Change (contains bass geekery)

Recently I've been playing more fretted bass guitar. I still love fretless as a main instrument but fretted is so easy to learn on and can be fun to play too. I had a five string fretted, which I traded for a beautiful different one. This one looked lovely and had a neck through design which was new for me. The problem was that it looked better than it sounded and this niggle grew.

The other problem was that I had picked up a cheap six string bass and had completely fallen in love with it. I've been listening to a lot of Rich Brown and Bjorn Meyer and enjoy the way they extend the idea of what it is to be a bassist. Watching Rich Brown play at the London Bass Guitar show was, literally, a revelation. I had one of those moments where I could see many, if not all, my music ideas coming to life in one instrument. The beautiful five string sat around, unplayed.

So, last week, after the normal amount of research (lots) I made a trade or two and picked up a new, better six string bass. Playing six string bass means having people tell you, "four strings was enough for Jaco, so why..." and so on. I decided to pick a bass that not only had six string but also had fan frets. I'm now waiting for the, "normal frets were good enough for... " comments too.

Luckily for me, my wonderful bandmates didn't flinch when I unveiled it on Saturday's rehearsal. This was probably helped by me being able to play it (aside form a couple of moments where I mistook the C string for the G). It is, after all, a bass. I understand the tuning and can apply my technique and ideas to it. As busy as I am (there's a lot going on at the moment) I'm finding enough time to improve and I am seriously enjoying the journey. Getting to play great music with open-minded people also helps.

Thanks to Emma for the picture, which I've cropped so you don't have to look at my skinny legs.