Bass Quotations

I decided to build a studio in my house. We built it in my basement kitchen. I had the drummer up by the fish tank. I was in the toilet singing. The bass player was out by the shelves in the living room, and the guitarist was on the couch by the telly.

No, but a cello is the perfect string bass for an accordion. Works with it beautifully.

The flukey part of it is, back in the early days, I had that guitar decorated with all kinds of crap wallpaper, 'Flower Power' - then that got all shaved off. And during the course of cleaning the bass up again, some of the wood got shaved down, and it probably became a lighter body than the stock factory model.

The bass, no matter what kind of music you're playing, it just enhances the sound and makes everything sound more beautiful and full. When the bass stops, the bottom kind of drops out of everything.

Bass players are always the intellectual kind, but nobody knows it.

I picked up 'The Hunger Games' thinking it was written at my regressed reading level. I've spent hours reading it, and I'm not even halfway through. Our bass player, whose name is also Nate, ended up reading all three novels and loved them.

We decided to do some of Merle's things with modern instrumentation. We used a flute, a bass clarinet, a trumpet, a clarinet, drums, a guitar, vibes and a piano.

Yeah, my drum programming especially is based on my knowledge of playing a drum kit. For the bass too, definitely. It was the first thing that I translated any sort of ideas through. It must have shaped it somehow.

I love my music, so I want to produce, write, and serve my music. I've had to learn about EQ frequencies and programming and space and clutter and how to be a better piano or bass player - everything.

I always got great respect as a bass player.

Like all music, the figured bass should have no other end and aim than the glory of God and the recreation of the soul; where this is not kept in mind there is no true music, but only an infernal clamour and ranting.

Because nobody wanted to play bass, I was instantly in a band.

Occasionally, when I run into a great bass backstage at a festival I'll play a few notes on the low E string, just to feel the instrument vibrate against my belly.

It would be obvious for me to do conceptual art, and I think I've done it already with smashing bass guitars and whatever - I consider that as conceptual.

From the first moment that I can remember, I had identified myself as a bass player and it had everything to do with my father, who was a bass player. And he loved music, you know, as much as anybody Ive ever seen. And that dynamic I just thought as somehow was a straight pass to me.

When I produce a record, I roll up my sleeves; I'm not one of those passive guys. I really get in there and make sure every note is measured. I tell the bass player, 'You have to play it like this,' or I tell the drummer, 'It's got to be like this.'

I didn't follow the standard rules of bass playing, and many musicians on many different instruments who became noteworthy for their unique or particular style did a very similar thing.

I wonder if I could make an electric bass.

I wasn't originally a bass player. I just found out I was needed, because everyone wants to play guitar.

For me, if the music is good, whether the artist is famous or unknown, I love being part of the music and contributing what I can to the bass end.

Obviously, a bass sounds like a bass and a guitar sounds like a guitar, but the way you play the guitar reflects your personality.

The bass line is the anchor for me. I started with the bass, and either doubled that and then added the harmonies, or sometimes added my own harmonies that I've always wanted to sing on the song. And then it just went on from there - singing violin parts and trumpet parts and just trying to emulate the sounds of the instruments.

I like the guitar better these days. I like the bass, too, but it's hard to fit a bass amp in a small car.

My very first gig was with the Sex Pistols, and it was also our first-ever gig. It was a very short set, and it was at Saint Martins College of Art in 1975. We were opening up for a band called Bazooka Joe, and their bass player at the time was Adam Ant, who went on to form Adam and the Ants.

I've always liked a very dry snare and, like everyone else, a very dry bass drum.

A lot of other bass players have told me I'm the only bass player who plays with a pick but sounds like he's playing with the thumb and fingers, which is a great compliment.

Black Sabbath was written on bass: I just walked into the studio and went, bah, bah, bah, and everybody joined in and we just did it.

I don't really know why I chose bass except that it was different than guitar.

When I started to pick up the bass, it was purely by random chance.

I've been in a band, so I understand the politics. Sometimes the bass player doesn't like what the guitar player is doing, and you have to sort of even that out.

I think the future looks great for music, musicians, bass players, and all we love about music.

I'm starting to play all the melodies with kind of keyboard sound but playing it from the bass guitar.

I play bass. I don't have to go out there and screech.

If you're working on a computer and you're editing bass, it looks like a warm curvy, sort of feminine object.

