So I am now a bass owner!

[Deanol]

I awoke on Christmas morning to find Santa had left me one of these...

A Fret King Black Label Esprit Bass!

I wanted a bass and spent a few hours at the end of November going round a few guitar shops trying them out. I tries bases from £79 (a second hand Yamaha) up to £1500 (a Stingray) and thinking I can't tell any difference between these. The only one that stood out for me was the Fret King. It felt right and sounded great. But it was dearer than I wanted to spend on a first bass.

Anyway, my lovely, sneaky, wonderful, crafty wife only went and bought it for me. And kept it well hidden until Christmas morning!

So now I have a guitar that is too big and missing a couple of strings! How the hell do I play this thing?

[mangotango]

2 minutes ago, Deanol said:

I awoke on Christmas morning to find Santa had left me one of these...

A Fret King Black Label Esprit Bass!

I wanted a bass and spent a few hours at the end of November going round a few guitar shops trying them out. I tries bases from £79 (a second hand Yamaha) up to £1500 (a Stingray) and thinking I can't tell any difference between these. The only one that stood out for me was the Fret King. It felt right and sounded great. But it was dearer than I wanted to spend on a first bass.

Anyway, my lovely, sneaky, wonderful, crafty wife only went and bought it for me. And kept it well hidden until Christmas morning!

So now I have a guitar that is too big and missing a couple of strings! How the hell do I play this thing?

How do you play it?

 

Loud and Proud. Only way to go.

[ahpook]

9 minutes ago, Deanol said:

Anyway, my lovely, sneaky, wonderful, crafty wife only went and bought it for me. And kept it well hidden until Christmas morning!

I think we should all give your wife a round of applause, what a lovely thing to do.

[Lozz196]

1 minute ago, ahpook said:

I think we should all give your wife a round of applause, what a lovely thing to do.

Agree, well done that lady.

[Maude]

Great looking bass! I could see John Entwistle playing that. 

Congrats and hang on to that wife of yours 😄

[ezbass]

That’s a very cool pressie.

[Deanol]

She's put up with me for thirty years now (we were "going out" for five years before we got married, and in September celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary) so I think she's a keeper. Although I do keep threatening to trade her in for a newer model, and then she throws things at me. I think we are turning into George and Mildred.

So now I have twice as many reasons for not doing the long list of jobs she has for me... (1) I need to practice my guitar, and (2) I need to practice my bass!

[mangotango]

1 hour ago, ahpook said:

I think we should all give your wife a round of applause, what a lovely thing to do.

I think we should all give your wife the phone numbers for our own wives, so that Mrs. Deanol can tell them how it's done.....

[Deanol]

2 minutes ago, mangotango said:

I think we should all give your wife the phone numbers for our own wives, so that Mrs. Deanol can tell them how it's done.....

Knowing my wife, she would spend two hours on the phone with them, and at the end of it still won't have got to the point of the call!

[Ricky 4000]

12 hours ago, Deanol said:

How the hell do I play this thing?

Welp, what I generally like to do is listen to a recording, and once I more-or-less get the idea of the bass part (usually wrongly, because what we hear and what we think we hear from the bass are often different things)... (bass is funny like that)... anyway, it doesn't matter if you're a fret or two out (especially at the "bassy" end where it's harder to tell).

(I once spent all day listening to a tiny bit of a whole afternoon of rehearsal, because there was one teeny bit in one of the songs that I thought sounded good - yet I couldn't replicate it... eventually the drummer came in, and decided it wasn't me, so it must have been a guitarist) (dammit).

Anyhoo, further tips:

1. Don't ever feel comfortable. That is the moment before you realise you haven't moved your fretting hand ready for the next note in a really simple bass line* and you're screwed.

b. Don't concentrate on the next bit - you'll mess up the bit you're playing.

3. Don't concentrate on the bit you're playing - you'll mess up the next bit**.

4. Don't worry about horrible fret buzz and finger noise - apparently it doesn't come out on recordings (like a vampire doesn't appear in a mirror - weird eh?).

5' There are 2 types of bass fills: The ones everybody in the room is expecting (you have to have a go at those), the ones that nobody is expecting (you don't have to do those), and one other type... I thought of it just now, but it's gone...

5a. People may tell you that fills are best unrehearsed, wrong, random, loud, and half a beat late - this is not true.

6" People may tell you that uncomfortable / embarrassed glances from other band members is jealousy - this is also not true.

7. As you're already a guitar player - you must know all of this already.

 

Hope this helps! 👍 

 

* Don't ever play something that people think is easy, or something that sounds easy. It's more embarrassing to mess that up.

** see "b."

Edited December 28, 2018 by Ricky 4000