Wednesday, April 24, 2013

The Root Note

To ALL fans of bass guitars and bass guitar music out there: Welcome to my new blog for just that!

Whether you are a musician (bass and otherwise) or a music lover, I invite you into my world of the Low End. This post is titled "The Root Note" as it is my first post in this blog.

Now for some context. I have been a musician for 11 years now. I started out with guitar and played that for several years before playing bass. I was always interested in the sound of the bass groove thanks to one of my favourite bands: Red Hot Chili Peppers (who would have guessed?). Flea's approach to bass in the sea of music that I was listening to at that time really stood out to me, making me wish I was playing bass as well. As a result, any time I touched a bass, it resulted in some lame-ass slapping attempt!

However, as the story goes for many guitarists-turned-bassist, I got into a band that already had two guitarists and needed a bassist. I just wanted to jam and said hey yea I am your man! I promptly bought a bass and started practicing. In the beginning my approach to bass was very guitarist-like (solo at every chance until the lead guitarist says "hey stop that! that's my job!"). However, I seemed to have a feel for the bass already and quickly grew as a player.

That was then, and today my influences include all the usual suspects including Flea, Jaco Pastorius, Larry Graham, Bootsy Collins, Victor Wooten etc. Now, I can't help but be funky, jazzy and throw in a harmonic every so often. I am pretty sure I am nearly all bassist now.

So that's that.

Groove on!