bass vs. standard guitar

I’m considering learning an instrument. My choices are, currently, violin, guitar, and bass guitar. I was wondering what people think the relative benefits are to learning one over the other for one’s first instrument (as far as the guitars go. Thoughts on the violin go in a different direction).

Thankee.
bamf

Guitar. If you can play that you can play bass anyway, and it’s far more versatile - you can’t pick up a bass at parties or around a campfire and entertain the folks by yourself :slight_smile:

I’ll agree with AndrewT.

Though bass guitar deserves a few more comments.
Advantage: If you are planning on being in a rock band, a good bass player would be more sought after than a good guitar player. (Guitar players are a dime a dozen. Yes I am yet another guitar player).

Disadvantage: Bass notes travel VERY far. If you are playing bass at a decent volume in your attic, people in the basement will probably hear you. It could be bad enough that neighbors would start complaining.

The world needs more bass players. More good ones. As has been mentioned, guitar players are a dime a dozen, and groups are always looking for bassists. Despite how loud playing one is (to your neighbors), if you think you’d like to learn how to play bass, go for it. You don’t have to blast it.

I started out on it 35 years ago. After having played bass for awhile, the guitar was easier to learn, because I’d already figured out the frets on the first four strings. I got work for money playing bass when I was a kid, just because word got around that I played one - even when I didn’t have one yet! So yeah, I’d recommend it.

Bass players are needed, but guitarists get all the chicks.

I say learn both. You can start with the guitar but as everyone who’s picked one up in the last thirty years knows, the first thing you’re gonna do is figure out the bass to “Smoke On The Water”, anyway!

Duh duh DUH!!! :wink:

Yes, but that’s why you practice with headphones plugged into your practice amp. That way no one can hear how badly you suck when you first start out too.

(Yup, I’m one of those new to it, sucks real bad, but enjoys learning bass… always with headphone so the meighbours don’t even know.)

I played standup and electric bass for about ten years, though I don’t play much any more.

Advantages to the bass:
Much easier to get in a combo/band with decent musicians. Sometimes all a bass player needs to get in a band is to be in possession of a bass and an amp. I was a middling player (on both standup and electric) and played with some incredible musicians in rock bands, jazz combos, and orchestras.

It’s also easier to be in a playing band while still learning. For much “party rock” the bass player can get away with hammering away on the root of the chord in straight 4/4 (ala the Ramones). As you get better, you learn more chops and add them in. If someone had decent rhythm, I could probably teach them to play passable 50’s / early 60’s rock in less than a week.

Pro or con depending what your personality is like: It’s kind of like being a lineman on a football team. To the unitiated, what you do is almost invisible, but in reality you are perhaps the most important instrument in the band.

In the words of Todd Snider:

The biggest (an almost the only) disadvantage is that you have to be very, very good to be able to play something by yourself that anyone else will recognize as music. Without being in a band, practicing can become quite boring. Wowwing the ladies (or the gentlemen as is your preference) is well nigh impossible, nless they happen to also be bass players.

Another disadvantage is that is seems to be more difficult to sing and play bass at the same time. Playing rhythm guitar and singing is almost natural, but playing bass and singing is a challenge. Certainly many many people learn to do it (say, like Geddy Lee and Sting), but I have found it a challenge (and have confirmed this feeling with other friends who play both guitar and bass).

It depends a lot on what you want to do. A first-glance, simplified view would be this: with violin/fiddle, you can play lead; with bass guitar, you can play rhythm; with guitar, you can play either or (if you’re good enough) both. The guitar, like the piano, is a very versatile instrument.

But the question is, what are you after? Playing for your own enjoyment? Being able to entertain solo? Getting into a band? And related to this, what kind of music would you like to play? Rock? Jazz? Country? Classical? Folk? Most instruments fit more readily into some genres than into others.

If you don’t have a clear notion of just what you want, learning the guitar would probably provide the greatest flexibility and give you the broadest foundation for moving to another instrument later.

Nor can you with a guitar, you just think you can.

The switch from guitar to bass is usually not difficult, but it’s a misconception that any guitar player can play bass. About not being able to pick up a bass and entertain people: at the risk of sounding immodest, I can. Lots of Bach’s pieces, for example, transfer beautifully to the bass guitar. Ever heard his “Toccata and Fugue in D Minor” rendered by a good bass player?

Still, for the most part, your point is taken. Most bass lines would be pretty uninteresting to listen to by themselves. The guitar is far more versatile.

I agree with much of what’s been said here. igloorex made some excellent points. You can become a passable member of a band a lot quicker playing bass than playing guitar–at the early stages at least, bass is much easier. And bass players tend to stand in the back and not be noticed too much–it doesn’t suit everyone’s personality.

For some, including me, bass is just a lot more fun. After 20 or more years of playing guitar (mostly acoustic fingerstyle, but some electric as well), I switched to bass. That was about 4 years ago, and I still prefer bass, though guitar is also fun. It’s a bit rare to find a bass player who started out on bass. Even Jaco Pastorius started out on drums.

I don’t play violin, but I believe the learning curve for that will be a lot steeper than for either bass or guitar.

