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Key bass


isaac42

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Arm is still hurting, and my physical therapist has strongly urged me to stop playing bass for a while. "At least give me a month!" he said. Well, no shows this week or next, and most rehearsals have been canceled, so maybe I can lay off a bit. But we did an experiment in one of my bands last week. Instead of bass guitar, I played bass on a keyboard.

 

Now, I'm not very good on keyboard. ("You're not that good on bass!" I hear a lot of you saying, and you're right!) I don't have the manual independence to play a bass line with my left hand and another line, or even chords, with my right. Not yet, anyway. I've been able to do that in the past, though, so there's hope. The notes sound like a keyboard to me. The sound doesn't vary, and a lot of the nuance that's there when I play bass guitar is gone. My timing could be better, too. On the other hand, the keyboard goes lower than low E. Could go another octave down, if I want it too. There's no floppy B string to worry about (as I said above, the notes don't vary). I can have any number of different bass sounds at the touch of a few buttons. I can add in a chord or two here and there, especially at the end of songs, and I'll bet that a lot of people will swear that I was doing it clear through the song. I can play the flute lick at the beginning and end of Can't You See. True, it's never going to sound quite like a bass guitar, but the reverse is true as well. In short, there's potential here.

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So I went out and bought another keyboard.

 

I've been using a Yamaha PSR270 for many years now. It's certainly not a professional keyboard, but it will do a pretty amazing amount of stuff. It can be a bit of a hassle getting into the right place in the menu to do it, though.

 

My 'new' keyboard is a Yamaha YPT300. I was cruising thrift stores, as I occasionally see keyboards for $20-$40. I figured that, as long as I could get another at least as good as the PSR270, I'd be fine. I could use both, so I wouldn't have to be switching voices in the middle of songs. I went to a store I hadn't been in before, the St. Vincent dePaul next town over. Big place. They had not one, but two YPT300s. I'd never heard of that model, so I came home to do a little research. Looked good, so I went back. One looked to be in better shape than the other, and came with a rickety stand. $50. Turned out that it had the color of the day (or week, I dunno) tag, so I got it for $37.50. Got a power supply for it and tested it out, and it works perfectly, as far as I can tell.

 

It looks more professional than the PSR270, and there are dedicated buttons for some of the functions that you have to access through the menu on the 270, such as split keyboard and dual voice. It should do me well.

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Played my first gig on keys Thursday night. It went well. I didn't sound too bad, and I seemed to be the only person who noticed my many mistakes. The bass lines aren't as interesting on keys as on bass guitar, but being able to play chords with the right hand is a plus. It really added something to be able to play some organ on House of the Rising Sun, for example, and the flute line on Can't You See.

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Second key bass gig went pretty well, too. The band leader is amazed. He didn't realize that, while I've played keys in bands before, I've never played key bass before. When he realized that, his jaw dropped. Anyway, I'm still making a lot of mistakes, though I seem to be the only one aware of that. I'm surprised at how much easier it was at the second show last night than it was at the first show Thursday. And adding in some right hand stuff really adds to the band's sound.

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