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Really nice site Bootleger, I particularly like the neck profile chart.

The thing with bass is no one starts off wanting to play it. Guitar is so much more flashy. Even Paul McCartney talks of being 'lumbered' with bass after Stu Sutcliffe left the Beatles (Lennon refused claiming he'd only just got a new Rickenbacker). In the sixties bass playing shows all the hallmarks of recently converted guitar players - pick playing, slavish linear basslines. It's not till the seventies that you get a whole new breed of player. Perhaps it was the more flamboyant styles of Entwistle or funk/disco's emerging 'slap' technique. Out goes the pick and in comes expressive fingerstyle playing. Suddenly people are Bassists, suggesting proper dedication to just that instrument.

Any band begins with the drums. I can't tell you how tricky songs where the guitar and bass lead the intro are (at least for amateurs like me). Drummers prerogative is do the count-in. The bass player then takes the bass drum beat and makes it more musical. Then the guitar players riff over that rhythm.

You asked about singers and bassists, Well there's Sting, Lemmy, Jack Bruce and Tom Robinson. Glen Matlock of the Pistols says you should sing the words, and it does help you keep locked in with the song... but singing into the mike, well...

I've found the more I work on vocals the more I fumble basslines. It seems like I can focus on expressiveness on one but not both. At least when you're in the early days of learning the bass. Also bass has to listen to the drums and keep strictly in with them. Guitars have more liberty to swing the beat a bit.

For the Western sounds you want try selecting the neck pickup and giving it full volume, turn the amp down for a reasonable level. Take the tone up to full brightness then back off a bit. Should give a big, 'fat' tone.

For the blues sounds try the bridge pickup. Roll the volume right back till you can just hear it, turn the amp up to compensate. Take the tone right back till the bass strings get muddy then rise a bit up from that. Should be a raw and growly tone.

Hi Roger, the Travis part comes from Merle Travis who was a banjo player. You can get very dense books on banjo rolls but the clawhammer is the key one.

Bend the ring and little finger of your right hand back. Make a claw shape so your hand looks like one of those hammers with two prongs for pulling nails. Now the thumb will play a root note followed by the index picking one string of the chord, then another thumb plucked root note and then the middle finger picks a string one lower than the index. Once you get the knack your fingers rock back and forth naturally, thumb on the downbeat, fingers on the 2 & 4. More variation comes in when the thumb alternates with the string lower than the root note for an 'alternating bassline'.

The great thing is you hold the chord and do the picking. Once you know the roots it all becomes second nature. Sometimes the finger notes you pick are the thinnest strings (outside pick) and sometimes the notes are more central (inside pick). It depends on the song.

Check out Ralph Agresta's book 'Blues: Jam Trax'. All the scale patterns it teaches you apply to rock.

Also look to discover 'harmonic fills'. Little patterns of notes that echo the song's main melody but you repeat them in different positions according to the chord at that part of the song.

If you mean Fleetwood Mac's song of this name then you are after Peter Green's 'out of phase' Gibson Les Paul sound, but I'm sure it could sound pretty sweet played acoustic.

To add to my last post Montana, yes I'm a bass player and although I play acoustic and electric when in a band I find bass suits me best. The hardest part of learning bass for me was finding an effective rock style that kept in with the drummer. I'd learnt lots of fun basslines but when it came to playing in a band I had to learn to get simple and play right on the one. So in this case 'really easy' means hard work. Great when it's hard rockin work though ;-)

Hi DFB, the strat is a classic design and a great beginner's electric guitar (before Gibson fans flame me, imagine handing a newbie an 8lb Les Paul). The body shape is near perfection and you get the classic rock'n'roll sound. People tend to move on to Gibson when they are after a heavier rock sound. However this is a little bit false, plenty of hard rock was played on stratocasters. It's a great all-rounder, far more flexible than a Les Paul.

Simple, quick route is to take your guitar to a small independent guitar shop. They will usually change strings for a few dollars ontop of the string pack price. Usually while they're at it they'll give the fingerboard a clean with lemon oil or similar.

The longer, harder route is to just buy the strings and a product like 'Fast Fret'. Look up an online guide to changing strings and have a go yourself. Make sure you allow plenty of time, I usually give myself an afternoon, change a few strings have a cup of tea, change some more etc. Pace yourself cos it can be be frustrating and fiddly. If you've never done it before you might want to take the shop route and watch what they do (assuming they don't disappear into a backroom workshop).

Another essential purchase - a contact tuner. Intellisense make a great 'bone' tuner. It clips on to anything acoustic, electric, bass even and will save you from over-tightening if you DIY (providing you don't go up a whole octave, then the strings will be really tight, real hard to play).

HI SC, you might think your guitar's fingerboard was flat but this is rarely the case. Flat would be a radius of infinity ;-)

In reality it's more comfortable for a fingerboard to have a slight curve. Checkout some jazz guitars and you'll see they curve alot, almost like the camber on a road. These will have a small radius. Some players claim this makes for faster playing but frankly it's a personal preference.