> I knew there were reasons I want to learn to
>play the bass guitar, I could just never remember
>them long enough to tell my parents. :-)
> Sil "I was never a good musician to begin with"
> vercup

Well, join the club. I used to think I was tone deaf, I was so bad at music. But now I realize I'm not tone deaf, I just had a tin ear, which thankfully I've developed pretty well in the years I've been playing bass guitar.

But I've always been surprised at the number of female bass players in the type of music I listen to (hard rock/heavy metal). It seems like it's the "in" thing to have a female bass player, and it always seems like if there is a female in a band, she's always the bass player. I've never really understood why. Some people I know have wondered (in a really sexist manner) if perhaps the bass guitar is the "easiest" instrument, and that's why if you see a woman in a band, she's usually the bassist. And although I'll admit it's probably easier to pick up the basics of the bass guitar than it is to pick up the basics of the guitar or the drums, I think it's *harder* to play a bass *well* than it is to play either of those other two instruments, if only because there seems to be less examples of stellar bass players in rock to learn from than there are great guitarists or great drummers. Not to mention that large hands are really an asset when playing the bass guitar, and most women I know don't have hands as large as mine. And even with my hamhocks, the pinky of my left hand is now eternally splayed out away from the other fingers (when I relax my hands and place them palm to palm, the index, middle, and ring fingers line up, but the pinky on my left hand rests well to the outside of the pinky on my right) from years of stretching for notes four and five frets away on my bass.

My theory is this: A bunch of guys get together to form a band. They've got seventeen wanna-be guitarists and a drummer. All of the guitarists want to play lead guitar. They fight constantly, until they get themselves down to two guitarists who agree to play both lead *and* rhythm, although both of them constantly feel that they should be the one to be the exclusive lead guitarist. None of the seventeen guitarist candidates, however, will "lower" themselves to playing bass, so they go on a search for a bassist. All of the good bassists (there not really being that many anyway) in the area are already tied up with other bands/projects, so one of the guys gets the bright idea to get his girlfriend to play bass for their band. He gives her his little brother's half-scale bass, and the band starts to practice. One week later, they break up because the guitarists are still squabling over who should play the lead on which songs, and the drummer has gotten into the "rock and roll" lifestyle a little early, and has quietly drunk himself into oblivion.

The bassist, on the other hand, finds that she loves playing bass guitar, and quickly graduates from the toy model her ex-boyfriend gave her and buys a nice bass of her own. She actually practices (something the other shmucks thought was beneath them) and learns some music theory (more crap those "lead guitarists" didn't think they needed to know.) After a few years, she hooks up with a band that actually has potential, and she goes on to fame and fortune while her ex-boyfriend continues to search for a guitarist who "knows his role" and will play rhythm for him while he wanks away on his ear-splitting solos.

That's my theory, anyway. Feel free to contradict me if you like.