Guitar Players Thread

dbarila said:
I feel like taking them off to boil them is more work than just putting a new set of strings on!
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I like that kind of flat dead sound which is why I don’t do that and I just put on flat wounds and call it a day and I haven’t changed my strings in well over a decade
 
Bull Shannon said:
A month or so ago I jammed (for the first time!) with a friend; my main takeaway was he brought his bass and I found it to be a lot of fun. I found the process of playing along with someone or trying to suss out an existing song’s bass line to be a lot more intuitive than playing the guitar.

I ended up cruising a few secondhand instrument shops and found a custom bass:
View attachment 230387
It’s been pretty fun so far, humbling as well; thinking about groove and rhythm over melody is a difference headspace. Now I’m hearing only the bass in every song.
Any advice for a new bassist? ETA: I just scrolled up to see @yukbon initiating bass discussion. I guess you can add me to the list of dabblers/slappers.
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Funnest way: the first Ramones album. All of the bass is in one speaker, all of the guitar is in the other. Hard pan to one side to play along with Dee Dee, or hard pan to the other to find the notes that work with Johnny.
 
So far I've been going through the introductory BassBuzz videos; I know I need to get into theory. I've always been bad with theory on my guitar; I was taking lessons and my instructor was walking me through the modes, but I dropped that instructor a while ago and my practice became very unstructured and anemic on theory. Curious if anyone has tips on picking up this knowledge; when I look on reddit, people just throw broad instructions at you: "lean the modes," "learn the scales," "know the fretboard," etc.

Yesterday I mostly practiced the basslines from Joy Division's Transmission (good for practicing speed), Destroyer's Downtown (their bassist does much of their arranging/instrumentation, so many of their Kaputt-and-after songs have a strong bass groove), and some of Yes's Heart of the Sunrise.
 
Bull Shannon said:
So far I've been going through the introductory BassBuzz videos; I know I need to get into theory. I've always been bad with theory on my guitar; I was taking lessons and my instructor was walking me through the modes, but I dropped that instructor a while ago and my practice became very unstructured and anemic on theory. Curious if anyone has tips on picking up this knowledge; when I look on reddit, people just throw broad instructions at you: "lean the modes," "learn the scales," "know the fretboard," etc.

Yesterday I mostly practiced the basslines from Joy Division's Transmission (good for practicing speed), Destroyer's Downtown (their bassist does much of their arranging/instrumentation, so many of their Kaputt-and-after songs have a strong bass groove), and some of Yes's Heart of the Sunrise.
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Theory is good to know but not incredibly necessary. The thing that will help you the most is learning chords and chord theory; a lot of the charts or transcriptions you will see will not necessarily be full arrangements or written for the bass specifically, but they’ll all have chords that you can follow along with, so if you know that this next bar has 4 quarter notes and the chord playing is a G, you know you can play that as

G———————
D———————
A———————
E——3—3—3–3———


Orrrr


G———————
D——————5—
A———2—5———
E——3—————

Or whatever, as long as you are within the notes of the chord

Although that said, most basslines tend to stay simple and stick to the root of the chord or the major tones of the chord like the third or the fifth. One of the reasons that Phil Lesh’s baselines in the Grateful Dead are so hard to figure out is because he doesn’t do that he’s not playing “traditional” bass lines.
 
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Soooo I did another thing...

1000001888.jpg

My Jag is now a three humbucker monster.

Bridge and neck are P-Rails with triple shot rings.
Middle is a Novak MS Gold Foil humbucker, one side D'Armond and the other Guyatone. Pickup runs to the top control with a 5-way rotary for series, parallel, north coil, south coil, and out of phase options.

I hope I don't get anymore ideas ;)
 
yukbon said:
Theory is good to know but not incredibly necessary. The thing that will help you the most is learning chords and chord theory; a lot of the charts or transcriptions you will see will not necessarily be full arrangements or written for the bass specifically, but they’ll all have chords that you can follow along with, so if you know that this next bar has 4 quarter notes and the chord playing is a G, you know you can play that as

G———————
D———————
A———————
E——3—3—3–3———


Orrrr


G———————
D——————5—
A———2—5———
E——3—————

Or whatever, as long as you are within the notes of the chord

Although that said, most baselines tend to stay simple and stick to the root of the chord or the major tones of the chord like the third or the fifth. One of the reasons that Phil Lesh’s basslines in the Grateful Dead are so hard to figure out is because he doesn’t do that he’s not playing “traditional” bass lines.
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you know, I realized I wrote all this and I didn't actually say something i thought was necessary beyond "learn chords, it'll help", which is true but isn't bass-specific. More germane to the bass (and surprisingly, drums,)*, is feel and groove, a sense of what is best and right for the song, which you hear termed a lot of as "pocket" but often shows in how well a bassist is at showing restraint and giving a piece space and letting notes either ring out slowly or (maddeningly, conversely,) knowing when to choke a note and not let it ring out for it's full value.

*Not every drummer is a musician -- Lars Ulrich exists, after all -- but I have found that when drummers really lean into it, they become real students of the instrument in a way that generally passes by a lot of, for example, singers and guitarists.
 
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