Bored of bass. . . .

[matt_citizenbass]

if you play by yourself,
get into effects or something.

my favourite thing to do at the moment is just sit down with my amp and pedalboard and loop and improvise over the top.

it's incredibly satisfying getting the loops to work and i find improves my playing in terms of understanding how things can fit in and generally everything else.

but the best thing to do is join a band, don't bother about "locking" in with the drummer or following the guitarist (i can imagine that would be well boring) do you your own thing and see how it fits, i love hearing a bass line running up and down in the background of a song.

[xgsjx]

There's a lot of good advice already there for you & as most say, sit with a drummer or drum pattern & play a groove with it. Start off with just one or two notes bumping them in time with the kick & then try putting a different note in there that doesn't land on a kick. Then drop one or two of those kick notes you was playing & you should have a groove.
Listen to what you're playing & play along to some CDs on your own. "Working in a coalmine" by Lee Dorsey is a brilliant easy bassline to play that has little in the way of drums to back it up.

I've been playing bass for 20+ years and a few times have went to give it up but I'm glad I didn't. I was gonna get some tutoring but never did(still thinking about it tho).
Playing things that you enjoy get easier as you gain knowledge of how the bass works. Like I've said to a few folk, Bass might be easier to learn quickly than guitar, but it's harder to get good at (I play both & I find guitar a doddle to play but there's probably 100 guitards for every bassist).

At the end of the day tho, if bass is boring you then you may not have the "groove" needed to enjoy playing it & maybe keys or sax would be a better option, but only you know the answer to that. I would put into practice some of the guys here have given you (AM1 & all the other lovely ladies are included as I class either sex as "one of the guys") and see how you feel afterwards.

Most importantly, enjoy what you're doing. Even if it is something ridiculously easy like "the Void" by the Beatles.

[Hodge]

First off I'd have to say don't worry too much about feeling that you're a crap player.

I can guarantee that there's not a single person here that hasn't at some point felt dissatisfied with their playing...otherwise we'd all be quite content playing quarter notes on the root to every song.

As people above have said, the bass is possibly the easiest instrument to play in a band, but the function that the bass fulfills in a band is definately the hardest to master.

You're basically the link between the harmonic structure of the song and the rhythmic structure of the song. You tie together what everyone else is doing and make it into a cohesive whole. That's not an easy thing to achieve and it's this challenge makes the bass so interesting and so satisfying when you feel you've done it well.

The majority of the audience may leave a gig talking about how great the guitarist was, but you can leave knowing that YOU are the one that made their night and they don't even realise it..... I quite like that.

A good example is a gig our band played many years ago (before I'd learned to tuck my lead back over my strap)..... in a crowded pub some drunk bloke fell into the guitarist's mic stand and it smacked him in the nose. He stopped playing for ten seconds or so, yet the crowd kept on dancing to the rest of the band. A while later a balloon wandered onto the stage and I kicked it back into the crowd, kicking my lead out of my bass in the process. The dancing faltered and everyone looked around, confused as to why everything felt empty all of a sudden, once I was back in action the party resumed.......THAT's the level of control the bass has over a crowd, whether they're conscious of it or not.

To me it seems that the mere fact that you've posted this request for advice shows that at some level you already understand this, and are aware that at the moment you're not doing it as well as you'd like.
That's a promising start, all you need now is to learn how to do it.....sounds easy if you say it fast. Thankfully it's not easy at all, if it were we'd all have mastered it a long time ago and then given up out of sheer boredom.

My advice would be to develop the habit of ACTIVE listening. What I mean by that is rather than just passively letting a song wash over you, as most non-musicians do, actually think as you listen about what the bassist is doing.....where they're playing root notes, where they're adding little phrases that make chord changes flow together smoothly, where they leave spaces, how their notes fall on or around the kick drum, how their line relates to the more obvious melody of the singer or whoever. Get a cheap guitar and learn a few chords, then when you're working out a bass line you like also learn what chords are being played, that way you'll develop more of an understanding of how each note of the bass line relates to the song as a whole.

Take time to listen to bass players who aren't flashy soloists with super-human technique....the fancy players very often have the basics down before they begin the flashy stuff, but it's not easy to pick out amongst all the ickety ickety ....sorry, I mean slapping.... or the tapping or 32nd note solos.

