My milestone? Played my first gig on bass.
Not really a big deal - but some background. I volunteered to play bass for the pit band for an am dram groups 50th Anniversary production at the local theatre (my daughter, wife, sister and setp son were all involved and I’d played guitar for the company last year, depping for their regular guy).
Thing is, I’d never played bass before, and we didn’t have a bass in the house until Christmas when my 33 y/o son gave his lovely Ibanez EDA 900 to my 17 y/o daughter). Well, I didn’t want to “steal” her guitar and, being more of a classic rock type of guy, I treated myself to a Mexican Jazz bass and Rumble 40 (we were being DI to the desk, so I only needed it for monitoring) in February and set about learning in excess of 40 songs for the show. These were tunes from everything from Gilbert and Sullivan’s “Mikado” through “Great Balls of Fire” and the Barry Manilow “Copacabana”.
Did I say learn?
We were mostly working from piano reductions, most without chord symbols, so I spent a good deal of time transcribing bass lines from these (as written most went well below the bass cleff with ledger lines). All the while making a start on B2B as whilst I have a reasonable understanding of theory and much of the fretboard is transferable from guitar, I knew I’d need some basic technique.
The show was last week and I just about got away with it. I was hearing bum notes from myself all over the play, but listening back to the recordings, it really wasn’t as bad as I thought and I’m feeling rather pleased with what I achieved.
My only dissappointment is I would have hoped that all this transcription and playing from scores I’d written would have improved my ability to sight read rather more than it has, but I guess I just have to accept I’m much slower at remembering things than I used to be. The notes on the treble cleff are automatic to me (I learned to read the dots as a 7 year old choirboy) but I still frequently find myself having to stop and work out what a note is on the bass clef. It’s frustratiing - I have no problem finding the note on the fretboard though, so I guess I’m halfway there.
Next milestone is to finish the B2B (currently trying to get “My Sharona” a bit tighter and then I’ll attack the 50 songs.
Having done 40+ songs in three months, I expect to finish the 50 songs by teatime!
In all seriousness, I appreciate there’s a vast difference between being able to get away with playing something and playing something well - even if playing exactly the same notes, so I’m looking forward to studying this new instrument seriously.
Fantastic site/forum, by the way. Love the encouragement and mutual respect.
). A bit of a physical advantage but mostly it was a matter of exercise and stretching - I do a lot of technical exercises. Oh, and guitar experience ofc, so I entered from the level of slightly more efficient fingers.
