How has playing other instruments helped your bass playing?

[odysseus]

9 hours ago, MacDaddy said:

 

Similar to me, my bass playing comes from classical guitar technique.

 

I was asked to play bass in a band with some of my mates precisely because they knew I played classical guitar and they were after a finger-style player.  Fortunately for all of us, I took to it! I still use classical picking patterns up the dusty end on occasion 🙃

[AndyTravis]

I spent several years as a guitarist/singer (only playing bass for fun) after being a dedicated bass player for 6/7 years from the beginning.

 

It taught me 2 things.

 

1 - bass needs to support rather than poke through all the time…I was like an cut price energiser bunny Flea from wish.com when I was a kid…

 

2 - I much prefer being a bass player

[Nail Soup]

12 hours ago, Newfoundfreedom said:

Learning to play the recorder in primary school has had a profound effect on my life. I can't even list the amount of times I've found it an invaluable skill. 

The recorder is a terrible instrument for young school kids IMO.

It is difficult to get a good tone, and it teaches only melody, not rhythm or harmony.

I understand that many schools are now using the ukulele... great news - it's got  short learning curve and covers melody, harmony and rhythm.

[Simon C]

I'm late to this one. The answer is "yes".  I don't think anyone has said "no" 😀. The need for a bassist in church and me already being able to play piano / keys ( quite well) and acoustic guitar (badly) was the reason I started playing bass.  Playing 4 root notes per bar in time can't be that difficult, right?  Whilst that's what got me into bass, the ability to read music and having a good understanding of the theory around chord structure has helped my bass playing to improve.

 

And it has also helped the other way. I used to hate playing the piano with a metronome.  I use one on the bass when practicing technique. So now I am a lot more comfortable with it on the piano.

Edited September 19, 2022 by Simon C

[msb]

I’ve found that after goofing around on a BassVI I’m using more chords and thinking more guitar , I also picked up a baritone guitar. It’s given me another avenue of discovery and has definitely influenced my bass playing.

All good.

[nilorius]

Piano, that was a start of my music instrument touch.

[msb]

I did play French horn in the school band , but the less I say about that is probably for the better. At best I can say I played it badly…

[deepbass5]

ex Trombone player here, Brass Band and Orchestra also played Tuba. It all comes in useful, the theory, playing as part of an ensemble, knowing how light a shade make a piece, learn how to practice properly, stage craft etc etc

 

Playing Trombone in a functions band at a high level was invaluable, sight reading on the fly, respecting other performers on the Bill etc stood me in great sted for running a band for thirty years on Bass .

 

I Think Piano or Guitar would have been more useful to go over to bass but the other lessons i learnt along the way were great. 

[3below]

Trumpet then Sax orchestral stuff in my youth.  Result was/is discipline, listen / watch to what is going on outside the music, wait your turn, tune up rapidly (silently on bass), sight reading (when I get it back up to speed), scales and keys, listening to what is going on with the music.  Wish I had learned piano/keys and could sing.  When asked "do you want to do some vocals?" my reply is "only if you want to finish the band off".

[Pinball]

I played Northumbrian Pipes, 6 String Guitar and Harmonica before bass guitar. I need to improve on all so I'm not sure that they did help much with my bass playing 😁....but my bass playing helped fix my poor timing so it probably worked more in the direction.

[Geek99]

I used to think I wanted to play guitar …. I got better though and now I’ve recovered from that sickness “thou shalt have no other instrument than bass” (commandment #11, turn the slab over, Moses, God wrote it on the back), is my mantra 

[lozkerr]

I've tried a lot of instruments over the years - bugle, trumpet, violin, piano, voice - but I think the one that's helped above all else is the marching snare drum. Especially when not playing an accompaniment and just having to mark the beat by playing solo. 

 

Marking the beat has the bass and tenor drums playing ||: left - left - left right left :|| and the leading snare has to improv over that. Lose your place and you very publically go from hero to zero in an instant.

 

The reason it's helped with playing bass is that I instinctively listen out for the one. If I screw up or get lost, I can land on it without too much effort and that's me back in the pocket.