mcgraham

Indeed. It's a very particular skill set that people pick up really quickly. What I would say is that once people get to that standard of just being able to plug'n'play everything plateaus very quickly, and suddenly improvement is rare. Also, what people think is 'good musicianship' for a worship team is sub-par compared to true masters of their instruments. I would love to see more christian bass players (see? keeping it on topic ) spend more time working on their instruments outside of sunday mornings or band practice. Because it's all improvised to some extent, the chain is only as strong as its weakest link. The best bit of advice I was given from a fellow worship musician (albeit by someone who was just repeating something that had been told to them) was 'learn jazz theory - if you can play jazz, you can play anything'. I did and continue to do so, and it has definitely allowed me to plug into any genre that I might want to experiment with.

I'm a christian bass player. I play regularly at Gracechurch Nottingham. Got into bass to help out at my youth group back in the day, been blessed by it and through it ever since. One thing that has come up a lot in the above posts is how it places demands on you to create music with others of varying ability and preferences just from a lead sheet/chord chart, and I think that is one of the strongest elements of developing musicianship that worship provides that you just can't find anywhere else. It's the balance of improvisation, bandcraft, and (for lack of a better word) performance/purpose that ties it all together so people do their best with far less prep time than a normal performance band would, but also don't go crazy or off on musical tangents like they may do at a jam night or the like.

I understood that a zero fret would have a nut slightly behind to keep the strings in place and provide that slight 'damping' like a virtual finger. Personally I think it's a great idea as my playing unconsciously evolved to avoid using open strings where possible because of the slight tonal differences, but it doesn't bother me enough to warrant doing such extensive modification to a bass that doesn't already have it.

[quote name='Kingy_who' post='1254615' date='Jun 2 2011, 09:07 PM']We're not talking about some mysterious force, we're talking about DNA and how they where raised in their early life, stuff that we can't change now, not with any amount of practice.[/quote] I agree practice can't change DNA, but what do we know for certain about DNA causing certain traits or predispositions towards skills like playing an instrument? Very little I'd say, to the point that we can only really confirm that nurture has an impact on musical development. Sure, we know that DNA is responsible for giving someone (say) long fingers, fast twitch muscle fibres, not having some kind of debilitating condition - these all being helpful for musical development - but beyond that can we really say that he has gene sequence X therefore he's bound to be better at bass playing, particularly prog-rock-fusion? Or gene sequence A which means he was destined to be a guitard? Obviously the latter one semi-qualifies as a debilitating condition, and my heart goes out to those poor poor guitards... dealt a bad hand in life I say.

Great thread - really interesting reading everyone's background and motivations to pick up the bass. I wanted to help out my youth group, and so looked at picking up an instrument - guitar or drums? I had no idea what a bass was so didn't count it as an option. I asked a friend what they reckoned I should pick up - they said 'what about bass guitar?' and they explained it was the low sounding instrument in a band. I recognised the sound they meant, but from the examples I knew I said it seemed quite limited relative to the number of sounds a guitar could make - what else could it do? So they sent me some RHCP (Higher Ground etc) and put me onto Primus... genuinely, from that moment I was hooked and I knew I just [i]had[/i] to be able to make those sounds. I also play guitar now to a similar standard, but as much as I like guitar I [i]love[/i] bass and everything it encompasses.

IMO and IME it's your general traits, personality and attitude as a person that has a huge impact on your musical development (like anything in life I guess). Not saying it's isolated from those around you affecting your development or the like, but I think your own psychology is a huge factor. For example, I'm naturally a very focused/obsessive/determined/motivated person, I approach things in life and work with reason and logic and always seek to better myself, but I am also a very emotional person at heart. I feel that these are key traits that have helped me in my musical development. For example, these traits mean that I really connect with music in general and am constantly bowled over by how it can stir emotions without ever having to engage people's intellects. But because of my personality, I am also strongly driven to understand logically why music moves me/people in the way that it does, and in turn I am driven to work obsessively at being able to execute that knowledge. I find it's a self-perpetuating cycle - I find/make something I like, I learn about it, I practice it, I get better at it, I find/make something I like it... etc etc. To answer the question, I reckon I'm probably about the 10,000 hour mark now (been playing 9 years, not including rehearsals/band practices etc, just my own personal practice) - I see the benefits in my own playing, but it really does need to be pure hardcore practice to see the most benefit.

