It’s been just over a year since I started playing around with the bass guitar, starting off as a pandemic distraction. I was introduced to good bass by a friend in high school who gave me a Victor Wooten CD. My appreciation was recently taken to another level last year by YouTube when Davie504 somehow found his way on my feed, and the rabbit hole thereafter. I thought to myself that this was something I could probably do.
The spin off to learning bass was not just acquiring a new instrumental skill, but expanded my musicality and appreciation of music. I started listening more to bass lines, and then more to all the other lines in a piece. One of the earliest bass lines I learned was Daft Punk’s Around the World. After practicing the two bass sections of ATW, the easy section and the hard section, I tried in vain to do an acoustic instrumental cover of the famous electronic work.
Edwin asked me why I was learning ATW as it is the dumbest song out there. I used to agree, but taking it apart and learning all the different parts and nuances that make it ATW has given me a whole different perspective. Even though my endeavour at recreating ATW sounded horrible, I feel like I have learned a lot:
- The bass (watched other people play the parts, practiced a lot)
- All the other parts: keys, drums, rhythm
- How to program a synth and putting tracks together on Ableton Live, effects (YouTube and Fiverr lessons)
The theme of the musical journey reappears, and although I would have liked a nice end product, I feel like my ATW affair was a worthwhile pursuit regardless.
Learning the bass also expanded what I was able to do creativity-wise. I was able to put together some fun videos of me and family performing some songs like Lost in the Woods. Don’t get me wrong, solo piano and piano accompaniment is great, but adding bass makes it way phat and thicc.
Halfway through the pandemic, I added a cheap glitchy drum set to the band which very quickly overwhelmed the cerebellum. I realized short of simple rhythms, I wouldn’t be able to learn the drums to any proficiency without serious work. But even with simple percussion, I learned how bad my timing after a lifetime as a spoiled solo instrumentalist (piano). While recording separate tracks, I found it really challenging to nail the beat, or groove, even though I was the one playing all of them. An example is Lost in the Woods, where I recorded the piano first sans metronome, and I had to later follow with the bass. I thought a slow, steady and relatively simple song like Perfect Day wouldn’t take long to put together, but was I wrong mainly because of getting all the instruments in sync even while playing to a metronome.
Along the way, I learned about recording, and particularly how to mic a grand piano so it sounds better. Compare Lost in the Woods (Blue USB mic) and Un Sospiro (dual SM57s on loan from my neighbour). I also learned the basics of mixing tracks, things like compression of the regular and the sidechain types, reverb and delay, hi pass filters, EQs, MIDI, etc. Further offshoots from my foray into bass include music theory, improvisation, ear training, and video editing.
Collaborative efforts have been made challenging by not only the pandemic, but also the schedules and priorities of adulthood and being a non-professional musician. Learning music is enhanced exponentially by peers who are just as hungry for similar knowledge and skill, but in the absence of this, the Internet and YouTube has been a fair substitute for motivation and inspiration.
This lazy Sunday, I recorded myself playing a couple of fun bass lines for posterity.
