Playing Bass Online

[shoombabi]

Just curious if you play the Bass guitar IRL as well, or if there are people that will intentionally gravitate towards the Bass in band play. I ask this because it seems in my experience that people only switch to bass as a courtesy unless they have some prior experience with a bass guitar to appreciate the lines.

[HeXcoda]

I don't play IRL but I'll frequently pick it when playing online. It's the instrument few want to play and like vocals I'm happy to fill in the cracks of the band to keep a four-man team going.

Plus, I'm honestly not that great wtih the guitar controller, pretty much stuck on Medium. The simpler bass lines (provided they aren't insane-o repeaters like Highway Star) are definitely my speed, and better combos means better team performance regardless of difficulty. (Why do people pick expert only to fail out repeatedly or never hold more than a 2x combo? It wrecks performance.)

[shoombabi]

Ahh, people -are- using this one. Please keep this as the poll, ignore the other one.

[Parodygm]

I don't play bass IRL (although I do play some guitar) but I certainly choose bass in the game. Sometimes I choose it actively, other times it's more of a courtesy. Rock Band emulates bass play better than it does guitar play so I find it quite enjoyable, especially songs where it's possible to use "authentic strumming" (upstrums).

Oh, a big boo-hiss to all the "I only play guitar, I'll come into your established three-player unit and try to take guitar, I'll drop out if I ever have to play bass" fascists out there. :mad:

[Brute Physics]

"Oh, a big boo-hiss to all the "I only play guitar, I'll come into your established three-player unit and try to take guitar, I'll drop out if I ever have to play bass" fascists out there."

agreed. When I get on I play bass a lot because I really like to try to upstrum (working on dancing two or three fingers...). If the group lets me play every 1 out of like 6 songs on guitar I'll happily beat out a near perfect bass rhythm for them any time.

[DesiredFX]

I have a Fender Precision Bass that I play, but I haven't touched it in a very long time. In both Guitar Hero and Rock Band, I will typically play bass primarily because I like the sound of the bass lines in a lot of the songs--on something like Slow Ride (GH3), I'd much rather play the bass line, because it's a lot more fun than the guitar and is actually a good bit more difficult, especially for a first tier song.

When my Strat controller broke, I could still strum up on it, so I took to going online and playing primarily bass in Hard or Expert mode. I could play guitar with the up-strum, somewhat, but it wasn't as natural as plucking upward the way I do when I play bass.

What this is all leading to is that I've reached the point where I really wanna pick up my P-Bass again, but I need to figure out a way to play along with the RB tunes.

Last night, online, I mixed it up a little, though. Now that I have a working controller, I started with bass, but since I was playing with people who were mostly playing Medium, I switched over to guitar and found that I had actually adapted to playing the rhythm rather than trying to read the charts, if you get what I mean. I had a blast, and I managed some of my best scores since I've gotten the game.

[batsu336]

I play both bass and lead guitar in real life. I have found that the same things that make bass fun on stage (repetative licks & fairly easy rythym) are the same things that make it less so in the game. In real life you can use the relative ease of bass to concentrate more on vocals or interect with the crowd.

[Wangsandsuch]

I'll generally let the other guy pick first, even if I'm the leader or was there first. More often than not they seem to pick bass, and it seems every time I jump on guitar, they QQ hard and quit the band.

[Prisoner_KSC2303]

Well seeing as the bass guitar is the first thing I listen for in song, naturally I pick bass in Rock Band every time.

Also, I'm buying my coworker's bass guitar tomorrow so hopefully one day I'll be able to say I play bass IRL as well.

[Rock_Starman]

If I play online (have a trial from the last time my 360 broke) I'll choose bass but don't play a real one. I'm good with solo notes,I can play Texas Flood behind my back and have Jordan's ass kicked but when it comes to chords....not so much. Normally just have trouble with the ones that go chord,single,chord,single and so on. Since bass rarely uses chords I'd be better sticking to that online than guitar. Also my timing is probably crap after GH 3 between the large windows and playing with hyperspeed 4 & 5. Went back to play GH 80's,even with hyperspeed it didn't go as well at it normally would,way too slow.

[SSPWOLF]

I play bass online, mostly because I have a sweet surround sound system and the sub-woofer makes the bass line sound magnificient.