Metal Reviews

How should I go about this?

I was self taught on the guitar for my first year. I'd recommend geting some tabs of songs that you love but make sure to get simple ones. As soon as you here the riffs you love getting played by you you'll be hooked and it'll give you the drive to carry on and get through the less interesting stuff.

I'd imagine that with bass playing with others would also be a good thing.

Most of all have patience and come to terms with the realisation that you will suck balls for a long period of time.

Buy a bass and amp. Play.

I had met someone who said he taught himself with one of those instructional books and video cds. Sounds reasonable.

Eat the flesh of Geddy Lee, gain his powers.

Fixed. they're kinda essential for bass since playing on time is whats important.

One of the guitarists in my band is self-taught and he's got mad skillz so it's definitely possible. I'd suggest grabbing an instructional video and working from that or just searching the web for excersizes.

If you want to be working in the right direction, here's what you should look up and work on being able to do:

Arpeggios in any key Major and Minor (These are basically the guitar chords just played out note by note. It's easier on a bass because there's only four strings)

Pentatonic Scales in any key also Major and Minor (These are scales where you play every note in a given key)

There are 5 different "positions" that you can do these in. Eg: One if you start with your root note on the E string, one for the A string, and so forth. If you can learn all of those scales, plus be able to know what note each fret on the bass corresponds to, then you'll be able to play along with anything your future band will tell you.

Tada! Sorry if that was confusing, I just woke up a few minutes ago. If you want me to elaborate I will.

If you're going to teach yourself, then get some frilly "HOW TO PLAY BASS" books or videos or something. They'd probably help.

A teacher would probably be really good, though, but you're teaching yourself, so that shouldn't matter.

Uuuummm... Remember that the bess is lumped in with the rhythm section, so as Noodles said, a metronome would be really useful. Having previous experience with drums helped me out there.

Oh yeah, don't buy a fretless bass either. My friend once bought one as her first bass, then she took lessons and the dude told her a fretless isn't a good first bass, so she bought another and gave me the fretless for a going away present (Air Force). SWEET!

I actually played it well, but I always thought the guitar sucked because it was always slightly out of tune. Then another friend came to visit me in England (5 years after I was given the bass) and he's a badass bass player. He picked it up and started jammin' and it sounded killer, but he was playing it wrong, so I thought. He was placing his fingers ON the fret (the line where the fret would be, rather), not in between them like I was playing it. I guess that's how you play a fretless. I wish someone had told me. I have a ton of old demos that have a weird bass sound to them because I was playing that bitch wrong for like 5 years and everything was just slightly out of tune.

See this is the sort of thing I'm looking for, thanks nood.

Also thanks to Morlock for that confusing but borderline comprihensible post. I'm just wondering whether its better to begin reading some insulting book (lead goes in amp! yays!) that inevitably has some usefulness tucked away behid the jokes or just start hitting the thing along to some tabs and work from there.

So cheers for the advise guys, keep it coming if you've got some more.

And Ken - I'd never be enough of a bawbag to buy a fretless. Shit, I want to maybe be almost as good as Cronos, not Steve di Giorgio.

Yeah, but a fretless has a killer sound when you slide, dude.

Fretlesses do indeed sound very nice indeed. I just wish I was good enough to play them.

Uh...indeed. :roll:

With some Steve Harris special sauce. :shock: Take a shot in the mouth and you'll be good.

Yeah I play bass and got kinda confused by Morlock's post since I don't even know all of the notes on my bass yet lol.

Fretless basses are cool because you can play anything on them and it sounds awesome.

Crazy Blind Guitar Solo

http://www.leenks.com/media689.htm

Crank it up as a loud a hell and wake up all your neighbours....

I just brought a full set of drums from ebay and a " Dumbies guide to drums dvd " and havent looked back.

INDEEDY THEY DO

FUCK

Bass was the first instrument I learned to play (motivated by this guy).

I wouldn't worry about the metronome at the beginning. Before learning how to move your fingers and so on, I find metronomes more stressful than useful.


Check out the sample for motivation. That song is so unbelievably metal, even though it's not.

I've listened to that song like 6 or 7 times in a row now, it's fuckin' awesome, haha!

Glad you liked it.

Yep, Larry Graham is the man. Father of slap bass and a prominent figure in the 70's progressive funk music scene with Sly and the Family Stone, which is also a damn good funk band. Probably one of the best bassists ever.

Regrettably, I doubt that you will like much of his work. He's made a lot of high quality funk and soul music, but it doesn't really have the 'balls' of this particular song. I can upload you a sample or two if you are curious.