supporting Member
Jan 22, 2016
2,397
10,087
67
South Carolina
#1
A comment in another thread got me to thinking this may be fun..... I had been playing around with guitars as a teen. Never really got serious but had picked up a few chords..... I was a hard rocker by nature. Nugent, Uriah Heep and Deep Purple were my cup-o-tea.... Then I remember like it was yesterday. A buddy invited me to go see Conway Twitty with him. I cringed at the thought but didn't want to be rude, so I went. The house lights went down, and the PA announcer said, "Ladies and gentlemen. CONWAY TWITTY!!!".... Every woman in that place screamed and ran down to the front of the stage. I thought that was a wholly Elvis related phenomenon (he was still alive then).... I was smitten. I looked at this average looking dude with a poofed up perm and a guitar and thought to myself.... I am a pretty average dude... If I can get serious about this guitar playing, I just might have a chance with the ladies..... Shortly thereafter I changed my focus to bass and that clicked for me. So yeah, the fuel that lit my engine initially was attracting the opposite sex. It morphed into a lifelong love affair with the bottom end, but I cannot deny that my initial motivation was entirely chick related....... What fueled your love of the bottom end?
 
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#2
Always loved music. I had an acoustic guitar that I would strum at when I was really little (it was my brother's but he never played it). Picked up French Horn starting in middle school. Wanted to be in the Jazz band. No French horns in the Jazz band, so my options were to audition on piano, guitar, or bass. Assumed that there were other students who were already taking piano/guitar lessons. Got a Bass and started lessons. Over 25 years later and I am still playing bass.

While my music and bass interest had nothing to do with finding a significant other, I did marry the middle school Jazz band piano player (after we both finished college). I was also right on my gamble; she had been taking piano lessons for years by the time she auditioned for Jazz band. She was also the second chair French Horn player through middle school (I was always first chair on Horn). Met her at band camp between 5th and 6th grade.
 
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#3
I hate to be contributing to the stereotype, but I only jumped into bass guitar because a friends' band needed one...I started off playing guitar. Eventually, learning about players that had more charisma and stage presence (Bootsy, Larry Graham, Flea, etc.) helped me see what bass guitar was truly capable of, in addition to it also being "cool" :cool:

I own and play guitar ok-ish, but I wouldnt answer random ads for a guitarist and hope to do well at the audition. If I got back in the groove:smug: I could get by well on bass.
 
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#4
I played guitar for many years and thought I was pretty good (I wasn't). Dabbled with piano a bit and played first chair violin until my 20's. I stopped playing for a few decades and woke up one day and said I'm gonna learn the bass guitar. I guess I thought I'd be more successful in my later years (I have been) and I love the thump of a good groove. I also don't have the skills for drums... Besides everyone needs a bass player whereas drummers get fired LOL.

So here I am three years in and loving it.
 
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#5
Pure boredom... I was a very hyper kid, then I broke my leg in high school and couldn't do any of the stuff I was used to doing. I needed a hobby that could entertain me while sitting down. My brother had decided he wanted to play guitar, so of course I couldn't do that. So I chose bass. The second I picked it up, I was in love. It just clicked for me. It's been about 25 years, and I still wish I had found bass sooner!
 
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#7
The reason I wanted to play bass was Paul McCartney's bass lines on Beatle records. Even from a young-ish age, I was fascinated by the low notes on the records. My Mom played Beatle records a lot and I have a fuzzy memory of hearing Sgt. Pepper and a very clear memory of my Mom bringing home the just released white album. I didn't know about bass guitars or anything. I just knew I liked it.

I got my my first bass and amp for Christmas 1974.
 
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#8
Tom Gallo said:
The reason I wanted to play bass was Paul McCartney's bass lines on Beatle records. Even from a young-ish age, I was fascinated by the low notes on the records. My Mom played Beatle records a lot and I have a fuzzy memory of hearing Sgt. Pepper and a very clear memory of my Mom bringing home the just released white album. I didn't know about bass guitars or anything. I just knew I liked it.

I got my my first bass and amp for Christmas 1974.
Click to expand...
That certainly clears up why you have a sunburst Rick!
 
