At 11/10/05 11:39 PM, AdmiralConquistador wrote:
I play bass. Bass guitarists are not a dying breed. People wanna play guitar because it probably sounds better to them, I think the guitar has a prettier sound than bass. Solos? Most people play rhythm, and not lead. Whoop-de-doo, you can play a guitar solo on bass, it's in fact easier because you have more space and the strings are thicker. Bass guitar in most popular music today is a background instrument or back up, and that doesn't make people who think that the most ignorant fucks ever. However if you do a little digging, some popular music has pretty damn good bass playing.
"Bassist give the song melody and generally play exactly what the lead guitar plays, just not chorded" that's called playing the roots, and it's much much much easier than playings chords. Bassists do have the occasional strange rhythm to play, but most of the time it's simple so that he and the drummer can lay down the rhythm for the rest of the band.
I don't know why you started this off all pissed, but it doesn't give bassists a good name...
Try and work on anger management.
I'm not biased either way because I play both instruments, but from my experience most of that is wrong.
Playing a guitar solo on a bass is in fact much harder, because like you said, the strings are thicker and more spaced out. It's easier to fret faster and pick faster in a smaller area.
Playing the roots on a bass is not easier than playing power chords on a guitar. They're essentially the same thing. Making a power chord is just as easy as barring a fat string on a bass. You can also play chords on bass, and they're just as hard as guitar chords.
Also I'm in a simple 3 piece punk band, and the bass is almost never playing the same thing as the guitar.
That's just my experience though.