I’m a lousy guitar player. After 50 years the best I ever got was a good beginner, that’s why I’m giving bass a try. I’d say my guitar playing definitely has helped with learning bass.
Haven’t touched the guitar in awhile, so grabbed it tonight just to see if practicing bass has helped with guitar. It hasn’t! (LOL). But the strings feel so skinny and unnatural compared to playing the bass strings. I may have to try larger strings on the guitar just so it feels normal! And the distance between frets is so much smaller, so guess fingers are getting used to the J bass fret bar.
Oh well, at least I’m learning bass and having fun. I tried learning it 30+ years ago and should have stuck with it. Better late than never.
Had a buddy that gigged regularly. His gigging guitar was a Strat Squire. He put in some better hardware, like tuning machines and pots, had it set up properly and had a really nice guitar for a few hundred buck. Said if it got stolen or damaged it wouldn’t bother him as much as if it was one of his expensive guitars which he kept at home. Squire sounded good too.
There is really an habit to develop, about changing from different instruments with different scale lenghts. It’s not natural at first and it feels very weird ; it was the case for me when I first tried to play a bass after years of guitar. But after a few times changing from an instrument to another, it becomes very natural. Also this habbit is really useful for bass-only players, when switching to a short scale bass.
I did goof around on guitar for a bit, but for now my guitar is chilling in its case. I am not at the level of competency I want to be on bass, so with limited practice time I am focusing on my playing, other things like guitars and pedals are on the back burner for now.
When I first started goofing on bass, my brother was already a talented guitarist. Hearing what he was doing made me GAS for a guitar bad. So, I decided to get one… I bought an Ibanez Jem 7-string, thinking the low B string would make the transition easier.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
I could not have been more wrong. Anyway, I sold it and bought an extremely low-end Squier Stratocaster. After a while I bored of guitar and decided to start experimenting on it. I converted it to fretless and swapped the phase on the pickups. It was a weird beast. I wound up giving it to my brother and lost track of it.
That was back in the 90s. Currently I have three of my brother’s acoustics here at my house (he left them with our dad when he moved out, and dad wanted them out of the house; I live next door to our dad, so I just brought them over here). I haven’t touched any of 'em, play-wise. They’re just waiting for my bro to pick 'em up.
So one unexpected thing I find is that guitar practice is a substitute for bass practice. As in, the time I put in to practicing guitar keeps my bass skills up and in fact I think is improving them in some respects. Bottom line, they are different skillsets with a lot of overlap, and you will see progress in the overlapping parts, especially fretting hand dexterity and strength.
I played guitar as a kid. I tried to pick it up a couple of years back, but I assumed my lack of finger dexterity was a result of other health issues, so I let it go.
Anyway, the old acoustic guitar is upstairs calling me. That said, I’m too focused on the B2B course to do it.
I’ve messed around with guitar on and off for about 10 years, never really made any significant process. Since picking up a bass, even before starting B2B, it just felt more right. More progress, more enjoyment. What I did know from guitar did make starting out seem easier, but I’d say I am past the slight edge I had at first, now its all new.
Still have my two guitars, but they sit in cases in the closet.
I agree 100%.
Did you notice that he has Josh long fingers.
I practice guitar 3-4 times a week, usually on acoustic, and get more satisfaction out of it than the bass.
I was at a jam session last night and the bass player was only playing Roots and Fifths. At the break he asked me why I never bring my bass to the sessions. I told him it was more enjoyable for me and as we were there to enjoy ourselves why not. Most of the time I play rhythm guitar on my acoustic and I I do not think bass is really geared toward playing full chords.
These are just my opinions and mine alone take from them what you will. YMMV
I agree. If I want to play anything beyond a power chord, I am reaching for a guitar or keyboard, not a bass. Unless they are arpegiatted, bass chords sound really muddy to me in comparison. YMMV of course. Some artists can do great things with them, but for me other instruments are much more suitable.
Not actually, I’m going the other way. I am leaning guitar and fooling around with bass. I’m an old guy, don’t ask me how old, I’m just OLD and probably trying to compensate for the nearness of the inevitable, but irrespective of that, I used to be heavily involved in bluegrass music. I admit it, I’m a recovering banjo player, but I’ve been fingerpick free for almost 30 years. The mandolin saved me from a fate worse than death. Life got in the way and I just quit back around 1990. At the start of this pandemic thing, I needed something to occupy my while serving out what turns out to be three years (so far) of house arrest for a septuagenarian liver transplant recipient. So, I bought a guitar to pass the time. Actually that worked out pretty well for me. I have had some success with it. Now I find myself wanting to play bass. Bass is the most consistently MISSING part of bluegrass music. More than 1/2 of the acts that I hear today don’t have ANY bass. For some reason there is, in the bluegrass community a distain for anything electric, and that includes BASS. So why do we see a few electric basses scattered around the bluegrass scene? It’s because an upright double bass, the “approved” instrument, is just too darned big to deal with and you still have to amplify it in order to hear it. Just this week I bought an acoustic/electric 5 string, a Michael Kelly Dragonfly. I got it for exactly 1/2 price, so how could I say no? There was a problem, the electronics did not work. It took me about 3 minutes to figure out the problem and it is playing fine right now.
I’ve only had this a couple of days, and it feels like I have Shamu the whale in my lap when I play and my left arm is suddenly a bit too short and OMG a look at the size of that B string! But it’s all good. I’ll adjust to it eventually.
