Jester

In my experience non-musicians generally couldn't care less about flashy technical stuff. If you're often in a position where people want you to 'play something', I think it's a far better idea to spend a few weeks learning to strum through some some old favourites on an acoustic guitar, rather than spending months and months trying to get to grips with U Can't Hold No Groove. As for the 'true potential of the bass', I think it only works properly in a band context. Same with drums - I'd be bored out of my mind watching a solo drummer for any length of time, no matter how good he was.

It isn't free, but you can still get [url="http://www.dv247.com/invt/27495/"]Tracktion 2[/url] for the ridiculously low price of £30. It was £130 before version 3 came out and even that was quite good value. It's a truly excellent bit of software, very simple to use, loads of plugins included, everything you need - read about it [url="http://www.mackie.com/products/tracktion2/"]here[/url]. You won't do better for the money. As for drums, Tracktion comes with [url="http://www.linplug.com/Instruments/RM_IV/rm_iv.htm"]RM IV[/url], which is great but more suited to electronica IMO. For 'real' drums, I recommend [url="http://www.rayzoon.com/"]Jamstix[/url]. It's quite complex, but so lifelike and flexible. It's also got a really cool 'jamming' feature where it responds to your playing in real time. There's a demo available, well worth a look.

The best software I've used is [url="http://www.earmaster.com/"]Earmaster[/url], but it's very expensive. It's also been stuck at version 5.0 for several years. There's a [url="http://www.download.com/EarMaster-Pro/3000-2133_4-10012043.html?tag=lst-0-4"]demo[/url] available if you want to check it out. In truth though, I've personally found 'recognize the interval' type exercises to be of limited value. It's one thing to hear notes played in isolation and think 'oh right, perfect fourth', but for me it was never anything more than an academic exercise - knowing the names of sounds didn't really help when it came to hearing and playing actual music. I've seen more improvement from just working out stuff by ear as much as possible - songs, advertising jingles, TV themes, anything. Just my opinion of course. YMMV.

I bought a Yamaha RBX374 just before Christmas and I'm very pleased with it. It wasn't what I was looking for though - I was after something with more of a vintage look, but of all the ones I tried, the Yamaha felt the nicest. Have you been trying them out in the shop or just asking for advice? If play them, you will eventually find one that just feels 'right' in your hands.

I'm not sure I agree. Out of interest: to those of you who grew up during the 60s and 70s, did you listen to the Stones or Led Zeppelin at the time and think, wow, this is the Future Of Rock, or were they just 'good' (for want of a better word) bands? The reason I ask is that I think the majority of music (especially pop music) has always been bad - but there's some quality in every generation and as time passes, the crap fades from memory and you only remember the good stuff. It was Noel Gallagher who inspired me to take up the guitar (sorry - I haven't been playing bass long enough to have any real perspective on it ), and people talk about the Britpop days now as if the mid 90s was some kind of musical golden age, but it just wasn't the case - there were so many vacuous bands (Menswear anyone? Echobelly? Elastica?) jumping on the Oasis bandwagon that, despite the fact that there was definitely some great stuff going on, the signal-to-noise ratio was terrible. And yes it sold well, but I don't remember thinking at the time that Definitely Maybe was a future classic - it was just an album I liked. It's only now that the dust has settled that I can look back and think, yeah, actually it was pretty awesome. It's easy to look around and think 'not as good as it was in my day', but come on - EVERY generation says this about EVERYTHING. Yes, mainstream commercial pop is largely horrible, but it always has been, and comparing Jimi Hendrix with Leona Lewis is like shooting fish in a barrel. I genuinely believe that there's never been a better time to be a music fan. Computers and the internet are completely changing how music is made and distributed - anyone with a few hundred quid to spare can buy production equipment that musicians from even a few decades ago would have sold their own grandparents into slavery for, and then they can immediately release their songs to a GLOBAL audience for practically nothing. I can go online and within minutes be listening to any style of music from anywhere in the world, and I don't have to put up with a record company force feeding me through the radio ever again. Of course there's still a lot of rubbish out there, but that's an inevitable consequence of the fact that good music is bloody hard to make, yet loads of people want to have a crack at it. And more power to them - the more music there is available, the more gems there are to find. And for what it's worth, there's a ton of modern guitar players (again, sorry for the guitar talk - it's all I know!) who would be inspiring me to start playing if I didn't already. Matt Bellamy from Muse, John Frusciante from the Chili Peppers, Adam Jones from Tool, Mikael Åkerfeldt from Opeth, the Amott brothers from Arch Enemy, James Root from Stone Sour, Fredrik Thordendal from Meshuggah... and they're just some of the rock players! Oh, and the bassists who are most responsible for me deciding to start learning bass properly (Ethan Farmer and Mike Elizondo) are touring and recording today.

Another vote for Ed Friedland here. I have his DVD and I rate it highly. Also worth a look is the book 'Funk Bass' by Jon Liebman.

So, 2008 is the year when I start learning how to play bass properly. I'm 27, and I've been playing guitar since I was 16. I've always liked the bass, and I've had an old one kicking around for ages which I used to get out every so often and plunk around on for half an hour (a 'Vester Witch 935' - anyone ever even heard of that? ), but I've never taken it that seriously. I'm more of a rocker when it comes to guitar playing, but it was actually hearing the start of 'Déjà Vu' by Beyoncé ([url="http://youtube.com/watch?v=afB8AJBmNrI"]video[/url]) that made me decide to work on my bass playing . Funky as anything, and people say that modern music has no groove... So hearing that was definitely one of those, 'OK, now I get it' moments, and from there I started finding other stuff (that I'd previously have dismissed out of hand) that made me think, 'I REALLY want to be able to play like that'. Ethan Farmer is another favourite - compare how lame and plodding the [url="http://youtube.com/watch?v=Fj3HkZv4tN8"]studio version[/url] of 'Dirrty' by Christina Aguilera sounds compared to the [url="http://youtube.com/watch?v=Ir2YK0M3Yzk"]live version[/url] which features his playing (bass comes in at about 0:50). Awesome stuff. Also Mike Elizondo - love the way his playing is so precise that you can't tell if it's programmed or not. Even though I like playing the heavier stuff on guitar, I'm definitely leaning more towards soul/funk/r'n'b stuff for bass. I wanna make people dance! And yes, it was hard work trawling through videos of half naked pop starlets to find those examples, but hey - sometimes you just have to take one for the team . So anyway. I bought myself a Yamaha RBX374 at Christmas, and I'm having a lot of fun with it. I actually wanted something a bit more 'vintage' when I went shopping, but for the price the Yamaha just felt so much better than all the others I tried. I'm now a big fan of loud active pickups as well - gonna have to look into getting some EMGs for my guitar .