Back to Bass-ics

Recently, I've remembered a few things about which I want to blag and have had motivation to blag recently. I think this is because I did something reasonably productive for a couple of weeks (working at tαr3eI as a cashier) and it managed to give a little spark to neurons. Whatever the reason, please bear with me.

When I was young, my father told me that our family had no real musical inclination or talent and that I probably wouldn't be able to play a musical instrument as long as I live. Naturally, that only made me want to stick it the old curmudgeon and learn to play a musical instrument anyway, just to spite him. While I was in college, I was exposed to some of the most musical people that I had ever met. Also, while I was in college, I was able to attend more sporting events, namely football and basketball games, than I had seen in my life up to that point. This is relevant in this case because, at these games I managed to improve the strength and endurance of my vocal chords while I was there. This enabled me to sing both louder and more precisely than I had ever sung before. To make a long, boring story short, I was more interested in music than I had ever been previously.


At this point, it was just a matter of picking which instrument I would want to learn to play. The summer after my junior year, I met a now good friend of mine, Scott Manning. Scott is/was the bassist for the Empirates. I first heard of these guys at BYU's battle of the bands and absolutely loved their stuff from day 1. (You follow the link that I've posted above to go to their facebook page and partake in their musical deliciousness.) Anywho, after I met Scott and heard his silky-smooth bass lines, I started to pay more attention to bass lines and rhythmic portions of popular music. I discovered that rhythm and the bass guitar are at the heart and sole of everything that I enjoy about music. The bass is the foundation for most popular music, and most music in general. As such music tends to sound somewhere between incomplete and just plain bad without it. (Yeah, I'm looking at you, Yellowcard.) My absolute favorite part of bass sounds and the bass guitar is the musical tension that is built in measures where the bass is absent, and the headbanging glory that ensues when it returns. To put it succinctly, I think the bass guitar is awesome and I wanted it to be a part of my life.

Now, as I already mentioned, neither of my parents families are very musically inclined, and I have my doubts that I would really be able to successfully play any musical instrument. However, there are couple of things about the bass guitar: 1) It only has 4 strings. I have 4 fingers... this shouldn't be a problem. 2) It's a perfectly symmetrical instrument... inasmuch as something on a binary logarithmic scale can be symmetrical. In short, the bass guitar is one of the easier instruments to learn to play, and I like it that way.

This summer I got myself a bass guitar and have been learning to play it. It's been a little tough, because I've had somewhat limited access to amplifiers of any sort, and playing a bass acoustically is mostly futile... So if you know anyone who has a bass amp for sale, or for free, let me know. However, I believe that my bass and I will be pumping out some pretty smooth bass lines together before you know it.