#10
When I was 15, had about 4 friends start trying to take up electric guitar. I liked the idea of playing an instrument and rock music, but I didn't want to be like everyone else. I listened to a lot of Rush and the bass appealed to me so that is the direction I took. All the friends had given up guitar within a year or two. Here I am 35+ years later still playing.
 
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#12
My grandmother was a music teacher and insisted that all her grandkids WOULD play an instrument.

Dad tried to teach me drums when I was about 7. It didn't take.

I went to the "band open house" as a 3rd grader. Tried a trumpet and a saxophone. Neither one clicked.

The next week, the orchestra director did an assembly for all the third graders. I have no memory of the violin, viola, or cello, because I couldn't take my eyes off the gigantic thing lying on its side on the floor. As soon as he picked it up and played a note, I knew that the double bass was my instrument.

I'd eventually go on to learn bass guitar, abandon double bass, and abandon music entirely for about a decade, until my sister (a high school band director) invited me to sit in with her pep band one night for fun. It was like finding my missing piece. I went out the next week, bought myself a new bass guitar, and haven't put it down since.
 
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#15
My father insisted that his three sons take music lessons. For some reason I chose clarinet which morphed into saxophone. I played in all of the school bands through high school. I was a sight reading mofo! I became very frustrated that I couldn't play anything without sheet music in front of me. I was too stupid to ask anyone how to achieve my desires or my public school teacher was too lame to point me in that direction.
I started playing bass because it appealed to me and I figured it was a relatively easy instrument to learn. Almost 50 years later, I'm still going.
 
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#16
I was forced into piano lessons as a kid (no theory, just sight reading), hated them, but loved music. Got my oldest brother to play Jesus Christ Superstar endlessly, along with the Beatles, The Harder They Come soundtrack, and Bob Marley. Stole records from both brothers while they were in college, and then that same oldest brother gave me his castoff Vantage P bass and s cassette mix called Torture Tunes he'd made in NYC with his friend the Torch. At least think that's where the tape came from. It was a mixture of punk rock and oddities like "I Got Stoned and I Missed It" by Terry Waldo and "Her Majesty" by the Beatles. I learned how to play by figuring out songs from that tape and subsequent punk rock albums I picked up. That was sixth grade or so, and I was in my first band in eighth grade.

Poor choices continued for many years, but I've had a lot of fun and still do.
 
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#17
I was the youngest of 7 kids by a long shot. I knew from a young age that several of my older siblings had played a musical instruments in school. Seemed like a natural thing to do. I think I sang in school choir in 4th grade and started on viola in 5th. Begged to play upright bass for several years, but it did not happen till around 8th grade. Added bass guitar in 10th.
 
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#18
Didn't come from a musical family at all, but my Dad and Mom listened to music all the time... all kinds of stuff. Even as a kid I had an ear and affinity for the bass parts, and I would spend hours just listening to music sitting on the floor in front of our big Pioneer stereo in our back room. I wasn't much for TV as a kid - my passion was listening to music. That's still true... I'll turn on the stereo and listen to music all hours of the day before I will turn on a TV. My lifelong best friend's Dad is a bass player and when I'd visit their house, there were basses and musical instruments everywhere. It was a world I didn't know, but when I got older and was in high school, I decided I really wanted to learn more about bass and how to make music playing bass. I never had an interest in other instruments initially - it was always about bass. He offered to jam and teach me early on once I got serious about it, and he even loaned me one of his basses (a fretless) to practice with until I got my own bass and amp. I never looked back! I played along with the radio and CDs on my own time, and would get together to play with him at least once a week. Good memories. It was all so fresh, new, and simpler then.
 
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#19
I had no choice.

Like Martin Riggs said in the first LETHAL WEAPON, it was the only thing I was good at. I've done all kinds of work in the day job world, but at a DNA level I was just wired for it.

I simply always heard bass first. The pedals on an organ. The upright in a jazz ensemble. Tuba/Sousaphone in a marching band. The bottom of the sound of a big diesel. Big ship horns are the best. I can tell or play the bass line of over a thousand songs, but I can remember the lyrics in full to just a handful.

I began as a classically trained piano player, and while it was vital for me in being able to play all the parts, see/hear chords and inversions, harmonies, it was invaluable. But all I ever really wanted to do was to play bass in a R+B hot horn band (what R+B was years ago, NOT now). And occasionally, I did.
 
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