Like it! Chilled but grabs your attention too. Sound and feel wise it reminded me of Marie Ael off Hadrien Feraud's album (but yours is slightly more listenable overall IMO). Great job! Mark

Yea it's worth working out various different sounds from the bass in isolation, and also in combination with different techniques and plucking positions, as well as different ways to pluck the strings.

[url="http://www.digitech.com/en-US/news/digitech-introduces-the-whammy-dt-pedal-with-drop-tuning-and-true-bypass"]Check it out here![/url] [url="http://www.digitech.com/en-US/products/whammy-dt"]And here![/url] I for one am quite excited by this!

It could be a multitude of things, (bridge, nut, setup, pickups, even the strings! etc) My suggestion for something of that value and history is take it to a top notch set-up guru for a setup and their opinion, that way nothing irreversible or value-decreasing will be done that isn't 100% necessary. I don't know where you are based, but if you are in the UK then somewhere like the Bass Gallery in London are great people to speak to about that sort of thing.

Yea I was tempted by a new amp, but only for a change rather than out of any real desire. And I realised that I'd be bored of it in a week, particularly given how rare Berg IPs are and will remain.

Still GAS-free here - switched to using my fretted Wood&tronics bass for a change enjoying that greatly too.

What bass do you play? Does it have an onboard eq? Even if it doesn't there's a wealth of possibilities even with just one pickup, a volume control and a tone control, and (more importantly) your fingers.

Scotticus, I don't use any effects on bass, at least for the moment - I'm probably going to get a Copilot FX Orbit sometime though for those glitchy sounds. I control everything from the onboard controls of the bass though, so I have radically different sounds that I adjust my technique for as well as the onboard eq, volume swells by tapping tones and rolling the volume control up, dub/synth pad sounds by rolling treble and mids off with bass up on the neck pickup and using the side of my thumb etc. With regard to guitar, I try to accomplish the same thing by my pedal choices and keep the pedal count to a minimum (e.g. they all fit on a PT Mini). I tend to pick my dirt based on how well it cleans up with volume knob of the guitar without substantial volume changes across the gain range. For examples, I use a Skreddy Screwdriver fuzz which responds amazingly to volume knob cleanup on the guitar without substantial volume variation. I also stick a compressor in the chain for limiting/compression options if I've got some particular difficult volume changes to handle but at present I only use that to taste on clean sounds or not at all. I am presently using a volume pedal post-dirt to control overall volume. I also have a delay with a useable delay setting for near everything (tap tempo built in in case I need it), and a Catalinbread Pareidolia that is a swiss-army knife of modulation tones.

Was on Hartman electronics website and they were advertising a device called the FX tracker by a company called Backline Engineering. Here's the link - [url="http://backline-eng.com/home/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=6&Itemid=5&74a0ad6b5f7a1df0ef4ab98b8fffbb41=20922c89c013dc09abd405e7bbf35390"]CLICK ME![/url] It seems to sense playing dynamics, speed of playing etc, and adjust a multitude of effects depending on what it senses. For example, you can alter its delay time to match the tempo you are playing at. Alternatively, you could alter the depth of chorus according to how loud you are playing. It has a whole host of built in effects, all of which are able to be tailored to respond to your playing in a predetermined way. As someone who HATES stomping pedals and likes to do everything from the guitar, this seems like a great idea, so I thought I'd post it up on here in case anyone was interested... or indeed if anyone has checked it out.