I had a friend who played bass. He loved it. Apparently, the words, “Hey man, I just play the bass.” carries a lot of weight.

I’ve witness both these senarios:

Bouncer at a gig assisting set up: Where would you like [big piece of equipment].
Bass Player: Hey man, I just play the bass.
BAAGASU: Oh, okay. (Goes off to ask someone else.)


Bartender: Wow, you all are really jamming.
BP: Hey man, I just play the bass.
Bartender: And how. (Gives hima beer.)

Not around here they don’t.

Well, given how badly I still play after 22 years of mucking about, you probably want to do the opposite of whatever I say, but . . . .

I play bass almost exclusively these days (I play strictly for my own amusement – haven’t played in front of an audience since May of 1986), but I started out trying to play guitar (I didn’t own a bass until about four years ago), and I’m glad that I did. I never really progressed much past power-chords on guitar, but just that bit was enough that I think I have more of an idea of what’s going on in most songs than if I’d just started out thumping along on the root of the chords on bass. I ended up on bass like a lot of us do – because I was always the worst guitarist in any group I played with, so they’d hand me a bass and just tell me to find the root and stay there.

I didn’t really object, because temperamentally I’m much more of a “stand off to the side and do the grunt work that doesn’t get noticed much but makes the rest possible” kind of guy than a “look at me I have a hairy chest and a big willy” lead guitar sort. In high school band, I was one of the equipment managers. Most of my experience in live music has been as a roadie/sound guy. So even if I were a much better musician, I’d probably still gravitate toward bass. And even when I was trying to play guitar, I’d often find myself picking out the bass line and playing that as I was learning a song.

I do think it’s probably easier to get to the point where you can play a few things passably on bass than on guitar, so if you’re the sort with a short attention span and/or a need for quick gratification, bass might be a better choice. I got so frustrated with my inability to make my fingers do what they were supposed to on guitar that I didn’t play at all for eight years or so.

It is kind of tough to maintain your interest if you’re playing by yourself on bass, but I’ve gotten around that for the last year or so (and learned more than in the previous twenty) by playing around with Guitar Pro, which lets me play along, read either the tab or sheet music or chords for either the bass or guitar parts, hear the bass line alone, or mute just the bass line so that I can hear just the other parts with me playing the bass line. It’s like having a band around that doesn’t ever get tired of playing the same stuff over and over again, will willingly slow down the tempo to let you get a part down, and doesn’t care how many times you muff something – and has a decent bass player hanging around to show you what to do. The downside is that you’re limited to playing stuff that’s had GP files created and uploaded, but there’s several hundred of them, and I’ve found enough stuff to keep me occupied.

One of the best things about playing bass is that once you’ve learned some basic skills and can navigate chord changes in E, G, A, C and D, you can start to play along with your favorite records. Well, if your favorite records are by Pastorius, please disregard. But generally, you can figure out what the guy on the record is doing, and copy it. I love to be Paul McCartney for a half hour, hitting all his notes at the same time he’s hitting them. And I can’t describe what it’s like to be Walter Becker or Chuck Rainey on “Aja” and “Gaucho” for the length of several songs. I’ve got a demo of “Black Cow” with just Donald Fagen at the piano. I played the bass to it for the first time the other day. To get it right just blows me away, and it’ll do the same for you, one of these days. A bonus is when somebody has written a particularly clever chord resolution that you would never have thought of in two lifetimes, and you notice it for the first time in hundreds of listens because you’re playing along with it, and you go “Holy shit, the guy who came up with this is a genius!” It inspires you to be good, to try to write something at least as clever. If that’s not a reasonable goal, you can be the bassist who understands why the guy who wrote that music is a genius.

I like to get out compilation CDs full of songs I know, and just play along with each one. To be able to keep up with the studio pros is not only an incredible feeling that you can’t share with anybody, but it’s also a very useful skill that will win you respect among the people you will eventually play with. Drummers, guitarists and pianists will love you.

Start out with guitar. Learn the chords, arpeggios, scales. Then, if you want to “specialize” on bass, you will have a strong “theoretical” background and it will show. You may find out you are better on one or the other, but no matter. The basic techical skills are about the same. For bass, you do need a strong sense of timing. With a guitar, you can sort of “follow” the drums or bass for the tempo. And don’t ask, a GOOD guitaist can entertain all on his own. I’ve had the privilege of hearing Charlie Byrd, Laurindo Almeida and Andres Segovia in concert. There are some that are good enough to not need anyone else. The rest of us are just hacks.

A list of thoughts:

Portability is worth something. I play violin/fiddle and guitar. Bass is nice, but I would not like to be stuck lugging around a bass amp or a giant acoustic bass.

Being in a band can be a drag. The guitar player can be a tyrant, the drummer unreliable…there are a lot of ways for the chemistry to sour. Unless you already know friends who want you to learn bass for their band, why not learn guitar and start your own band!

How many worlds of music would you like to cover? With my fiddle I play Scandinavian, Appalachian, Western Swing, Cajun, French-Canadian, Irish, Romanian, and classical music. There are some others I have yet to learn, including traditional Chinese. Shirt Ninja–what kind of music do they play at weddings in Shenzhin?