Oh good, a bass

I brought a bass guitar and amplifier to work today to 'round out' the collection of things that let me pursue an arts while I work for a college of arts (and humanities). The bass I picked is special to me; while I would make the argument that all of my basses have a place in my heart, this one is my brother's, and I helped pick it out for him and would send it back having been well cared for and set up if he ever wanted to pick it back up. It plays well; it's effectively an off-brand precision bass copy, but it happens to have been reasonably well made, with no fret sprout or sharp hardware, with its only real failing being that the wood behind the sunburst finish isn't the world's most interesting piece. In my estimation, its only other weakness is that it's a precision bass, and so the neck is wider than is comfortable for my tiny hands. As I've been spending time with my short-scale StingRay bass, though, the width is a bit less of a challenge than I might otherwise have been willing to tolerate.*

I had about 15 minutes at the end of the day today where I had time for music, and I got the bass set up and played a bit. I can tell you for sure now that I am a bassist and not a guitarist. I love the Mustang guitars; the short scale and small body make them just friendly to play, but I never had much of a taste for melodies due to my early exposure to third-chair clarinet, and easily settled into a better understanding of harmonies (due to same) and bass lines once I moved to bass clarinet (and, later, baritone saxophone). That, combined with the now 19+ years of experience playing bass guitars, and the instrument is just more comfortable in my mind than guitar. I love the fact that I get to have both in my office, but, where bringing in the guitar previously brought me a feeling of relief, having the bass present feels right.

* - A brief rundown on bass proclivities: my first bass was an Epiphone Rock Bass, from sometime after the batwing headstock debuted. I don't remember its neck profile, but when I bought it, I knew so little about the subject that I tuned it by ear to D-standard because I matched the low string to the lowest note on Rage Against the Machine's self-titled album. Once I figured out that there was a real standard tuning, I quickly determined that the poor instrument's truss rod didn't seem to work... it's possible I was also so convinced by Bass Player Magazine that tweaking the truss rod would break the instrument, though, that I never really tried very hard. Either way, it played like a bow and arrow. I ended up falling in love with a five-string Spector NS-2000 bass the next summer, which was my instrument for something like three and a half years. Even though the scale was longer (35" versus 34"), the narrower string spacing meant that most of the music I wanted to play was easier... fewer runs on single strings, more intervals to cover between strings, so reaching from say C to D# was something my short miserable pinky could actually help with. Since that came so early in my journey, I got used to the tighter spacing such that for a few years, I actually couldn't play a standard Fender Precision neck without getting tired immediately... 1.75" versus the Jazz width of 1.5" was somehow too much of a difference for me. I have two five-string basses, one a StingRay 5 and one a Warwick Corvette. The StingRay sits at fitting 5 strings in 43mm width, the Corvette 5 in 45mm, and a Jazz bass does 4 in 38mm with a Precision at 4 in 43. Both of my fives are more adjacent by a wide margin to the J width, so since I spent the first 14 years of playing with narrow necks, narrow necks will always feel more correct, especially in light of my biological failings. Fortunately, practice can at least sort of help me deal with it.