Okay, here's the deal.

I can play accoustic and electric but not bass. I'm not exactly loaded and am looking to buy a bass guitar in the region of £300-400. I probably will be teaching myself. Can anyone recommend any good books for beginners?

I love the kind of bass work in Illusion, Coma, Pimp & Circumstance of the extended mix of The Greatest Romance. What kind of bass is that? What kind of model do you think is suited to a beginner?


I appreciate any replies.
[Edited 3/8/06 3:01am]

I started learning bass a few years ago, but stopped cuz it made me want to go back to keys. I want to pick it up again now though.

I don't know enough about what type of bass P uses.... but what I bought to learn on and was very happy with was a Fender Jazz bass made in Mexico.

From what I was told by several bass player who helped me pick it out, was that for R&B, jazz/funk etc, the Fender Jazz model was better suited than the other Fender model (forget the name...maybe Precision?)

Mine was made in Mexico I believe which meant it was cheaper than an "true" Fender Jazz, though still a real Fender etc. It came in a cool robin's egg blue. at the time it was in your price range . it looks like it's around $450 now at Samash:
http://www.samash.com/cat...GroupCode=


I"ve been meaning to get it restrung so I can start playing again. (although I already forgot how!)

Also - look into the OLP line of basses - the Stingray. I've got one, I'm pretty happy with it.

The Stingray bass became synonymous with funk-rock in the 90s with players like Flea (Chili Peppers) and other folks.

The bass Prince uses, at least on the older stuff, I think was a Fender Precision (Let's Work, Head, etc).

You might be asking about the style of playing instead of the actual bass. He's popping and slapping the bass. Forgive me if I go too simple for you here, but pop/slap bass is where you hit the lower 2 strings with the side of your thumb - thumping the bass, and pluck the top two with your index or middle finger.

Go listen to Sly Stone's "Thankyoufalettinme Be Mice Elf" (or whatever). It's historically credited as the origin of that style (though I doubt it myself... I'm sure somebody did it by accident on some record long before that). And that song is a good place to start learning that style because the bass line is very simple and very easy to start out with.

The secret to pop/slap playing, as told to me by Cloud9, is to not get carried away with your right hand. Try to move it as little as possible, even though the record may SOUND like the dude is flailing away on the bass, in reality, the right hand moves just a little bit, otherwise, you're hitting the bottom two strings too hard, and they click when they hit the pickups. And you get blisters on your index and middle fingers from plucking the strings too hard.

I'm checking out Illusion Pimp... right now.

The bass on there is a keyboard bass, not a guitar. Except for the beginning where the notes are way up high on the bass (or guitar? dunno).

Another thing about Prince's style on bass - he came up with a unique style of playing around the time that Brown Mark joined the band ("rumble") - playing with a pick sweeping a muted string to get some percussion out of it - check out songs like "Irresistable Bitch" and "Cloreen Baconskin" and even stuff like "Mutiny" or "High Fashion" from the Family record (that's probably the classic example right there - the bass is walking but funky as hell).

Hope this helps without being too retarded.

When I attended Berklee College of music in Boston there was this great electric funk bassist named Tony Oppenheim. He wrote this book called "Slap It" which one of the best books out on the slap funk style of playing. You may want to check it out.

http://www.slapit.com/

As I said above, I stopped playing, but I always thought R&B and Funk playes played Fender Jazz not Precision.

Thta's why i bought mine

btw, Beahall, interesitng you brought up keyboard bass. as a keyboard player, i always wondered why sometimes a bass player plas bass synth instead of using the bass guitar. REcently at the Grammy's Randy Jackson played keyboard bass for mariah's 1st song We Belong Together, but strapped on the guitar for Fly Like A Bird.

Why do they do that?

beauhall said:

Beau, have you tried any of the OLP guitars, like the Axis and the Luke? Just wondering about your thoughts on OLP instruments in general.

beauhall said:

What exactly is a keyboard bass?

FrankAxtell said:

Cool. Thanks.


How about this one?

http://www.amazon.com/gp/...oding=UTF8
[Edited 3/9/06 5:07am]

Keyboard Bass is just somebody playing the bass lines on a keyboard instead of a bass guitar.

Why do they do that?