A bass player has to think and play like a bass player. A drummer has to play and think like a drummer, and stay out of the way of the vocalist. The guitar player has to respect everybody else.

But people are now realising why I was playing bass with Hendrix.

I don't regard myself as a great classical or jazz pianist. I like country music, but I'm not a great player. I just like music. Drums 'n' bass is pretty exciting and I'd love to explore it.

I was in a really crummy pop-punk band. I think we did a whole bunch of Blink-182 covers, and we were on the fringe of losers and jocks. So we invited all the cool kids to come watch us play in our bass player's brother's bedroom. And it was terrible, but everyone thought we were so cool.

Teddy Wilson, I think, said a little while ago that it's much easier to come in and play whatever comes into your mind, without obeying any of the laws of bass line and harmony and so on.

I love bass, I really do. Bass is ace!

I actually think that bass is probably the instrument that has evolved in a quantum leap compared to other instruments. It's the instrument that's evolved the most, especially with how it's perceived. And even how it's played, and how it's viewed from a point of view of commerce, like with the music industry.

I played bass guitar in high school and in college and then I actually fractured my thumb, so my bass career went bye-bye.

The range of the cello is so big, it can play as low as the double bass and as high as the violin. It has the perfect shape, and its sound is the closest to the human voice.

I listened to many different types of instruments and music, and have always tried to look at the bass as an instrument as opposed to only a bass.

I even played bass for a while. Besides playing electric guitar, I'd also get asked to play some acoustic stuff. But, since I didn't have an acoustic guitar at the time, I used to borrow one from a friend so I could play folk joints.

Before moving to Pennsylvania in 1999, I played bass in a newsroom rock band in South Florida for several years.

If you play the very subtle jazz tunes with acoustic pianos, acoustic bass and it's a dead standard, you are going to play very differently. It depends on the music.

I came from an era when we didn't use electronic instruments. The bass wasn't even amplified. The sound was the sound you got.

I like a lot of bass players. I like a lot of tuba players too.

When I lost the use of my hi-hat and bass drum legs, I became basically a singer. I was a drummer who did a bit of singing, and then I became a singer who did a bit of percussion.

I never liked socially conscious rap. I like rap that's physical, that's about a beat and bass and repetition.

Jack Bruce, as soon as I saw him, it changed me. I didn't even know what bass players did until I saw Cream.

I've always been the DJ or the bass player or the drummer, somebody in the background. I don't think anybody who knows me personally would say that I'm particularly shy or introverted, but I'm definitely not like Mr. Attention.

I like to practice on the bass, but I don't do it as often as I should.

Being down in Orlando, Florida, where we filmed the movie, I learned how to bass fish. Jerry Reed, who plays the villain in the movie, taught me how to bass fish.

The bass player's function, along with the drums, is to be the engine that drives the car... everything else is merely colours.

I really pay attention to the bass in the music I listen to, and that's what I tend to write toward.

On Ain't No Telling I came up with the bass solo.

I realized pretty soon that I have to do more than just play bass in the background way. So, I developed a kind of playing which only a handful of musicians accepted.

There was a time when fast playing and fretboard pyrotechnics on the bass were important to me and when I am recording a bass track, that is still very important to me.

I don't show just anyone how to crust a sea bass. That's sacred information.

I want to learn to sight-read music. And to play the bass pedals on the organ. Those are my only ambitions.

I've always said the bass just happens to be the crayon I picked out of the box. I'd still be drawing the same pictures... should I have picked trumpet or accordion or guitar, whatever it may be. The sounds in my head are still the same.

I can understand why some of these drummers and bass players become cult figures with all of their equipment and the incredible amount of technique they have. But there's very little that I think satisfies you intellectually or emotionally.

I don't know nothing about no jungle and bass.

I got heavily into the drum-and-bass scene, which is really wicked.

It will be the first time I've played live with a double bass.

Then, as the day progresses, depending on how the product is coming in - for instance, the fish man will fax us and say black bass is great - throughout the day, we'll also make judgment calls and adapt to what's available.

Bill Withers and Curtis Mayfield, those are the people who informed me in playing the bass.

Now they have banging guitar and no bass and call it rock, but that's not what I call rock.

A bass should sound like a bass with the thump of the finger against the wood, like it began with stand up.

But Dennis was a really solid musician, and we really needed somebody who could play bass like him.

