Guitar Players who have switched to Bass

[Lumpy]

Well shoot, I thought bass players were in much higher demand that guitar players. 

Not really. And with simple music, like doom, punk rock, some types of metal, you don't have to be a great bass player to make it work. A monkey can do it, sometimes. So there are all kinds of just-okay or beginner bass players who are qualified to play this less-complicated music.

I wish my buddy could get this through his thick skull. He was never a really good guitar player to begin with (talented in writing, to be sure, but just shitty at the instrument from lack of practice. And always whining about not having time to practice, still does that, it's a bit irritating). He tries to write a whole song on his bass. Which is fine, but he forgets that there's also my guitar to take into account. I keep telling him to go the Cisneros and Om route (mainly so I can just kick his ass out the band and do my own thing), though only if he wants to continue to lay shit down that takes up all the space.

I know exactly what you mean. However, maybe you can still make this work, if you're clever (and willing). You just need to find a different voice for your parts. I bet there is a creative solution, if you can think outside the box or whatever. Like sometimes (I'm thinking 70s heavy bands) the guitar/bass can play two different but equally strong parts, but they combine to "outline" the whole of the song. Maybe you know what I mean. Modern (post punk) era, the idea that guitar and bass need to always work in tandem is a lot more common (but maybe not so necessary). Crazy talk?

Or maybe this dude is overplaying and impossible to work with, who knows.

[At_Giza]

I wish my buddy could get this through his thick skull. He was never a really good guitar player to begin with (talented in writing, to be sure, but just shitty at the instrument from lack of practice. And always whining about not having time to practice, still does that, it's a bit irritating). He tries to write a whole song on his bass. Which is fine, but he forgets that there's also my guitar to take into account. I keep telling him to go the Cisneros and Om route (mainly so I can just kick his ass out the band and do my own thing), though only if he wants to continue to lay shit down that takes up all the space.

I know exactly what you mean. However, maybe you can still make this work, if you're clever (and willing). You just need to find a different voice for your parts. I bet there is a creative solution, if you can think outside the box or whatever. Like sometimes (I'm thinking 70s heavy bands) the guitar/bass can play two different but equally strong parts, but they combine to "outline" the whole of the song. Maybe you know what I mean. Modern (post punk) era, the idea that guitar and bass need to always work in tandem is a lot more common (but maybe not so necessary). Crazy talk?

Or maybe this dude is overplaying and impossible to work with, who knows.

It's not that he's impossible to work with, it's that he's a super slow learner (not because he isn't smart or anything like that). He's got too much going on in that head of his that he wants to do that he can't focus on one thing. I've been dumbing down the stuff I play. Basically reversing the traditional roles of our instruments.

Of course that doesn't fix the problem, I suppose in the end it would just make me look like I was just taking up that little bit of musical space I'd been banished to by this seemingly superior artist or some bullshit like that. Not that I'd mind that, it just seems a little odd when I think about people reading a bio of me somewhere and they find out I'm Classically trained on guitar. Bit of a shock to those who see me playing three power chords and an occasional little riff. 

Anyway, it's not hard to get through to him. I've more been trying to get him to practice more. "Drop the vidya games and pick up that bass of yours." That hasn't helped much, but from time to time he shows a little improvement (if only that could also be translated to him cleaning up that repugnant house of his).

Ironically, when he was playing guitar he would write relatively simple riffs that were really good (though indeed unable to build off of most of them from lack of practicing). I wish he would take a look at all the stuff he wrote on guitar and realize that it was all simple, containing no more than what was necessary to get his musical point across. I've told him point blank that he needs to do that. It helps for the duration of our mind melding practices, but when we come back together he's always got this new riff to show me that ends up sending my guitar to the back again.

I try to counteract that by trying a bit of complimentary riffitude, but that ends up muddying the water too much (probably my fault because I was at one point so used to playing duets for guitar where both parts were playing that aforementioned "different but equal" parts. Too much musical info for the brand of Doom we play). So I am always forced to remove notes or be like, "You know, I can do this part, just this guitar's octave higher, or I can play it on this baritone here and you can play these four or five notes you wrote sort of like this." Of course in showing him what he can do versus what I can do it seems to be an affront to his "song" half the time, and sometimes he's just apathetic about it.

Hard to work with him, really, because in all of this my creative juice is sucked dry and his is overflowing the pot. I'll get through to him, sometime, I'm in no hurry at this point. I've got the time.

Also, he's kind of a "What to avoid as a guitarist turned bassist" poster child. So that's what all the lurkers should take from this input of mine. Don't be the guy who drowns out the rest of the guys. Be part of the band.

[Lumpy]

Well I hate to be an armchair-quarterback (not really ) but since we're talking... you sound exactly the type of player who could pull off what I'm imagining (me being completely divorced from the reality) which is your bass player doing his busy stoner doom riffs, while you play some combination of sideways guitar/next-level shit/fucked up doom jazz/simple stripped down 5ths/finger style weirdness (I don't know what, exactly) which would make you both heavy and original. You'd have to give up the idea that your band is supposed to sound like (the list of bands that you wanted to sound like) and do something that's uncharted and unique. Pretty demanding task for you (invent a new sound from scratch) as opposed to more straight ahead stonerdoom which you can probably play relatively easily.

Just blabbing about stuff I really don't know about... sorry.

[At_Giza]

Sound quite Avant-Garde, if I am hearing what you are imagining. Not that I wouldn't want to do that, because it might be interesting.

What I want to do really isn't all that out there. I'm sort of on hold, though, from doing it because of lack of steady funding for the last three instruments I need. I want to meld a couple almost converse genres.

Basically take this, the style of music Rome did on Flowers From Exile and Nos Chants Perdus and put an element of almost droney Doom riffage in there too.

Like, for instance, taking a song like this (I think my buddy would actually like the bass tone in the beginning of this song, even though he REALLY wants distortion in his bass. *cough* Om [and he doesn't even listen to Om, the faggot] *cough*):

...and put some heavy-ass guitar into it on top of the acoustic stuff already going on and all the little undertones and blah blah blah.

That's my disease, I've already got ideas to put down, but I lack the last three instruments I want (A Squire Vintage Modified Tele P-bass and a Godin 5th Ave Kingpin [Cognac burst plz] if anyone wants to donate those two to a worthy cause ).

Once I get those instruments I will definitely be getting on that project like a fat kid on cupcakes. I'll probably even try some of the stuff out that you want to see (especially since I can use that Godin for the Jazzy Doom-style whatever, always wanted to do some simple fingerstyle Jazzed up Doom stuff). Though, the problem I found with playing fingerstyle with most distorted guitars is that it reaaaaally kills the nature of each note. Electric guitar with most distortion really doesn't like fingerstyle guitar. I'd have to find the perfect fuzz or something that doesn't make all the notes fall down into the pit of utter chaos. It's really tough to find a good equilibrium between distortion and the clarity of each note.

[SpaceTrucker]

I'd be the fuzzed out phazed out lead bass on a jazz-doom experemental trio. Just find a good drummer and some brass players.

and I can sing like some mad cow disease having mental patient.


while you play subdued jazz chord progressions.

Maybe add an electric mandolin in there too.