Bob Kolada wrote: Sat Jun 13, 2026 4:49 pm
Sounds like a concise way to compliment one's overall musicality; timing, intonation, appropriate 'articulation' or whatever it's called on stringed instruments,...
I only played bass at the HS pep band level so I never heard it.
Well...
I can play a lot of fancy stuff on the tuba (even at this age) but about all I can play on the electric bass is what needs to be played with combos and jazz bands. Thank goodness I can usually at least play that.
Those characteristics you listed:
With the electric bass, a really good instrument set up properly (fortunately I know how to do that, but it's pretty logical, once these fairly simple instruments are analyzed - if the neck is straight, the frets are in the right places, and the bridge is located at the correct place - hopefully at the factory, once the (bridge adjustments) string lengths and the string heights are adjusted - and maybe the nut at the top of the fretboard is also evaluated) it's going to play as well in tune and as easily as it's going to play (just as with a piano, except way-WAY simpler)
A musician either has good timing or they don't...tuba, bass, saxophone, jaw harp.. a good drummer and a good bass player can keep each other honest. Those who claim that one completely regulates the other just aren't thinking about it correctly.
articulation - electric bass
Some people play with their thumb (I guess they don't plan to do too much, and that's fine), others employ a truncated version of classic guitar right hand technique, others play with a pick, others are amazing at slap technique - and combine that with hammer-ons and pull-offs, yet others can do all of these things and a few of them can do all of those things at extraordinary speeds and with good time.
I'm pretty much (VERY much) blue collar, when it comes to electric bass playing.
The bass guitar is just not something I've ever spent much time practicing at home - other than recently: to get through some of the technical oldies funk passages that requires speed as well as sustained speed (and other techniques that I possess, but techniques that I never particularly built up speed employing).
Call me if you need a really good tuba player.
Call me if you need a really good tuba player who plays bass guitar OK. Call me if you need an electric bass player who knows a bunch of standards - and even a whole bunch of obscure tunes with multiple strains from the 1920s and 1930s, and can play a whole bunch of songs (that fewer and fewer people know) without having to look at lead sheets.
summary:
You're not going to be wowed by my electric bass playing, but I don't believe you'll be distracted by it either.
I have a goal of getting better at playing the thing, but - whenever I sit down to practice - I find myself grabbing one of the tubas.
(They're already out of their cases, and they don't have to be plugged in.)
... so back to the original puzzling question...
If a good bass is set up correctly, it's going to play pretty darn well in tune - which is why it would be odd to receive a compliment about how in tune one's bass guitar is... and if a few knobs are turned this way or that, it's probably going to sound pretty good if it's decent amplification equipment, so it seems odd to receive compliments about how good bass guitar tone is, as well.
)
), so I sort of tilted my bass guitar sound towards the sound of an upright. I probably still (very much) tend to do that, even though I'm now playing in an eclectic band that plays all sorts of things. It's just too much trouble to bring two bass guitars with two types of strings (flats on one, roundwounds on the other) and to turn the knobs this way in that for different songs, especially when I'm also carrying the tuba when we mix in some dixieland in with all the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s and '90s stuff that we do. 
