1.21

 After writing about nothing for the past while, I finally have a decent blog post for you guys.

Bass Tour!

in all their glory, partially featuring my
one guitar on the little stand to the left

As of now, I have five basses (this number will probably go up before we reach 2027). I figured I could talk a bit about each of them because there's a story behind buying each of them.

This is the first bass I got back in 2021! What got me hooked on bass was discovering the band Muse a year prior when I was 16. As soon as I heard that opening riff on Hysteria, I knew I wanted to learn bass. Hysteria and Sir Duke (because every bassist must inevitably learn that song) ended up being my two audition songs for music school. My technique was total shit, and I learned those two songs by sheer brute force. I would get home from high school and play those two over and over again for hours every day. 

I actually used this bass for my first gig ever, because I had to slap and I couldn't figure out how to do it well on my five-string.

Here's my first five-string, which was my primary bass up until very recently. My mom wanted to throw me a party for graduating high school, but because I didn't want one, she bought me a new bass instead. She discovered Sweetwater and got on call with a guy who directed her to this bass after she explained that I liked Tool. It does very much look like a Tool fan's bass, and funny enough, I ended up using it for my Tool recital.

The thing sounds great, but it's weirdly difficult to play. The neck is pretty long and thick. My hands get tired way sooner on this bass than my others. Regardless, it's definitely my nicest bass, and the whole body is made up of one solid piece of wood. If the neck ever snaps, it's over for me.

Here's the thing in action!

This was my second gig ever.  A performance of all time indeed. I was a fill-in for the usual bassist. That's why I seem scared! 

Here's a more recent one. If I look tweaked out in this video, it's because I very much was. It was a pretty bad day for me, but this little recording session in the middle of the day was lovely :) Isaac's a great guy.

I got this bass mostly out of spite. At the end of 2024, my professor told me that I should buy a new bass because the five-string was "too much" for me. I said "okay" and got a six-string.

This bass looks fucking awesome but it is so hard to play! The neck is massive, and it has two truss rods. I'd love to use it for a gig one day but the material I usually play doesn't require that intense of a bass. I've had friends want to do Primus covers, so maybe that'll be its performing debut...

I got this bass from my dear friend Stav, who's had me cover for him in a couple of bands he's been in. He had this bass because my college was doing a Peter Gabriel ensemble, which required him to have a fretless. He told me that when the ensemble ended, he was gonna sell it and put the money towards a nicer bass, and this led to a few people asking if they could take it off of him. I won because I promised him cash in big bens. I was working as a stagehand the night of the performance and the moment he walked off stage, he took his strap off, handed me the bass, and I handed him the cash. It looked like a drug deal.

I used this on a classmate's recording session last year for a course project but I haven't used it since. There's definitely a bit of a learning curve to playing fretless, and it's taken some time to get used to.

This is the most recent bass I bought! It has everything I like about my first five-string and more. I love that it has an active/passive switch. It's super helpful for the sessions and performances I'm in. It's also my easiest bass to play, in my opinion, though most people would probably tell you it's the first four-string. I'm an idiot who did all my serious basic learning on a five, so that's why I'm this way. 

I bought this bass because I was having a bad week last November. I was alone in the music building working on a project when one of my other wonderful bassist friends, Jackson, asked if I wanted to go to Guitar Center with him. He has a signature Joe Dart bass and one of the gears for a tuning peg somehow got warped. I wasn't really getting any work done due to being bummed out so I went with him.

It became a whole ordeal, because about five minutes into our drive, one of Jackson's car's tires somehow slashed open. We managed to pull into a gas station and luckily he had AAA. After a pit stop at the neighboring McDonald's, we hopped in a tow truck, and I got another friend of mine to drive us back from the mechanic to the university parking lot. At this point, we had to go to make this all worth it. We hopped into my car, and I carefully made my way to Guitar Center. Once he handed over his bass to the employees, we spent ages messing around with basses in the store. Jackson ended up grabbing this one, and once I tried it out, I knew that I had to buy it if he settled on getting a different bass. Lucky for me, he did, and I got to take this one home! I got a great discount on it because parts of the finish are worn, and one of the knobs has been replaced. Lot's of gigs coming up on this bass soon...

That's everything I have for now! I'll have to update this list once I get another bass. Thanks for reading and see you tomorrow! -G