It seems that there are quite a few users from Europe and Asia on these forums. More so than most other forums I tend to be on that have .com addresses (as opposed to .uk or some other region). I was just wondering if there is a reason behind this that is greater than just your typical internet accessibility explanation.
What I mean by this is: Is playing bass more common/popular/accessible in other parts of the world than in America?
Tokyo certainly seems like a popular place, and I am sure there is a non-zero number of people that play bass because of the culture in Tokyo and the massive availability of the instrument there. Is the same true in other parts of the world?
An interesting question @brandoncmurphy, especially since the first electric bass was supposedly designed and developed in Seattle Washington back in the 1930ās.
Granted, the double bass was a somewhat āmorphedā version of the European cello and referred to as a bass violin until (possibly) the players bow broke during the middle of a song and the only way he (or she) could play the damn thing was by plucking the strings instead of sawing on them!! .
Anyway, it is great that the instrument is gaining popularity throughout all āgenresā of music, and I believe āgenresā can be conceived as more the āculturalā designator rather than the mere (ethnic or country?) designatorā¦???..
The B2B course pretty much hits many of these different music genres - something pretty cool in my bookā¦
Interesting question. I donāt have a big picture answer, but just my impression from where I live. (Germany, Cologne)
Bass is as easily accessible as guitar, but not as popular. You will still be able to buy a bass in shops which sell guitars. Itās not the most popular instrument, but popular enough.
Most bass players I know are people who upgraded from guitar. Yes, I see it as upgrade. There are exceptions of course, but in general when you take all the bass players and all the guitar players the bass players are more aware of the musical context and less egocentric. As with every and all generalizations this is not true for everyone and there are a lot of reasons for my generalization which do NOT equal guitar = bad (e.g. guitar is most of the time the first instrument picked up).
But except for more exotic instruments like bagpipe or stuff like that the usual (guitar, bass, drums, piano, brass instruments, sax) is easily accessible as instrument and training/lessons.
I think bass being so popular here is a subset of all music being popular here. A lot of value is placed on music education here, and more or less every kid gets it, and a proportionally larger number of people here end up as being in to playing music than in the US, at least where I grew up.