I don't know what sort of music you're into, but in any style you can find solid players who don't get alot of glory but do their job and put how good the song sounds above how good they themselves sound. At the stage you're at you'll learn alot more from them than you will from all the Wootens and Sheehans and Berlins combined. Not knocking any of those players, but with them the fundamental skills aren't so easy to hear through all the fancy stuff when you're just starting out.

As for who to follow...well it's not really a matter of following anyone, but more a case of playing WITH someone...so that each of you compliment what the other is playing and the result is more than the sum of the two parts.
99 times out of a hundred that person will be the drummer.

You never follow the guitarist, it's actually the guitarist that occasionally follows you.....we just let them think that they're leading to keep them happy. A guitarist's ego is the only thing more fragile than their strings.

I tend to think of a band in terms of cake...... just bear with me, alright?.......you and the drummer are the cake, the guitarist and the singer are icing and fancy little baubles.
A cake without icing is still a cake, but icing and baubles without cake is just a pile of sugary crap.

It's easy to be fooled into thinking that the fancy stuff is the hard part, but it's really not. As an example, when I was younger I was a massive Geddy Lee fan, I could play along to all the earlier rush albums (up to Moving Pictures) all the way through, note for note.....I thought I was awesome. Then one night I found myself having to play Clapton's "Lay Down Sally" so that the birthday boy at the party we were playing at could have a sing. Could I play a steady, simple root-fifth type thing all the way through the song without losing the groove?.....not a hope. It was a real kick up the arse for me.

So don't get disheartened, rise to the challenge, actively listen to anything and everything; the most ardent death-metal freak can still learn alot from a Rutger Gunnarson line on an Abba song or a Duck Dunn line on Otis Redding song, even adverts on the telly....nothing is out of bounds.

Good luck, and enjoy.

[Bay Splayer]

learn to slap...if you cannot slap, you will [b]never[/b] be a [b]proper[/b] bassist

[4000]

[quote name='Hodge' post='505218' date='Jun 4 2009, 02:06 AM']First off I'd have to say don't worry too much about feeling that you're a crap player.

I can guarantee that there's not a single person here that hasn't at some point felt dissatisfied with their playing...otherwise we'd all be quite content playing quarter notes on the root to every song.


My advice would be to develop the habit of ACTIVE listening. What I mean by that is rather than just passively letting a song wash over you, as most non-musicians do, actually think as you listen about what the bassist is doing.....where they're playing root notes, where they're adding little phrases that make chord changes flow together smoothly, where they leave spaces, how their notes fall on or around the kick drum, how their line relates to the more obvious melody of the singer or whoever. Get a cheap guitar and learn a few chords, then when you're working out a bass line you like also learn what chords are being played, that way you'll develop more of an understanding of how each note of the bass line relates to the song as a whole.[/quote]

+1. Learn lines off records, and do it by ear. Sing melodies and learn to play them. I've been a songwriting bassist for nearly 30 years and for me that's the key. Most of my lines have been written before I ever touch the bass.

[lowdown]

[quote name='AM1' post='430592' date='Mar 10 2009, 04:18 PM']Buy a cheap keyboard and learn how to play chords and scales. This will teach you about intervals and harmony and the impact upon chords of playing different root notes and building additional notes upon chords.[/quote]


That is good advice for noobies and advanced.
If you can not get hold of some keys, maybe Guitar.
Dont get to serious with Guitar though, because you will never learn to sightread,
And you will lose all your friends.



Garry

[farmer61]

[quote name='liamcapleton' post='430533' date='Mar 10 2009, 03:33 PM']I good way of getting back on it I would say is joining a band. You get money from it, and have a damn good time playing live too.[/quote]


+1 Even the most boring tune can be really fun when playing to an audience, the bass playing almost becomes secondary to the enjoyment of gigging.

[Kongo]

Become a "Go-Between"...it works for me.
It happened from playing bass without learning a single song for over a year...just cause I got bored of it.
Then when you play in a band you become "Independant".
I don't mean solo I mean work with the drummers rhythm, then with the guitarists notes, then with the other guitarist or vocalist...The bass guitar has an awesome job that the uneducated don't realise: The power to change the direction of music ALONE!

Even drop out...Sometimes I just drop out for a measure or 2 just to let the music breathe and the band might find something to do because of that.

Become a sonic merchant...just never loose your time. Rhythm must be constant but a bassist will do this naturally.

[Cat Burrito]

Get lessons to help you out of the rut. And play with more people. Simple as that