Too Much Guitar Playing

I've always been a bassist and singer when I've been involved in music. I started out as a drummer many years ago, and I know enough music theory to figure out chords on guitar or keyboards, but nobody would be likely to want me as a band member playing anything other than bass. However, since I plan to play again with an unstable lineup of people (as opposed to a lineup of unstable people), I decided I wanted to understand as many of the songs as possible on a deeper level and learn them on guitar as well as bass and learn to sing them all as well, even if I don't plan on singing lead for that particular song. It also gives me more options if we end up with another bassist involved at some point.

My plan at this point is to bring some friends together to play on a very loose basis, encouraging them to bring in new people from time to time to shake things up. I don't want to get involved in a regular band again, but I do miss the interactivity of playing music with other people, so this is my way of solving that problem.

And so I've been spending more time playing guitar than I ever have before, and I'm enjoying it a little too much, to the point where I've been spending more time on it than my other creative projects. I'd be years away from joining a band as a guitarist, but I'm reaching a point where I'm good enough to play relatively simple songs and sing them at the same time without screwing it up, and good enough to show a real guitarist the chords if necessary.

A guitar or keyboard player who can sing can join a band and immediately have songs that everyone else can start improvising behind them, and I've always envied that. I'm still much better on bass and more comfortable there, but it's cool to be able to play complete songs on my own, which is significantly harder to do alone on bass. I suppose the whole point of this post is to say that I'm doing something (mostly) new for me and having a good time doing it.