A lot of modern amps and preamps sound great when you're jamming by yourself, but don't hold up in a band situation. The sound isn't dense enough, and the lows and highs tend to get soaked up by the bass and cymbals.

Unless you're singing something that's kind of in rhythm with the bass, the melodies, it's just difficult.

I had done chorus before in school, but I was only trying for an easy A. I was a bass going 'dum dum da doo wop.

I'm not going to do the Ben Harper house record or the Ben Harper drum 'n' bass record.

I never forget the first time I was on 'Top of the Pops', my bass player said: 'You've made it!' I did used to think, when I was younger, that I'd be on there one day.

In the late '80s and early '90s, there was a slightly retro drum sound that was popular in hip-hop music called the 808 bass drum sound. It was the bass drum sound on the 808 drum machine, and it's very deep and very resonant, and was used as the backbone as a lot of classic hip-hop tracks.

Ben was more improvisational, and relied less on methodology, and basically is a guitarist who switched to bass, whereas Jeff has a more traditional approach to playing bass in a band, and has a great sense of what his band sounds like, and we lock up nicely.

I never picked a bass up before Sabbath started

Elvis came along when I was 10. My father gave me a bass ukulele. I taught myself how to play from a book to play some chords, so I was laying down 'Hound Dog' and things like that when I was 10 years old in 1955. That's the way I was. My ear was glued to the radio. I knew right then what I wanted to do.

I grew up around salsa, merengue, bachata, bass music, freestyle, hip-hop, techno, house, rave.

James Ralston, my guitar player, has performed with Tina Turner for about 22 years. Jim Hanson on bass has played with Johnny Cash, Rodney Crowell and Bruce Springsteen, and they're fantastic musicians and amazing singers they get a really cool vocal sound together.

I always just wanted to be the singer or the bass player in the band. I'd love to have a band, where I was obviously the singer, but where it wasn't me, it wasn't my name.

Actually freestyle really comes from 'Planet Rock'. If you listen to all the freestyle records you'll hear that they are based on 'Planet Rock'. All the Miami Bass records are based upon Planet Rock.

You can't beat 2 guitars, bass, and drums.

I usually speak with all my drummers so that I write my songs with them in mind, and we'll have bass sounds, choir sounds, and then you can multi-task with all these orchestral sounds. Through the magic medium of technology, I can play all kinds of sounds - double bass and stuff.

I'm a pretty good drummer. I'm pretty good at guitar, bass and piano. I can play accordion; I'm not virtuoso. I've played cello before. My sister played it, and I know how to play it, but I'm not the best. Violin is kind of the same thing.

I know melody. I know rhythm; I know bass guitar; I know the piano. I know everything about music that helps build the music that go along with creating the whole art form, you know what I'm saying?

Since I was a kid, I always wanted to figure out how to make a bass line that was a pendulum - like, gravity would control it, and then you could make it play different notes.

I tour a lot and interview a lot. I'm on the Internet and doing stuff. I go out and promote. I've got a bass drum and a sandwich sign and a washboard. You just have to shout louder and louder that you're still alive.

It's really hard for me to sing and play bass.

I don't want to interview people. I want to have a conversation. I want to talk to Paul McCartney about the bass sound on 'The White Album.'

If you're using live bass versus orchestral bass, you've got to make sure that you're not stepping on the toes of the other elements, so you've got to balance it out.

Later in high school, I met Hillel Slovak, who was the original guitar player of the Chili Peppers, and we became really close. We had a band, and we didn't like the bass player, so I started playing bass, and I got a bass two weeks later.

I like to combine the dramatic emotional warmth of strings with the grooves and body business of drums and bass.

I was in bands, but they were punk bands, and you plug in the guitars, you turn them up really loud, you've got four or five other people on stage with you, you've got some protection from when they throw lighters. You can always hide behind the lead singer or the bass player.

I tell you the groans of the damned in hell are the deep bass of the universal anthem of praise that shall ascend to the throne of my God for ever and ever.

Music has always been in my family, but it was mainly keyboards. I learned to play classical piano, but when I first heard the amazing bass guitar of James Jamerson, who played on all the big Motown hits of the '60s and '70s, I knew bass guitar was my instrument.

My accompanists are Danny Barnes and Dennis Crouch. Dennis is a fantastic upright bass player -- and Danny sings harmony and plays electric guitar and he plays the banjo. Danny's been playing since September with me and we can do most everything fairly convincingly from the records, especially with that electric guitar arsenal.