Question for the Bass Players

Bass is probably the easiest to play. Unfortunately, it's one of the few instruments that's no fun to play standalone. I learned to play bass before playing guitar. You can always tell a guitar player moving to bass because they try to just mimic the guitarist's notes instead of playing along with the drums or going off a beaten path.

The road blocks include the same ones that kept you from being better at guitar. Hand strength and dexterity, tonal acumen, and rhythmic accuracy. If you've got that, the rest is just a shitload of practice. Get to it.

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If you also play guitar, how similar was it to learning guitar? What were the differences?

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From a theory and fretboard standpoint, it's pretty much all the same as guitar (if you're playing on a 4 string bass).

The differences lie mainly in the physical/aural aspects like string switching on thicker strings, a heaver instrument overall, getting the right tone that fits the song/music but doesn't get buried under the mix, etc.

There are tons of resources on YouTube/Instagram/TikTok.

Here's a few I follow:

For Lessons:
Andrew Freed
Daric Bennett
BassBuzz
Dan Hawkins

For Covers:
CoverSolutions
Fusilli Jerry
Greg Fairweather
DarthMart
just some basslines

Easier only in that you are mostly playing single notes. Easier to pick up because you don’t have to learn all those chord fingerings.
To play it well is hard and takes time. You’re rhythm and you have to know how to work within that and keep time and establish a groove. I know a guitar player playing bass in a second because there is no groove.
If you want to sing, playing bass or drums and singing is very hard.

Your job:

A singer makes people sway.

A guitarist makes people nod and move their head.

A drummer makes people tap their feet.

A bass player makes people move their arse!

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Bass is probably the easiest to play. Unfortunately, it's one of the few instruments that's no fun to play standalone. I learned to play bass before playing guitar. You can always tell a guitar player moving to bass because they try to just mimic the guitarist's notes instead of playing along with the drums or going off a beaten path.

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All of this.

If you know anything about music, I could teach you to be functional on the bass in an afternoon.

It's probably one of the lowest bars to entry of any musical instrument however like the others have said here, to actually be good at it requires a lot of work.

My advice is that less is usually more when it comes to playing the bass.

It easy to be "ok" but it takes a special person like Phil Lesh to take it to another level....aka the "Phil Zone"

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I have been playing guitar for 54 years but I only took up bass a couple of years ago. And quite frankly, I have pretty much taken to liking bass more than guitar. It was like I almost had an innate feel for being part of the rhythm section.

In response to someone talking about going at bass like a guitar, I absolutely plead guilty to that but I bought a bass that’s kind of conducive to being treated like a guitar, a Hofner violin bass (not the really expensive one or the really cheap one, the kind of “in the middle” one) that has a short scale plus it works much, much better when you use a pick.

I started out just playing the basic notes of the chords, then worked on runs and fills and lines to connect those.

Bass is fun …

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Were there some road blocks you encountered that made it somewhat a frustrating learning experience?

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I won’t speak to easy / easier, as learning a few power chords takes about as much time as learning a basic bass line, which is where a lot of people start.

Two challenges and one piece of general advice:

1) learning songs is often challenging because the bass is buried in the mix and difficult to hear; get good headphones or speakers when learning or you’ll go nuts.

2) related to #1 being heard in a band setting live. Bass players disappear tonally for a variety of reasons…guitar players are too fricking loud (usually the case), kick drum is mic’d and cranked, bass players “scoop the mids” because it sounded good in their bedroom, drop tunings and floppy strings, under powered rig, not enough attack. If you’re playing with others, figure out how to live sonically where the kick drum and guitar aren’t already taking up space…think low mids to high mids.

3) general advice -skip Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and whatever your guitarists friends tell you to learn. Learn songs you love and know by heart because it’s so much easier to find the groove and figure out what the bassist was going for and why they made the choices they made. Don’t like Rush, Tool, or RHCP? Then fricking skip it! Play your Motley Crue songs and frick up a bunch, you’ll have a much more fun time learning.

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I love when non musicians comment ignorance on something musically related. The most common ignorant thought is that anybody can just pick up the bass and/or drums. bullshite. Yeah, if you want to sound like a bubblegum high school garage band that might be true.

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Just depends on what someone's goals are.