Bass

Today was a full day, Bible study, chapel, class. But by far the zenith of my interest today was in my relationship with Ash. Ash is my bass guitar which is fittingly made out of ash and walnut. Ash has five strings that I change every few months, Ash has five knobs adjusting, gain, volume, volume bridge, lowend depth and the scoop. I play Ash with a hand wrought hemp strap, a piece of deer hide bearing the mark of the turtle clan tied about the long horn on its body and a strip of purple ribbon tied just below the chrome tuning pegs.

Over the past year I have grown to know ash better and better, exploring the different positions to sit in, the different dances we can do. The mystery of notes beyond an 8 step octave have been dabbled in, the slap of funk, the tap of classical music. Yet all of these were changed somewhat today.

There is one disadvantage a bass player has while jamming with a group, when a vocalist decides that a particular key is not comfortable they can change it and the guitarists throw a capo on the neck of there axes but the bass player rarely uses a capo thus comes the need to transpose on the go. Today in chapel two songs were in the key of A a comfortable key with lots of possibilities, but the vocalist had a hard time in the chorus, so the key was changed to F there goes the key of A so I slowly figured out how to play in F. Soon enough F wasn't working it was a little to low so F# must be the key. I can't think of any worship music in F# but we played through and I noticed none of my noted sounded right the second time through, on to G! Well thankfully I settled down into the key of G and did manage a few bass lines, transposing from A and trying to remember to play in G.

As exciting as transposing can be that was not the interesting part. The second set we played after Olu Peters delivered a message on the 1st chapter of Job. This song was called faithful one, a song I had played for the first time this morning. When the band and I went up the the stage instead of standing with my Bass as usual I sat on a chair rested the butt of the bass on my left foot and with a violin bow played my bass like one would a cello. The electric bass played with a bow sounds amazing as I was to discover. Wow the endless possibilities. There is one drawback because of the strings being level and not staggered as they are on a violin or cello you are only able to play 2 strings properly so this should only be done with simpler songs. Well, have to get on with some homework.