The discourse community I have decided to blog about is the community of people who play Guitar and Bass guitars, focused more on Bass as that is the instrument that I choose to play more often.

The thing that I love most about this community is that every person knows different skills or methods to achieving something. Yes there are some musical greats, and yes there are experts or masters, but the ones that I believe to be the best aren’t these people at all. The ones I believe to be the greatest are the ones who forged their own sound, either by being in a band who started a new musical genre (Geezer Butler, Cliff Burton, etc) or by being a Jack-Of-All-Trades, master of none.

The community’s goals are to improve their musical skills, learn new songs, make new songs and for some people, to jam with others and have fun. My personal goals in this community are to play songs that I enjoy listening to, make sounds that are generally not associated with Bass guitars and slowly learn how to make music on my own, much like many others in the community.

To achieve these goals, I am starting by learning to play some songs by one of my favorite bands, Metallica. I use a Yamaha TRBX174 with Rotosound 30-90 gauge strings and a Fender rumble 25 amp. Together, this combination sounds wicked, but one day (Soon hopefully,) I will be playing with some extra pedals, like an Ibanez Tube Screamer, a Wah of some sort, and/or an EHX Big Muff compression pedal. I am trying to build a similar rig to Cliff Burton because I love the tone so much. Listening to his isolated bass tracks always surprises me, no matter how many times you listen to it. Also, we need an Isolated bass track for The Call Of Ktulu damnit!

Some of the main communication for these people happens face to face, between musicians at the guitar store talking to employees about new products, local shows and troubleshooting. The other large platform of communications is online as well. Groups on Facebook, forums, comments on internet magazines, Youtube videos about products and tutorials, and much more.

I hope many people realize that Bass guitars, while they are mainly to provide low end power to a song, aren’t lashed down to this role and can definitely shine on their own.