Because some bass sounds you just can't GET on a bass guitar. Flashlight by Parliament, Boogie On Reggae Woman by Stevie Wonder - those bass lines are classic but they're on a synthesizer instead of a bass guitar. And no matter how many effects you get, it'll never sound exactly the same.

So it's a good thing to learn both, I suppose, but not necessary. You can fake the synth-bass lines on a bass guitar.

And yep - a Fender Jazz is an excellent bass for funk guitar - I didn't know that you'd already bought it, so I was throwing my own 2-cents in.

My first basses were Jazzes. As soon as I saw Sting's "If You Love Somebody" video, I was sold on the Jazz. I forget the bass player's name now - but DAMN that bass line was badass.

Also - the jazz bass is easier to learn on, in my pinion, because the neck is a lot thinner than the Precision or the Stingray.

Get busy building up your callouses. you'll need em!

I don't think the thread originator got a Jazz bass; that was me. sorry if hijacked the thread
[Edited 3/9/06 9:17am]

beauhall said:

You can get those bass lines with 5 and six string basses or but down tuning a four string.

Go to Learngopselmusics.com and go to the guitar or bass forum and look for Uriah. he has some great free deomos on there that will get you going. He also sells some DVD that he makes. his site is www.uriahasmusic.com

MattyJam said:

Go to www.learngopselmusics.com and go to the guitar or bass forum and look for Uriah. he has some great free deomos on there that will get you going. He also sells some DVD that he makes. his site is www.uriahasmusic.com

The A SQUIRE JAZZ BASS or OLP will do fine for his sound. the only one I woukld not recommend is any copy of a Fender P or a Fender P all the others mentioned should be fine

beauhall said:

Darryl Jones(Sting) ls the bassist name. He also played with Miles Davis on "Under Arrest"and Peter Gabriel. He now plays with the Rolling Stones.
[Edited 3/9/06 21:07pm]

bassmaniac said:

Oh sure, you can "get" the bass lines. But the bass SOUND? No way. That's a moog on flashlight - unless you get a hell of a compressor and 2 or 3 envelope filters and can match your volume on every note, no, you just ain't gonna get that kickass, close-encounters-of-the-funk-kind bass sound from Flashlight.

Ditto with Boogie On Reggae Woman. He's working the pitch-bending wheel all over that song - so, sure you could probably fake it by sliding up some frets, or using a fretless bass and more compression and filters, etc, but it'll still be a bass guitar, not a keyboard line.

Not to go all nit-picky on you - okay - yes, yes I am - but my point is that the song that was originally cited as an inspiration, Illusion Coma Pimp and Circumstance, is a keyboard bass line - sounds like it's way WAY below a bottom E on a bass. I could be way off - it happens all the time - just sayin.

A lot of times, specially in funk, you'll hear a keyboard bass line, AND a regular bass played over it. A good example is "I Wish" by Stevie Wonder. That's a real bass guitar, AND an electric piano. My guess is that Stevie recorded the key parts first - including the bass line, and the bass player came in to match it later... which results in a GREAT bass sound that you can't get with EITHER instrument on it's own, (okay except maybe a sampler synth or some crazy stuff like that.)

beauhall said:

What kind of keyboard would you use for that? The bass sounds I've heard on keyboards have always sounded very cheap to me!

This is so weird. I'm in LA for work and yestreday Flashlight came on the radio. I had never herad it before.

I tihnk the old school songs used Moogs or Mini Moogs and Pirnce probably used Oberheims.

Modern synths often have "bass synth" patches.... or else iw ould guess you could use "lead" patches and play down low on the keyboard.

I'm just speculating. I usually don't play bass parts cuz i'm trying to do keys and strings or keys and horns at the same time

A lot of the synths from the 90s and on up have decent bass sounds. I've got a Yamaha EX-70 - it came out in the late 90s maybe, and it's got some really good bass patches (sounds) in it. They go for $350 on ebay these days.

But the basic logic (for me at least) is, if it has speakers, it just can't be that great. But I could be way wrong. But yep - just play way down on the keys.

I'm thinking of getting this one:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/...%3AIT&rd=1

What d'ya reckon? Seems like a good buy to me.

-
[Edited 3/18/06 20:41pm]