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As a child I was always attracted to simple, up-tempo music and strong beats. That
never changed. House music (minimal/progressive), Roland 303 and reggae, I still love
it. About 20 years ago, I fell in love with African percussion (djembee and bass drums),
still playing in a band.
About seven years ago, a good friend of mine and an excellent bass player, Mark Bubbermans,
was fed up with me tapping on his bass guitars. He forced me to hold a bass guitar
the proper way. “No, no, I have to hold it the other way around•. From the
first touch of probably the E-string, I was lost. Mark gave me an acoustic bass (Vester)
which I could keep as long as I played it. A few months later, I immigrated to Senegal.
I can tell you it’s a bit weird to fly to another continent with a huge instrument
you are not even capable of playing. Love makes blind. So I managed to play a bass
guitar upside down for seven years with a technical development close to zero. Besides
being incredibly stubborn, two major advantages blocked my development. I could take
any bass guitar and I like the low E/A-strings which are easy accessible upside down.
But …
Times change. U meet people who can actually play. U get a girlfriend who plays cello
and recently started guitar classes. Who likes to buy instruments and starts to show
pictures of LH basses. In the meantime I was looking for bass tabs to support songs
like ‘bad moon rising’ or ’horse with no name’. I noticed these
bass tabs are not that difficult or can be simplified ;-)
With the mental help of my girlfriend I got a beautiful bass (thanks to Leander Grooten)
and I am learning and I am happy.
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