z4twenny

At once? That's usually chordal stuff but plenty of guitarists use all 6 strings consistently. I know I do, whether I need to or not

__________________
41 songs in my profile, click "view all mp3's" all sorts of variety
Check out my new Industrial side project Penis Christ
http://artists.ultimate-guitar.com/penischrist/
Cover of the NIN classic Head like a hole.

CryogenicHusk

How was the transition? Any setbacks? Also, in your (or anybody else's who wishes to jump in on the matter) opinion, who has a better chance to "make it" (whatever that means to you, whether it is getting a gig playing for a relatively famous or really famous band or as a session musician, or whatever), a good bass player or a good guitar player? I'd think the bass player has the advantage, since there are so many more good guitar players out there than there are good bass players, which makes competition for guitar a bit steeper.



Well, at once, I guess. Otherwise, I would think there's no real difference and if it's something that is in range, in terms of frets, for the bass you can imitate anything on it that you could play on the guitar (albeit an octave lower) and doing something like that with just 4 strings and larger frets/thicker strings could be arguably trickier than with those extra 2 strings and smaller frets/thinner strings.

There are those dudes who strum away at open chords and do hardly anything else, and that isn't exactly next-level stuff either.

edit: Lately I've been considering trading the electric guitar for a bass. I'd still keep my classical guitar and keep learning it, but I wonder if I would do better as a bass player than I do as an electric guitar player.

chronowarp

Think about the roles that each primarily play in contemporary music, and then ask yourself that question again.

__________________

Check out my band Socrates and the Lava Gods

CryogenicHusk

So there's no logical reason, just ignorance.

chronowarp

Of course there's a logical reason. The role of the bass in a modern rock ensemble is really simplistic, almost exclusively monophonic, and rarely abundant in any extreme technical challenges.

What is crucial in a mix? Focused low end. Kick and Bass. If youre bass is kapoodlingdoodling all the time then where the **** is your focused low end.

__________________

Check out my band Socrates and the Lava Gods

TV-Casualty

Bass is typically used as a support instrument. If you look at a lot of rock bands with bass players hammering on the root note while the guitar player is more harmonically active, its easy to see why some may consider bass an easier instrument. And in a case like that I would agree, but of course that is not always going to be the case.
As you said before, either can be as easy or as difficult as the player wants to make them

MaggaraMarine

I think it's harder to solo on bass. You can't just play guitar solo on bass, it will sound terrible. Bass solo has to have more groove and usually landing on the root note sounds the best. On guitar it doesn't matter which chord tone you land on when you solo (if you even play chord tones all the time). You can sustain notes in a guitar solo but on bass it will not sound good. You need to play guitar and bass differently. They are as easy/hard to play but the playing style is different.

__________________
My motto: Play what the song needs you to play!

Gear:

Charvel So Cal (MIJ)
Digitech RP355
MXR Micro Chorus
Laney VC30
Tokai TB48

mdc

Yeah you can, and no it won't.

__________________
Sweet

Hail

it's definitely easier to be unique, but it's all about doing whatever you might find your niche in. i wouldn't switch to bass just cause it's easier to be flashy - it's a logistical nightmare, because outside of the big names like hamm, pastorius, wooten and that ilk there's very little exploration in that realm, which means whatever you do needs to involve you absolutely owning it.

plus, after a point, unless you plan on being subserviant to other (read: not necessarily better) musicians, you're quite limited. i'm heavily interested in electronic ensembles because it's just impossible to get the bass to "meld" outside of the rhythm section unless you're approaching it carefully. that's why i'm stuck on the issue of having my music recording ahead of time and having an audio engineer and/or DJ perform with me so the burden isn't completely mine and so the audience has something to watch rather than me hitting buttons for 30 minutes while i'm trying to play my part and be entertaining.

like i said, though, it just fell into my preferences and went together flawlessly. on guitar, i'd have to work my ass off to get something up to speed, clean, to learn a new technique, but on bass it's all very simple and comes incredibly naturally. i enjoy the fact that my fingers are the tone producers and it's very easy to hear what i want the note to sound like and just change my finger approach, articulation, which finger i'm using, whatever and find something that works. with guitar i didn't have fun with that kind of exploration - it was just more of a burden rather than an interesting thing to me. that's all you need - to love innovation and enjoy what you're doing enough to not even realize how much time and effort and obsession you're putting into it.

@magg: listen to jaco. all the secrets of the universe can be found in his playing.

__________________

MaggaraMarine

^^ Yeah... Well, I was talking about more typical guitar solos (try to play a solo by Slash and I think it sounds awful on bass). My band's guitarist sucks on bass. He plays it too much like guitar and that's what makes it sound bad. You need to play them differently, they are different instruments.

