Things you wish you'd known earlier?

[ivansc]

Playing with your head between a very loud bass amp and muscular drummer's cymbals makes you go very deaf sooner or later. Earplugs? EARplugs???
So glad I was able to convince my kids that looking after their hearing while young was a good idea.

Beating the living daylights out of your bass to get a good sound (for years, before there were many proper bass amps available in the UK) eventually knackers the joints in your hands.

That is all.

[bassbiscuits]

[quote name='bassbiscuits' timestamp='1507462013' post='3385554']
I wish I'd known how much of my life was going to be spent playing music. I'd have actually bothered learning to read and write music properly and taking GCSE and A Level music at school perhaps.
[/quote]

In fairness this might be a blessing in disguise tho.

Pre Internet era, I worked out stuff by ear, from records, tapes, and live videos. This formed my approach to playing, and has given me a good ear for dissecting the different parts of songs and instrumentation which I wouldn't have ever developed if I'd just googled everything or read it from a chart.

Still I think a better command of music theory somewhere along the way wouldn't have hurt at all.

Though in the 30+ years since I started playing I've kind of worked out pretty much what I'm doing, even if it's taken me a bit longer to get there!

Edited October 8, 2017 by bassbiscuits

[bassbiscuits]

I also wish I'd realised that there's a whole world of musicians gigging, teaching and performing to make a decent living.

They aren't famous, or household names, but they are proper, genuine, working musicians.

When I began, I had the impression that unless you were on Top of the Pops or on some huge world tour, you weren't a real musician.

There are a tiny percentage who achieve that, and at the other end are the people who never get past being a bedroom player. But the rest of us are people whose lives involving making music at varying levels of professionalism, maybe as a lucrative hobby, maybe as our main job.

I wish I'd known they existed back when I started. Would have helped make it all seem a bit more achievable and reasonable, rather than just a wild dream of wanting to be a rockstar.

[Norris]

If you play in a band regularly you are not going to have much of a weekend social life outside of it

You don't need an expensive bass (certainly not nowadays) to make a good noise

The groove is more important than the actual notes

[gjones]

Don't be scared of the truss rod.

[interpol52]

[quote name='Raslee' timestamp='1507488127' post='3385826']
I wish I’d have known the drugs don’t work 😃😃😃😃
[/quote]

I wouldn't worry, it's a dreadful song. 😉

[lowdowner]

[quote name='Norris' timestamp='1507492887' post='3385886']

The groove is more important than the actual notes
[/quote]

So true

[scalpy]

The guitarist doesn’t have to have a Marshall half stack for pub gigs. Drummers should spend more money on cymbals than drums. Singers should spend money on kit full stop.

[chris_b]

I'll second the ear plug thing.

I waited until the damage was done.

How stupid is that?

[project_c]

I wish i'd been told this: The amp you bought sounds fine, you don't need to sell it and keep buying others and spend thousands and thousands of pounds. It's the room you keep it in that makes it sound like a bucket full of turds. Took me a while to get my head around that.

[bazzbass]

chord tones

playing the right note is so much easier when you understand chord tones

wish I'd known that crap drummers are meant to be fired !

[Bigwan]

I wish I'd known how much variation there could be in one type of bass and not condemned all P-basses because I'd experienced one sh*tter...