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Not a topic I expect to generate a heap of discussion but one I have genuinely pondered for some time now.

I don't get bass guitar. Why the hell are there 4 strings on the thing? EVERY bass guitarist I watch does 3 things with it:

1. Plucks the top string only,
2. plays a heap of 1 and 2 finger "chords",
3. Looks like they can't believe their luck that they are in a band and get to call themselves a musician.

Am I missing something??

I am not a bass specialist, but one of my son plays bass. He likes heavy metal which is not my cup of tea, but he plays some pretty slick licks on the four strings. He have shown me some players that are quite spectacular. Some are playing with 5 strings and a few with 6 strings. I personnaly find that if a band would not have a bass player, the pitch would be too high and the rhythm would not be fluent or emphasized enough (imagine the Beatles without Paul). We could be talking also about slap bass player, who are quite spectacular

If you look at Sting or Giddy Lee from Rush, they use the full fret board. Of course a bass player who does not sing is quite less spectacular as they do not have the melody. A perfect example of this is John Paul Jones from Led Zed. Very low profile, bearly see him in the videos, but many of the songs are punchy because of his bass playing (along with a bunch of others intruments he plays, of course).

Marc

If there were no bass players, who would find the girlfriends for the drummers?

If time and money were no barrier, I'd love to learn the bass guitar. It can sound so funky and looks like a lot of fun.

Finding a band or just a group of people to play with would probably be a good idea too. It doesn't appear to be much good as a playing by yourself type of thing.

tovo wrote:

N


Am I missing something??

(end of childish rant)

Definitely missing something listen to this dude and he has 5 strings on his Bass.

And then there is this dude I'd have him in my band




Not sure he'd have me though lol

This is worth listening to for the Harmonics he gets and the tapping on a bass !

ahahah,first of all,,yeah they look cool,,i think its because the ease of it,,

Ones i ask a bass player,''can you explain that thing for me,,what are you doing'',,well i play(pluck) the chord's and find a nice rhytmn...

I would love to know more ....

they are very important,,i ones wrote a piece of music and experiment with mute the bass notes,, it sounded better with the bass notes..

there are also lady's that play that heavy thing.

Oh, and i saw a view that did very great solo's,,,very special..

Hmmmm......well let's say, if I would play the piano and had another one for the drums and I had to choose between a guitarplayer or a bassplayer, I'd go for the last one, the depth of the tones in combination with the rythme would be more important to me, because it's crucial for the fundament. And for that matter I even find the bassplayer more important then the drums...but then again, I would skip the piano and play the guitar myself, or switch between the guitar and the piano, along with the bassplayer and a drummer! :cheer:

And sure when you play a song for the first time, you just pluck the main notes, the 1, 5 and 8, maybe some passingtones, later you add much more to it.

I find it a fun instrument to play, I usually do when there's already another guitarplayer. It's relaxing and you can just stay low and in the background....if you feel like it.

However, they say bassplayers are sometimes frustrated people, they are só important but usually very underrated...even the people who play them are often intravert, wich is quite the opposite of a solo-guitarplayer, often those are way more extravert, comes with the instrument and the role that is has or is it the other way around? Haha! :side:

You should check out a bass Tony!

Cheers

Nesh

Thanks