__________________
My motto: Play what the song needs you to play!

Gear:

Charvel So Cal (MIJ)
Digitech RP355
MXR Micro Chorus
Laney VC30
Tokai TB48

z4twenny

i disagree i'm by no means the best bass player but i can keep up generally and it's only because i've got decent guitar chops and decent ears. the only way i really play differently is in the purely physical aspect of hand/arm movement to compensate for the neck and string distance.

__________________
41 songs in my profile, click "view all mp3's" all sorts of variety
Check out my new Industrial side project Penis Christ
http://artists.ultimate-guitar.com/penischrist/
Cover of the NIN classic Head like a hole.

food1010

The funny thing is, fewer strings actually makes it a lot ****ing harder. You can only move across an octave + a fourth/fifth in the same position, whereas on guitar you can span two octaves + a third without shifting at all. Plus, working out chord voicings on guitar is a lot easier because of the wider range of notes within the same area of the fretboard.

__________________
Only play what you hear. If you don’t hear anything, don’t play anything.
-Chick Corea

Hail

to be fair a solo by slash sounds awful on guitar, too

__________________

Matt.Guitar

When you start trying to claim one instrument is easier to play than another, you really do open a can of worms.
Why does everything always have to be a contest? Good bass players know their place.

__________________
http://www.youtube.com/user/MattGre...s?sort=p&view=u

MaggaraMarine

Yes, I can also play bass because I can play guitar but they have a different role in a band. The technique is the same but the way you play it is different. You need to play certain things in certain parts to sound good. As I said, our band's guitarist is a terrible bassist. He can play it technically pretty well but when he plays, he doesn't play the right things in the right time and plays solos all the time. It just sounds terrible.

__________________
My motto: Play what the song needs you to play!

Gear:

Charvel So Cal (MIJ)
Digitech RP355
MXR Micro Chorus
Laney VC30
Tokai TB48

Hail

good guitarists keep their amps off

that's when they know we give them the treatses, yes we do, that's a good boy, ruff ruff, metal up your ass, how cute of you, you think you can think

__________________

CryogenicHusk

Yeah, but I was thinking that, not only are there other styles besides rock and in many of those Bass gets a good amount of spotlight, but also that even in rock there's bands like Iron Maiden and Rush that are extremely popular (and not overly technical like tech death metal or a lot of prog metal bands) and have bass players that contribute just as much as the lead instruments. Do people trashing bass simply choose to pretend bands like those even exist? Yeah, I agree that the role of the bass player is usually different, but it is not necessarily easier. The role of the drums is different from the role of the guitar too, yet you don't see people claiming it is an easier instrument because it is more of a rhythm instrument. There's no real justifiable logic to it when it's so easy to provide counter-examples.



Exactly my point. What is typical isn't necessarily the rule. And I agree with the poster above that people need to stop comparing instruments and just play whatever they want to play on the instrument they are most comfortable with, whether it is guitar, bass, piano, sax, banjo, etc.

I immediately think of Bela Fleck playing those Bach violin partitas on the banjo... I'm glad he didn't see himself forcibly confined to country and bluegrass (nothing wrong with those styles, but the more the merrier) just because his instrument of choice is the banjo.



Yeah, I wouldn't switch based on logistics alone. Like I said, I'd give it a try first before making decision. Classical guitar just takes up most of my free time already, and I'm wondering, since I am getting used to using my fingers as tone producers, like you said, if maybe Bass would come to me more naturally at this point than electric guitar does or ever did.

I wasn't thinking about just being flashy and having the spotlight, I was thinking more about which one is easier to have a niche with... Everybody and their little brother plays electric guitar, it seems. So Bass just seems to be something where finding something not everybody can offer might be less difficult. I might be wrong, though. Like you said, if it involves absolutely owning it, then maybe it is just about as difficult, if not more, than it is with the guitar.

I'll see if I can borrow somebody's bass and give it a shot and see if it's more comfortable for me.

JimmyCraig

So he starts the thread and ditches when he sees the angry villagers with burning torches damn

__________________
Technology is a big destroyer of emotion and truth. Technology doesn’t do anything for creativity. Yeah, it makes it easier; but it doesn’t make you a more creative person. That’s the disease we have to fight in any creative field: ease of use

CarsonStevens

My two cents on bass being easier;

I feel that it's easier to pick up as a complete n00b and get productive with more quickly. As was already mentioned, someone with no clue can pick up a bass and play root-note rock pretty easily. And since there is plenty of music where that's all you need, you can contribute to a band just by learning the notes on the neck and off you go.

With a guitar, you'll need to know some chords, at least, and butt-simple solos aren't gonna cut it. So, you'll need to learn more to be able to contribute guitar to a band.

Now, of course, once you get beyond the basics (or is that bassics?), each instrument has its own school of virtuosity that requires a different set of skills to master. Some skills transfer, some don't.

__________________
Primary Gear:

Epiphone Les Paul Standard & Valve Jr. half stack
Epiphone Thunderbird IV Bass & Acoustic B10