Why did you start playing?

[CTbassist]

Well..... I was always into music since I was introduced to my first instrument (saxophone) in fourth grade. Later in 6th grade I saw this humongus violin thingy and i told my band teacher that I wanted to play it. now I play the electric because I love playing a bassline that hold people together, and I just love the sound!

 

[etechstan]

1. Chicks
2. Saw the Bohemian Rhapsody video on American Bandstand when I was 14 (1975)
3. Kiss Alive
4. Football team beat me up.
5. Jocks and musicians got chicks, skinny guys didn't and skinny guys can't be jocks. :scowl:
6. Invited chick to a rehearsal, chick invited me to third base. (I was 15, that was an accomplishment)

 

[lavmonga]

Much like everyone else I was (am) so into music, I was in 8th grade and had just saved enough money to buy an acoustic guitar. These two guys who I occasionally hung out with (who became very good friends) told me they started a band and needed a bass player. Needless to say the idea of being in a band was exactly what I was thinking about. So I spent the money on my first bass instead. Haven't stop buying the damn things since!

 

[vegas532]

I initially started to prove people wrong who said I couldn't do it, then it became a great form of anger management therapy...from there it became a full blown addiction.

Some people play for money, for girls, or to get popular...then there are those of us who do it because we have to.

They can have my basses when they pry them from my cold, dead fingers.

 

[chanson]

My brother had been playing guitar for about a year or so and it inspired me to get into music and want to play an instrument. I originally wanted to play drums, but it seemed too daunting to learn and I couldn't afford a drumset. One day, my brother and dad were watching a Rush DVD and I immediately asked what instrument the singer was playing.

 

[Swerve]

Bass players aren't cool

lmao

 

[barebones]

Money, fame, and chicks. Still waiting.

 

[Jhengsman]

I was a sax player in school. I wanted to be a treumpet player but was assigned to woodwinds and not the brass period in Junior high school. Years later I had a girlfriend who was an ex wedding singer who wanted to getback into music playing classical guitar which she played by ear. She asked me to get her4 guitar set up. I decided it was something we could do together and got a guitar.

At the time I was a new Christian and developed the goal to play guitar for the church. Years later the relationship with the girlfriend had ended but I was the forth guitarist at a new church when our keyboard and bass players graduated high school and left for college. I was asked to shift over to bass.

 

[Mike R]

Last year I decided I wanted to try a new hobby, my other favorite hobby being working on old cars. I wanted something I could take along with me to college and have as a stress reliever. So I started later than most at the age of 20 (I'll be 21 later this month). It's been slow progress and I'm not that great at it, but I get a real kick out of it and enjoy the little bit that I can do.

 

[poomwah]

I wanted to be gene simmons

 

[lpdeluxe]

I was into motorcycle racing in my 20s, and when I went off to graduate school at the University of Texas I discovered that everyone played guitar there.

So I bought a guitar, then a harmonica, then a bass, and a Dobro, and whatnot, and at this point I have gigged professionally on all of them, and loved every minute (well, maybe not when I was faced with 40+ pages of notation of the score when I joined the orchestra for a production of Big River).

 

[Matt Dean]

...took guitar lessons at age 8-10... in high school, played baritone horn... at age 15, I wanted to be in rock band and bass was the only thing I considered... I just knew that bass was my chosen instrument... 36 years later, still rocking the bass!

 

[ryco]

I wanted to play drums, but there were already too many drummers in orchestra.
There was an opening for double bass so I went for that instead.
I loved Paul McCartney and Chubby Jackson!!
Pops said play bass and you'll always have a gig.

 

[Basdyret]

I started our on guitar like so many others - as a 15-year old I was attracted to the attention the guitarists got and I loved music. I started on a classical guitar that I borrowed from an uncle and learned reading scores within a few months, and after half a year I bought an electric, which lasted until the first set-up, where it was scrapped because of a bad neck, and then I got a more expensive one instead.
I was into aggressive music at the time, but played stuff like Clapton and Metallica - who didn't play "Nothing else matters" to death in the mid nineties??
We did have a bass at the school that I played around with sometimes, and loved it, but I did the same with drums and everything else, and still considered myself a guitar player.

The next year I went to high school and found nobody to play with, but there was a blues band with a great guitarist, and they were looking for a bass player - I bought a bass and a combo, played the thing constantly and learning the lines from listening to CDs until our first gig 3 months later. We played for an ecstatic crowd and had a great time, and that was the decisive moment I became a bass player. I tried picking up the guitar again now and then, I still like playing one now and then, but it has completely lost it's attraction to me as a main instrument. Now I don't even own one, and apart from my basses I only have a banjo - which I'm even trying to sell now, as I don't use it.

So even though I already listened heavily to Primus before I even started on the guitar - and still do - I can't say that Les made me start playing bass. Playing with others did.
Or was it Duck Dunn...?

 

[Bass_masta16]

The guitarist in my band forced me into playing bass. But as life goes on, I've taught myself how to play guitar

 

[bass'n it]

I went to bass because way way back in 1973.....a bunch of us "musician" friends wanted to impress the chicks ..hmmmm. so we decided to form a "band"....I was a guitar player then...but we had no bass player (or knew anyone who could play the bass for that matter). so I got the short straw that day and I became the bass player in this "band"..........I bought a black 4 string cheapo Hondo bass fromDaddys junky music Store here in town and a padded Traynor amp...and the rest ,as they say, is history..........I love playing bass and I'm glad I drew the stort straw that day!..36 years ago!


Spector club member # 109
Ampeg club member # 436

 

[For_Ironys_Sake]

guitar hero.... before you start bashing me about it, i have moved past it, ive been guitar-hero-free for a year now

But I got really good at the game and then the thought of "why am i wasting this much time on some game when icould be learning real guitar?" popped into my head, so a bit later I was given an old fender acoustic guitar but then decided I wanted to learn bass because everyone else was learning guitar and I wanted to be different. Take THAT society!

 

[gonzorob]

I've always been a musical person. Played trumpet for a couple of years. Sang in a band, and in choirs. I always loved the bass. The way it looked and sounded. What it contributed to music, and the characters that played them. I married my wife about three years ago. She is a classically trained pianist. Majored in performance. She tried to teach me piano, but I just couldn't dig it. But she caught me searching the web for basses one day and went out and bought me one. That was that. I haven't looked back.

 

[CatfishStudios]

First time I saw live music being played I was instantly hooked...I wanted to be up there making those sounds..anything..cowbell..keys,drums....whatever...first instrument I aquired was an acoustic guitar..and stuck with it for a few years..went to banjo..then electric guitar..than to the natural peak evolution of a musician..the bass..

 

[tareh]

i was 11 and introduced to metallica. then branched out to other stuff like exodus, testament, obituary etc etc. stumbled to pantera, awed at dimebag and picked up the guitar when i was 16. heard rage against the machine and loved tim commerford's lines. started playing bass because a buddy started a RATM tribute band, and absolutely love bass. been playing bass for 4 years now.