Top 1200 Bass Player Quotes & Sayings

I'm an okay drummer, I'm an okay bass player, I'm an okay keyboardist, and I'm a quite good guitar player.

The thing I like to do when I'm making records is to keep it exciting, as opposed to, 'There's a bass player, guitar player... ' Just a little variety.

When I heard BB Kings Sweet Sixteen, I knew I wanted to play bass because that was the thing that made that record: the bass player.

Everybody besides my piano player has been with me since the very first day. We were a four-piece band for a solid two years. It was me playing acoustic and rhythm electric guitar, a bass player, a drummer and a lead guitar player. For a couple of years, we sounded like the Foo Fighters.

The lousy guitar player in any band is the bass player.

At the time, I didn't know that bass would not be enough for me. I'm not a bass player because bass is always a background instrument even to this very day.

I used to aspire to being more of a traditional bass player, to be honest. People say I play it like a guitar - and I was a guitar player when I was growing up. I started learning when I was eight, and that's what I was fascinated with in my teen years.

I didn't start off as a bass player, and Guns was the first band I really, like, 'Oh, I'm gonna be a bass player. This is what I'm gonna do.' And I really dove into it head first.

I can sing, but I consider myself a bass player. I'm, you know, a musician first.

I feel my spot is somewhere between a bass player and a rhythm guitar player. I play with a pick. I play very aggressively. I always have a distortion pedal in line, and I play less melodies and do more stuff against the guitars that create melodies.

I'm the greatest bass player in the world.

I don't really have a favorite bass player. I listen to a lot of bluegrass. But then again, I'm not a typical bluegrass bass player. I was really into the Grateful Dead, and I still am - I don't listen to them too much, but for me they are a big influence.

Eventually as a teenager, I was pulled up on stage by James Brown's saxophone player, Maceo Parker, during one of his concerts and scatted on his stage for 20 minutes. After I was done, Maceo's bass player got down on one knee as if he were proposing, took a string off of his bass guitar and coiled it up around my ring finger. He hushed the crowd and said into the microphone, "Wendy, from this day forward you are married to music. You have a gift from God. You must devote your life to using this gift or else you will deprive the world of something so special." I got the chills.

I actually met Chick Corea in New York, where I was staying with a bass player friend.

If you're going to play bass, then play bass how you play bass. You can learn technique and theory, but we want to hear what you have to offer.

You have to understand that the bass guitar is the party instrument. It only has four strings. If you see a bass player playing five strings, take your shoe off and throw it at him.

I still don't really feel like a bass player.

Because I write the music, I write the lyrics, I write the vocal melody lines - I write everything. Just because I let somebody sing something doesn't mean they're more important than the bass player or the keyboard player or the drummer.

Being a bass player in a band without a drummer for seven, eight years has been kind of weird.

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.

I'm the quiet bass player.

So the whole basis for jazz music is based on the fact that the bass player could not play his instrument.

I'm a bass player and I'm a drummer - I'm a big fan of bass players.

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 I've ever seen. And that dynamic I just thought as somehow was a straight pass to me.

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.

I like Jaco Pastorius' 'Portrait of Tracy.' He was this bass player who played jazz fusion. He was the dopest bass player who ever lived.

I don't look at my instrument as having one specific role; I was raised to go as far as you can. But Raphael Saadiq hated my bass. He told me to throw it away. And playing in Snoop's band, there was a time when my bass was more annoying to everyone than helpful. They would get on my case: 'Can you make your bass sound like more of a bass?'

My dad taught me to play bass. He's a bass player; he still plays in a band in Michigan to this day. He taught me to play bass when I was about 6. I used to just go to band practice with him, and whoever didn't show up for rehearsal that day, I would take their spot.

I'm a bass player and I love the bass.

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

I'm a bass player from way back and Paul is a guitar player and we've been in many bands.

I think people forget even though we were labelled a synth band because of 'The Hurting,' but keyboards are not our native instruments. Roland's a guitar player and I'm a bass player.

I didn't want to be the bass player everyone forgot about.

I often use a return channel to get some shape out of the bass. It's a good way to split the frequencies of the bass so that the sub bass is clean and in mono and the higher end of the bass sound can be filtered off - have it on an audio channel and that's where you can use effects.

I was with Miles Davisfor a couple of years as his bass player, and it was a beautiful experience. After two years I said to him, "Listen, man, I want to leave your band." He goes, "Why?" I said, "Because I want to develop not just as a bass player, but I want to get more into composition, into producing, and I'm working with Aretha Franklin and Luther Vandross and all these guys, and I want to really see how much I can grow and develop." He actually gave me his blessing.

I recruited my dad to be my bass player and fired him on several occasions. He stayed on as a bus driver.

I was never much of a bass player.

I don't ever have any bass in my monitors at all; I instead like to lock in with the guitar. I know the bass player has got to be locked in with the drummer, but to me, metal music is about the guitar and drums locking in and operating like a machine together. I played with my brother forever, and we were magically locked in together.

Billy Sheehan has always been my number one favorite bass player of all time.

In 1972, I got my first electric bass and started playing the kind of instrument I play now. I found that the majority of musicians couldn't bear that. They are not used to listening to the bass because they think the bass is in the background to support them.

The worst words I could ever hear as a bass player was, 'Can you play the root notes?'

I was charmed by a performance given by Crowded House at Toronto's Massey Hall where the bass player broke a string.

I played a bass player and a singer in a movie once, but I totally lip-synced to everything.

Without getting real personal, we liked our bass player Ed. He was a great guy and he was a good bass player but his playing was suited for a different style of band.

I wasn't allowed to play in some universities in the United States and out of twenty-five concerts, twenty-three were canceled unless I would substitute my black bass player for my old white bass player, which I wouldn't do.

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.

Traditionally, the role of the bass player was just to keep things simple and solid, so it's really a special thing when you can get a player that can actually bring in a lot of presence and also a visual presence, too.

I always got great respect as a bass player.

Being a bass player in these big-time rock bands is hard work.

One of my all-time favourite guitarists is, in fact, a bassist - John Entwistle from The Who. He's one of my all-time favourites, the way he kind of expanded. I mean, he could have been a lead guitarist and been one of the best guitarists in the world. He wasn't even bass player; he was a bass guitarist, and he took the bass to another level.

I wouldn't want to hear Beethoven without beautiful bass, the cellos, the tuba. It's very important. Hip-hop has thunderous bass. And so does Beethoven. If you don't have the bass, it's like being amputated. It's like you have no legs.

For my money, Ray Brown is the greatest living bass player. Every great thing that's happened on bass since Ray Brown -- all of us point back to him. That's where it started, you know. Ray Brown is definitely a walking master, and to get to play with him is obviously an opportunity that no one should ever pass up.

My drummer, bass player, and guitar player sing backgrounds. They play and sing. I can sing all the harmonies, but I can't do it alone.

So our ears got used to listening to jazz in the place that it was that the bass player could not play. No one really realized it and really addressed it until the bass players who could play their instrument came along and started doing something with it.

I think my first experience of art, or the joy in making art, was playing the horn at some high-school dance or bar mitzvah or wedding, looking at a roomful of people moving their bodies around in time to what I was doing. There was a piano player, a bass player, a drummer, and my breath making the melody.

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.

When I heard BB King's 'Sweet Sixteen,' I knew I wanted to play bass because that was the thing that made that record: the bass player.

I am more of a solo bass player and he needed somebody who would keep the role.

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.

There's something rhythmic about running, so it's not surprising that I love it. I'm a bass player, after all.