How does a Guitarist play Bass?

fretmeister

Top Tip regarding strings. Roundwounds will be fine on any tuning heads. No need to buy shortscale strings.

Flats will break if the speaking part of the string gets wrapped wound the head if it is a mini tuner - but most are fine with full sized tuners. Both of mine have fender sized posts so I can pretty much use anything on them.

My medium scale Ibbys have dedicated medium scale flats as the tuning posts are tiny.

stickyfiddle

fretmeister said:

Mustangs are often bad for neck dive. Not great with shoulder issues! 

Ah that sucks. I've only played them in shops sat down to be fair! 

fretmeister

If you find one that is pretty close to balanced then swapping the tuners for Hipshot Ultralites can solve it.

Snap

to the OP

my first instrument was piano, did all the grades syllabus from about age 6 I think, then took up guitar at 14, and bass around the same time.

Bass - it's all about the space between the notes for me, groove and timing. The bass requires more precision (geddit?) than guitar in every aspect of the playing. If your timing is off, your note the wrong length, or your intonation not right, it will sound wrong.

There is a lot of space of error in guitar playing, not so much in bass playing.

ICBM

Snap said:

There is a lot of space of error in guitar playing, not so much in bass playing.

Indeed. The old idea that bass requires less skill than guitar because there are only four strings, and you only play one note at once normally - hence the bass was usually given to the least good guitarist in every school band - is completely wrong.

That's partly why I took up bass though - when I went to uni, I joined the student music club and found it consisted of something like 35 guitarists, one bass player and one drummer. Immediately realising that most of the guitarists were better than me, I decided to double the number of bass players and have a better chance of getting into a band. (I've never been a drummer.)

Snap

ICBM said:

That's partly why I took up bass though - when I went to uni, I joined the student music club and found it consisted of something like 35 guitarists, one bass player and one drummer. Immediately realising that most of the guitarists were better than me, I decided to double the number of bass players and have a better chance of getting into a band. (I've never been a drummer.)

My daughter is at university doing music technology & composition. She's a bassist.  She finds the same, loads of guitarists, two bassists, and also hardly any other females. Good and bad. She's learning guitar too. Superb bassist IMO, even though I am biased.

I had the same naive view that bass should be easy cos I played guitar. But, soon as I started playing with other players, I quickly found out that my timing was crap, and I lacked groove. That has taken a long time to get even vaguely right. I found playing purely fretless for a year or so, maybe longer, really helped technique. Even less margin for sloppiness there.

Drums - every time I've had a go, I've been uniformly crap, but I would love to learn properly.

Snap

and here she is last Christmas, give them a play on Spotify, Flatstanley, they are reasonably popular on the live scene in Manc/Sheffield



And a few weeks ago @ Yellow Arch Studios in Sheffield (of early Arctic Monkeys fame)

guitarjack66

Snap said:

and here she is last Christmas, give them a play on Spotify, Flatstanley, they are reasonably popular on the live scene in Manc/Sheffield



And a few weeks ago @ Yellow Arch Studios in Sheffield (of early Arctic Monkeys fame)

Great name (a classic children's book from my schooldays.) There is a band that I should have been in that would have suited me fine,Garbage!

Snap

Cocked up the link to first clip, here it is again, and thanks for anyone who watches!

BeardyAndy

I've been a guitarist for over 30 years but have recently jumped ship and am loving bass, I've played a lot of fingerstyle acoustic over the years so the whole playing without a pick wasn't a stretch for me. The biggest thing I've had to try and drill out of me is using a softer touch with my picking hand over the plucking style you use with guitar.

Ossyrocks

I spent decades playing guitar, fronting bands etc. At the start of the pandemic I moved house to an area quite far from where I used to live, and where I knew no one. I did a bit of playing with a community group, but very little really.
In late 2021 I decided to try playing bass, just because I thought it would be interesting, and that I had always admired some of the great bass players I had played with over the years. 
Two years on, I'm exclusively playing bass and everyone around here only knows me as a bass player. I have four basses, and some nice bass amps, and I'm in two bands with very decent musicians. I can't see myself actually going back now, I love paying bass so much.

As for approach, I started again, and learned to play and think like a bass player from the outset. I feel like I'm a way better musician now than I was when I was a guitar player. I understand theory, scale and harmony in much greater depth than I did before. I'm looking forward to being the bass man into my dotage.

Rob

Heartfeltdawn

Tannin said:

One more thing. Bass playing is a state of mind. Your job is to make the singer sound good. 

That explains the high rate of alcoholism in bassists who used to play with Bob Dylan then.

wellsyboy

mart said:

Open_G said:

...

One of the bassiest bass lines I can think of is also one of the simplest. It’s the verse of black velvet. I have no idea but genuinely cannot see this as being come up with by a guitarist playing bass. I’m not sure a guitarist would ever say, “I’ll just groove on the low E.” yet this song is all about that bass groove. 

...

That's one song that really inspired me to get into bass playing. But it's not actually a bass, is it - it's a synth if I'm not mistaken. Still, it's a good lesson in what to play, and what not to play.

Surely not!???? Sounds convincingly bass like to me - what synth is that then?

EricTheWeary

wellsyboy said:

mart said:

Open_G said:

...

One of the bassiest bass lines I can think of is also one of the simplest. It’s the verse of black velvet. I have no idea but genuinely cannot see this as being come up with by a guitarist playing bass. I’m not sure a guitarist would ever say, “I’ll just groove on the low E.” yet this song is all about that bass groove. 

...

That's one song that really inspired me to get into bass playing. But it's not actually a bass, is it - it's a synth if I'm not mistaken. Still, it's a good lesson in what to play, and what not to play.

Surely not!???? Sounds convincingly bass like to me - what synth is that then?

On Wikipedia it says played using a sample of a fretless bass sound. What were people playing samples on in 1989? 

Heartfeltdawn

EricTheWeary said:

On Wikipedia it says played using a sample of a fretless bass sound. What were people playing samples on in 1989? 

Snap

Heartfeltdawn said:

EricTheWeary said:

On Wikipedia it says played using a sample of a fretless bass sound. What were people playing samples on in 1989? 

I had a S1000, sold it on ebay a few years ago for quite a few quid. Back then it seemed like amazing tech. Guess it was tbh

prowla

Snap said:

Cocked up the link to first clip, here it is again, and thanks for anyone who watches!

That is really art school!

(and not in a bad way.)

Snap

@prowla thanks mate. Going to see them headlining a show on Friday night here in Sheffield, mainly acoustic apparently. 
Almost a year on from the clip above, and they are really tight and relaxed as a band now. Great to see. Not one of them over 20.

Rocker

I may have said so in the past but if what you play suits and supports the song, does it really matter if you play the bass as you would a guitar?

stickyfiddle

Rocker said:

I may have said so in the past but if what you play suits and supports the song, does it really matter if you play the bass as you would a guitar?

Not at all. But playing like you would a guitar very rarely suits the song