AMOlson

Bass - Rush, Geddy Lee all the way. Grew up with 'em, my first concert was Hold Your Fire. When the most recent generation of rhythm games was about to come out, I thought real hard and decided why bother with a little plastic toy when I could learn to really play. Got a bass and now own 4 of 'em and 2 guitars. Love bass. Guitar - A7X, Synyster Gates. Longer story there. Was happy playing bass, but kept looking over the fence wishing I could figure out that chord thing. Then I tried Bat Country on bass and it was fun, listened to some of their stuff, especially Nightmare, and bought the 3 pack. Still on the fence, then I was really bored one afternoon and watched Synyster Gates' master class at Guitar Center. Now THAT is guitar playing, more classical/jazz than chord/chord/chord. Hmmm ... maybe ... ended up with a good guitar with a gift card from buying my fretless and ... yeah. I still swear I'm going to be able to play Afterlife before I die. Just as long as I don't have to play chords.

I wouldn't worry about it with a guitar, as they're not under all that much tension to begin with. Even more since you're going down in tension. The only issue I've ever had was having to adjust the truss rod when I went from ancient normal to new heavy strings on a bass. Generally speaking though, if you're going to lighter strings or lower tunings than the instrument was designed for, you're good. The worst that is likely to happen is a broken string, which on a guitar is common. Now this is from a physics standpoint, not a musician's, so there's that grain of salt.

Yeah, I get this a lot. "Why am I doing this? I'm not getting anywhere. This is a waste of time ..." Four things I do ... Grab my guitar (I'm a bass player) and tinker with it. I am a lousy guitar player but it often will get me unstuck. If nothing else, being able to reach 6-7 frets at a time feels great. Play my fretless for an hour or so. It's different enough with having to focus so much on intonation that it can make a regular bass feel totally new again. Walk scales for a while. Cmaj, Dmaj, Fmaj, etc. On guitar I suppose this would be progressions, but being a bass player, I'm not entirely sure. Lastly, when I'm really sick of it all, I just play for a while. Pick out songs I'm at 95%+ on and play to enjoy playing. Sometimes I'll even get a little itty bitty bit closer to to FC. I've even hit it a couple of times. Go me! My rule, practice every day. Even if it's just pulling an instrument down and twiddling for half an hour on a song I'm trying to transcribe or get completely locked in my head. Once you get past the beginner stages, it's really difficult to see progress. But its there, and doing different things can often really help. Check out some of the master classes from Guitar Center that have been posted or study your favorite artist in concert. Even better, play with some different styles and techniques. Learn to read music, for example, if you don't already know how. Experiment with learning to create music. Do something different just to keep it fresh.

Oddly enough, classic rock like AC/DC, Def Leppard, Black Sabbath and a lot of 80's hair metal, like Whitesnake, are very easy on bass. Just watch out for the occasional flyer from groups like Bon Jovi. And Rush is always on the most difficult list, no matter what instrument you play. After a while you'll be able to pick out the bass line when you're listening to music and you'll be able to hear what makes a song hard to play on bass. Besides, if you practice by yourself, it doesn't matter how bad an attempt is. And with CDLC, well, just delete your mistakes. :P